Dan Seals for Congress

Recently I contributed to ActBlue, which supports politically Netroots progressive candidates across the country, and one of the candidates I selected just based on the site's writeup was Dan Seals, who's running as a Democrat for the IL-10 congressional seat, which includes some of the wealthiest suburbs in the United States (Winnetka, Wilmette, Northbrook, Highland Park, Lake Forest, etc.). After learning more about him, I am really excited about his campaign, and hope he can defeat the incumbent Republican, Mark Kirk, whose positions include staying in Iraq at all costs, voting against funding for troops and slashing veterans' health care and other benefits by billions of dollars, cutting college loan programs by almost $13 billion, championing the Social Security privatization schemes, pushing a government-mandated day of religious observance (!), and many other awful positions that have characterized the current Republican-led Congress.

In contrast, Chicago native Seals supports a structured withdrawal from Iraq, protection of Social Security benefits, a reworking of the Medicare prescription drug plan that doesn't give most of the power to the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, a restoration of college loans and an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind legislation (which friends of mine who're public school teachers almost uniformly agree is a mess), and in the increasing theocratic environment in which we're living, supports a strong and vigorous separation between church and state. With most of these positions, Seals sounds like a typical Democrat, which he is. I can't find much on his site about addressing the growing economic inequality in this country, protecting women's reproductive rights, broader issues involving US foreign policy, and so on. But without a doubt, having him in Congress would represent a sharp turn to the center-left from Kirk, who is a dyed-in-the-cotton right-winger and Bush administration true believer.

To win, Dan Seals needs financial support. Currently 92% of his funding comes from individual contributors. If you like his positions and what he has to say in a chat with Air America's Al Franken, or in this podcast with Archpundit, please consider helping his campaign out. You can go either to his site directly or to ActBlue, which played a role in Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut, and is helping candidates like Jim Webb pull ahead of George Allen.