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Ed Markey’s website is here. You can sign up to volunteer here, or to donate here. (Yeah, a dedicated ActBlue page would be nice, but I don’t have the skills to make one.) The special election is less than two months away, June 25th.
Markey’s been the Representative for my district since 1976, and he’s been a progressive and a reliable Democrat his whole career. He’s got Planned Parenthood’s (email) endorsement:
With a 30-year record in Congress, Ed Markey has proven that he can be trusted to stand up for Massachusetts women, no matter what. Unlike Gabriel Gomez, Ed Markey will protect women’s health, safe and legal abortion access, family planning funding, and comprehensive sexuality education in the U.S. Senate. The general election is coming up on June 25 — and Ed Markey needs your continued support.
In the weeks leading up to the primary, Planned Parenthood Action Fund volunteers worked hard to educate and mobilize voters, knocking on over a thousand doors and making over 13,000 calls in support of Ed Markey….
He’s got Senator Warren’s endorsement:
We need more people in the Senate who are willing to stand up for our values and stand up for families. I’ve worked with Ed and I’ve seen him in the ring, and I know he will fight for what we believe in.
Ed will fight for families and small businesses — to level the playing field and build a future for our kids and grandkids.
Ed will fight for women — for equal pay for equal work and access to health care screenings and birth control.
Ed will fight for working families — for the right to unionize and collective bargaining.
Ed will fight for seniors — for protecting Medicare and Social Security, the commitment we make to ourselves and to each other.
Ed will fight for the environment — in passing on a world to our children where you can drink the water and breathe the air.
And Ed will fight for accountability on Wall Street — to end “Too Big to Fail” and “Too Big to Jail” once and for all.
I know that the people of Massachusetts share the same values that Ed Markey and I do. But I also know that we can’t take anything for granted in the June special election. After all, it was just a few years ago when Scott Brown shocked the world and won the last Massachusetts special election.
I may be preaching to the choir, but we absolutely cannot lose another special election in Massachusetts — or let our guard down even for a minute.
National Republicans and powerful corporate interests are going to do everything they can to take back a Senate seat in Massachusetts and keep another progressive like Ed Markey out of the Senate.
Those ‘powerful corporate interests‘ have already chosen their candidate, swiftboating spokesmodel Gabriel Gomez, who came out of nowhere and the vulture capital industry to beat two well-regarded professional politicians for the Repub slot. Gomez ads were all over the local news hour tonight, and he’s working the wet-eyed, smarmily sincere, grip’n’grin-at-the-local-diner ‘Hispanic Scott Brown’ template as hard as he can. Ed Markey’s not gonna let him walk away undinged, but it’s clear the astroturfers are willing to dump unlimited! corporate! cash! in an attempt to add one more reliable anti-President-Obama vote to their roster. This is waaaay bigger than just another local race in what should be a ‘reliable’ blue state in the Northeast corridor; it’s another test by the robber barons and banana republicans to see if they can replace a good Democrat with a bought-and-paid-for corporate shill.
Cacti
My advice to Markey…
Study everything that Martha Coakley did and do the opposite.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cacti:
More or less exactly what I was going to say.
Markey in the Senate, Colbert-Busch in the House (from South Carolina, yet!) — it’s all doable.
Morzer
From what I’ve seen, a lot of the local Republicans don’t seem terribly enamored of Gabby as their candidate. I imagine most of them will rally round just because they hate liberals slightly more than RINOs, but I don’t think Gomez will be as effective as Scott Brown in being just bigoted enough when away from the cameras. Markey also has a much longer and more distinguished record than Coakley, which ought to be worth something.
Morzer
I’d also like people to note that Gomez has some distinctly interesting things to say for himself in the letter he wrote Deval Patrick, in which he begged the Other Kenyan Muslim Usurper to appoint him.
http://c.o0bg.com/rw/Boston/2011-2020/2013/03/13/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Graphics/MASenateStatementofInterest17Jan13.pdf
It’s quite a fascinating document when you study it. If you can manage not to laugh at Gabby’s contortions.
amk
Let’s hope massholes aren’t stupid enough to pull a brown II.
MikeJ
@Cacti:
I’m waiting for Markey to compare his opponent to Bobby Valentine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer:
I failed. I go to da box for two minutes, ya know, by myself … I feel shame … and then I get free.
Morzer
There’s also a fairly substantial difference between the local political careers of Scott Brown and Gabriel Gomez. Brown had won local office pretty consistently before he assisted at Martha Coakley’s self-immolation. Gomez, on the other hand, has run just one previous local race. He ran for selectman in Cohasset in 2003 and came in 3rd in a field of 3.
Mike in NC
Whatever. When I lived in Massachusetts 30 years ago we elected actual Democrats to the US House and Senate.
liberal
@Cacti:
LOL.
mainmati
2013 is not 2010. Markey is not the same as Coakley. Hopefully also, a GOTV movement will get enough Dems and Indies to the polls.
liberal
Just dumped a Ben Franklin on him.
Morzer
Anne Laurie, I believe you can create an Act Blue page for Ed Markey here:
https://secure.actblue.com/directory?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=markey
Just click on the “create page” tab and the process is fairly painless.
Kay
Are people in Massachusetts saying “oh my GOD not another Senate race”?
Morzer
@Kay:
No, but that’s because we are Godless liberal elitists.
Kay
@Morzer:
Right. I forgot.
I hope the Citizens money barrage goes like it did in Ohio with Brown.
Like water off a duck’s back :)
Morzer
@Kay:
“You gotta get, that, dirt off your shoulder”
NotMax
Regardless of who wins on June 25, that will make a total of 4 different Massachusetts senators within the first half of the same calendar year.
Talk about change.
Trivia: AFAIK, Massachusetts’ is the only state song which includes the exact phrase “live long and prosper.”
Vulcan salute optional.
Morzer
Little bit of history was made today in Massachusetts:
http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/05/01/nick-collins-concede-election-linda-dorcena-forry-first-suffolk-district-senate-race/HgmmyOVdgiFXjbzRmNfNzO/story.html
mdblanche
@SiubhanDuinne: The South Carolina race may not be over yet: Mark Sanford has picked up a new endorsement.
David Koch
I just don’t see the famously insular irish of Massachusetts voting for a hispanic.
Tom Levenson
@Kay: Yes?
File that under SATSQ.
Morzer
@David Koch:
Well, they voted for a black man as governor and another one as president. Twice, in fact.
rikyrah
Go Congressman Markey!!
Calouste
@Cacti: You mean act like you’re running for Senate, rather than just waiting to inherit the Duchy of Massachusetts?
Kay
@Tom Levenson:
You poor things.
The Citizens ads in ’12 were really generic, I thought. The donors got ripped off. Someone was just cranking that shit out.
Davis X. Machina
@Mike in NC: 35 years ago, Massachusetts elected Markey, a decades-long member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
FlyingToaster
@Kay: We only got the pro-Romney ads aimed at NewHamsters.
Warren and Brown signed the Peoples Pledge, and very few ads were put up by outsiders.
Gomez has already rejected the Pledge, so our airwaves are going to be inundated. I suspect I’ll stick to watching PBS, RetroTV and Qubo from broadcast, and non-NECN cable on the big screen. We have a working mute button on every controller here, after all.
I’m really dreading the ratfking push poll calls, though. I got a few this past week on behalf of Lynch, and I just screamed obscenities at the robot before hanging up.
Kay
@FlyingToaster:
I don’t have a landline anymore so I don’t get calls these days.
In ’08 I got a Palin volunteer to tell me they needed more people for a rally. It was like 40 miles away so I asked her why she was calling so far out and she told me: “we’re afraid we won’t fill it”. Then I felt bad because I don’t think she’s supposed to tell me that.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Omnes Omnibus: Denis Lemieux, is that you?