Grassroots for Gillibrand

The Grassroots group DFA has included Gillibrand in their list of candidates and has raised $7,695.00 from 185 contributors so far. Here is the DFA page which says:

It's hard to imagine a Congressman more embarrassing than John Sweeney of the New York 20th Congressional District. In addition to voting in lock-step with President Bush, enjoying ski trips with lobbyists, accepting thousands of dollars from Tom DeLay, and partying at college fraternity houses on the weekends, John Sweeney's found time to try to privatize Social Security and give away billions to the oil industry.

Thankfully, DFA candidate Kirsten Gillibrand is everything that Sweeney is not. She's smart, ethical and will represent Upstate New Yorkers with the honor and dignity they deserve. Let's help Kirsten bring dignity back to DC.

Some, like this person who doesn't even live in our district are unhappy about grassroots activists helping candidates across the country. He says: "Granted, I want Sweeney out as much as anyone else, but I find it distrubing that people from Wisonsin are coming to my backyard and telling my neighbors why they support a candidate who is running for office in place where they have no property, no roots, etc etc."

Well, I do live here and I'd rather have individuals from around the country help the candidate I support so that we can beat this incumbent. We all have a stake in turning congress around. We must take the majority party out of power so that we can restore checks and balances in government and put the failures of the "Republican Revolution" behind us this November.

(Which failures? The culture of corruption, the nation building war with no exit strategy, the most bloated federal government ever, the record breaking national debt, the expanded influence of lobbyists, the abandoning of fiscal responsibility, the increased pork projects, combined with doing nothing to address skyrocketing expenses for the things we need, like gas, health care, education for our children.)

The DFA funds to the Gillibrand campaign come from average citizens unlike the money from around the country coming to Sweeney from Lobbyists in Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington DC. (Also see this earlier post)

These are also not funds from big corporations who seem to be able to (cheaply) buy legislation they want, like this.

So here's a newsflash for our myspace neighbor: DFA did not start outside money coming into politics. All DFA does is give average citizens a chance to offset at least some of the lobbyist and mega-corporate influences in Congress now. And if that helps bring about changes like this, then we all win.