Jean Hay Bright for U.S. Senate 2006

Background:

I am a writer, an organic farmer and a political activist who has lived in Maine since 1972. A former newspaper reporter and bureau chief for the Bangor (Maine) Daily News, I have run for federal office in Democratic primaries twice before, for Congress in 1994 and for U.S. Senate in 1996. My background includes working as a Legislative Assistant for Congressman Tom Andrews (1993), and I was heavily involved in the Kucinich campaign in 2004 (my husband David Bright was Kucinich co-coordinator in Maine). Lots more information on my web page: www.jeanhaybright.us

Goals:

To present a strong, principled voice in Washington, to counter the Bush administration and the right-wing agenda that is running our country into the ground.

Issues:

The Iraq war (including the related loss of civil liberties), national health care, and the millions of U.S. jobs lost to foreign trade are the key issues for Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Jean Hay Bright of Dixmont. (lead graf in recent press release. more below)

Grassroots Support:

Ours is a grassroots campaign. Pulling from the active Dean and Kucinich campaigns that electrified Maine's Democratic convention a year ago, this campaign is understood from the get-go to be a movement from the ground up. I was an active Kucinich volunteer and my husband was Kucinich co-coordinator for Maine.

DFA Values:

I'm running to end the war in Iraq. It was wrong to invade a sovereign country which had not attacked us and had no means or desire to attack us. And it is wrong to stay there. Our presence there is escalating the violence against our military men and women and against the Iraqi people, violence emanating from an enemy that we cannot recognize nor fight. The war has drained our coffers here at home to the point that essential services, including homeland security, are under-funded and are putting our own citizens at great risk. And our status in the world community is in shambles.

I'm running to stop the financially destructive Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, which, coupled with the hundreds of billions of dollars diverted to fund the war in Iraq, have resulted in our astonishing federal deficit and astronomical national debt. That fiscal irresponsibility is also severely impacting state budgets, including Maine's.

I'm running to protect social security, and other programs that reflect a government that recognizes its responsibility to its workers, its elderly, its disabled, its orphans, and to its veterans.

I'm running because it's long past time we had national health care.

I'm running to protect what jobs we have left in this country and to restore the ones we've lost, by repealing devastating trade agreements such as NAFTA and refusing the allow new ones such as CAFTA.

I'm running to make our nation more secure by ensuring food and energy independence, and by providing all our children with both a healthy and safe environment and an opportunity for a decent public education through the college level.
I'm running to save human rights and civil rights from assaults such as the Patriot Act, and an Attorney General who thinks the Geneva Conventions are "quaint."

I'm running to protect the federal judicial system from reactionary judges dedicated to decimating Constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.

And I'm running to preserve reproductive rights and the individual liberties and responsibilities such as those which are laid out so eloquently in Roe v. Wade." (end press release grafs)