Marie deYoung, Harris Martin, Paul Lang
Joe Sestak, Tony Payton, Anne Dicker
It was quite a crowd at Lucy's Hat Shop for the monthly Philly for Change meeting. As I thought, Paul Lang was indeed there. I ran into him right as I walked in at the signing table. I saw a few familiar faces there like Duncan Black and Marc Stier and the regulars from the steering comittee, but there was an incredible amount of newbies. Jen Murphy [one of the SC members] estimated that about seventy people were there. Great turnout! And after the collection bucket was passed around, they counted up a nice $200 for the general fund. But the candidates were the ones on center stage for the night.
Marie deYoung was up first. She is running for State Representative in the 163rd District in DelCo and has already been endorsed by DelCo Dems and the PA House Dem Campaign Committee. She's a former Army chaplain and Halliburton whistleblower where she exposed Halliburton's millions of fraudulent charges through contracts in Kuwait. She plans to keep on fighting companies like Halliburton and protecting her district's constituents from greedy corporations. Her biggest platforms [after a look through her brochure] are for educational reform of the public schooling system and comprehensive reform of the state tax and budget system.
Harris Martin is running in the 18th Assembly District up in Bensalem. He is the chairman of Bensalem Democrats who helped register Dems in mass numbers and was able to tip the scales in Bensalem Township to a Democratic majority in registered voters. From what I'm told [since I rarely leave the Philly area] that's a pretty Red area so it's quite an achievement. Martin is part of the group of newbies running under the PA Clean Sweep banner.
Paul Lang took to the mic next with his run for State Senate in the 6th District in Lower Bucks County and a chip of upper Philly. I realized that it was the first time that I had heard him speak in front of a crowd politically. I have seen him in person many times and spoken to him over the phone many times, but it was good to see him in front of a crowd. He speaks well. He spoke of his service to this country during his time in the U.S. Coast Guard [retired as Lieutenant] where he broke his back using forty-year-old ageing equipment. He was told that he may never walk again. Compared to that painful experience [from which he still feels some pain]. His doctors down at Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed Medical Center joked with him that the only person they saw more often than him was none other than Dick Cheney. But he got through the initial couple of years and now getting out on the campaign trail isn't so daunting a task after going through such an accident and following intensive treatment. He touched on two local issues of contaminated water supplies and the effects of big box retailers like WalMart which are a drain on the local communities. He vowed to be committed to those issues once elected. Above Average Jane has a great interview with Paul.
Joe Sestak, running for U.S. House Rep in PA-07 in DelCo. I've heard rumblings about him for the past few weeks, but nothing of real substance. He retired a Vice Admiral after a thirty-one year career in the Navy which included a stint as Director of Defense Policy in Clinton's White House. He's only been on the campaign trail for fifty-two [or was it sixty-two] days now, so he's still a little green, but he spoke well to the crowd. A very calming voice came out of the veteran. He wants out of Iraq. He wants to fight for universal healthcare. He wants to fight to uphold womens' right to choose. He wants federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. He has a personal stake on the issues of healthcare and stem cell reasearch. His five-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and had to go through four months of chemotheraphy. He spoke of Rep. Curt Weldon's [the incumbent GOP opponent] attacks on his family's decision to take Alexandra to the Chilidren's Hospital in D.C. instead of a hospital in PA. Sestak told of how he went to the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins and CHOP here in Philly; they all told him that the best care would be back in D.C. at Children's Hospital so he did what any parent would do, go get the best care for his child where his family was already based due to his assignment at Annapolis.
Sestak stressed accountability in his closing. He told the crowd about how a plane is launched on an aircraft carrier [Sestak was a cammander of an aircraft carrier battle group in Iraq and Afghanistan]. He described the incredible engines on a jet and the additional launch cable mechanism that adds additional takeoff thrust. He told us how the pilot cannot see underneath her/his plane and relies on her/his deck operator to give an all-clear signal after making sure everything was okay underneath by stepping in front of the jet in plain view of the pilot. The deck operator is saying to the pilot that it is okay to shut off the engine at that point with no worries that the cable will launch the plane off the deck; if it does, it would take the deck operator with it. The deck operator is telling the pilot to trust her/him and that s/he is putting their life on the line in demonstration of that trust. Sestak stressed that Weldon would never ever put himself in that kind of position because he lacks a sense of accountability.
Sherri Cohen took the mic for her mother Florence Cohen who is calling for a special election announcement to fill the void at the At-Large seat in the City Council left by the recent passing of Sherri's father. Head of the City Council Anna Verna is the one person with the power to call this election and she is holding steadfast against doing so. Sherri's been collecting signatures for months now and gaining support everywhere she goes. I believe I signed the petition several months ago at a PfC event.
Tony Payton Jr, running for State Representative in the 179th District which is around the West Frankford area of NE Philly, was up next. He is running because he thinks we can do better. We can do better to keep up the American Dream alive. The schools and communities are eroding he said. He was Deputy Campaign Manager of the Seth Williams for District Attorney campaign and a fellow in the Center for Progressive Leadership's Fellowship; he feels that his past experiences have groomed him to bring back the American Dream to the community he loves and lives in.
Last but not least was Anne Dicker whose campaign grew right out of the roots of PfC, she's running for State Representative in the 175th District which encompasses a boatload of area east of Broad St from Kensington to Bella Vista. She eschewed the squaking wireless mic and called the room to get closer around her in a tight circle. She got the crowd quite pumped up, many of the members of PfC are already working on her campaign so she knows how to hit their buttons. She called the plans for the casinos a travesty and feels that developers are trying to turn her beloved Philly into another Atlantic City. She called her 175th the coolest neighborhood in the planet to hoots and hollers [Lucy's is conveniently located in the heart of the 175th].
After the speakers, it was announced that the Minimum Wage bill passed in the House with an increase to $7.15. Marc Steir has the info here. The night closed out with a showing of a short documentary of a local Philly guy's trip do Ecuador to document the injustice the Ecuadorians are going through with outsiders coming in and mining their copper, an incredible natural resource which is used in just about everything electronic — by that I mean it's a lucrative industry to be in control of the raw materials.
I must stress that every single one of these candidates is a first timer. Get involved. Make a difference.
