At least money-in-politics took one loss in MD


Though I was saddened to see that Donna Edwards lost her Senate race in Maryland to a better-connected opponent, there was some rare good news out of Maryland. The 8th Congressional District nominated Jamie Raskin, a heavily outmatched democratic state senator running against corruption.

raskin

Jamie Raskin is probably headed to the Senate.

His opponents outspent Raskin heavily. Raskin spent less than 1 million, but his opponents spent at least 1.5m and 9m respectively. Some of that $806K that Raskin spent was from me, thanks to the Bernie campaign for helping me find him. I have also donated to Donna Edwards.

It was a pretty crazy race, split 34%, 27%, 24% among the top three candidates. But somehow, through grassroots movement, Raskin was able to pull his support together and overcome. Raskin is strongly against money in politics, even writing a book on it. Meanwhile, he had one opponent in David Trone who just threw a bunch of his own money at the situation. The other opponent, Kathleen Mathews (married to the Chris from MSNBC), was supported by the Clinton machine.

The best thing about Raskin is the substance. He’s understood locally to be an effective politician, but maintains a strong progressive stance on extremely important issues like climate change, campaign finance, and interventionism.

We need more of these wins. We need these kind of elected leaders- the ones who understand what leadership actually is:

 

“We are the agents, and servants of the people, and I will never ever forget that” -Jamie Raskin