Standing Up For New Jersey
| By Unknown user - Jun 12, 2006 5:45:10 PM ET |
| Also listed in: Featured Bloggers |
I'd like to thank my good friend, Senator Reid for giving me the opportunity to interact with everyone here at this site. The energy evident among the netroots is going to be vital in winning back control of Congress this fall and I will certainly be tapping into it. In fact, my own campaign blog should be up and running at Menendez2006.com before too long. We also have another useful site up at StandUpToBigOil.com that I encourage you to visit. Scott Shields of MyDD.com has joined our staff and will be blogging there regularly, along with myself and others. I hope you'll join us there. In the meantime, I'll be posting some of my thoughts on the state of our nation and the state of our campaign over the remainder of the week here at GiveEmHellHarry.com.
My political career began with what some might call my own personal crashing of the gate. Both of my parents worked tirelessly to provide for our family - my mother as a seamstress at a garment factory and my father as an itinerant carpenter. They could not have been more proud of me than when I was accepted into the honors program at my high school. Unfortunately, it turned out that I would have to spend about $100 to buy the required books. Despite all of their hard work, $100 was still an enormous amount of money for our family.
This seemed completely wrong to me. Why should public school students be forced to pay extra for their books? I was so insistent that our principal relented and offered the books for free. I didn't want special treatment, though. I wanted the school to do the right thing for all of the students. Not content to sit on the sidelines and merely complain, I launched a petition drive when I was 19 to put our school board seats up for election, and when we won, I ran for a seat on the board and won. Throughout my career, I've carried with me the number one lesson learned in that first race for school board - always stand up for what you believe to be right, no matter what.
But the stakes today are higher than they were back then. Today, the Bush administration and the Bush Congress are leading our nation on a reckless course. And as one of only one hundred members of the United States Senate, I've worked to stand up to their agenda at every turn, whether the issue was the war in Iraq, Social Security privatization, port security, education funding, or the minimum wage. Time after time, the Bush Republicans in Washington have taken the wrong position.
My opponent in this race sees things differently. Tom Kean, Jr. is running to join them in Washington, to be another vote in support of the Bush agenda. During his tenure in the New Jersey State Senate, he's voted against raising the minimum wage while voting for tax cuts for millionaires. He's claimed to be an environmentalist, and yet he's voted against making polluters pay more for cleaning up toxic spills. He claims to be for stem cell research, but has voted against it three times in the last year alone. On the war in Iraq, Tom Kean, Jr. supports the Bush position, saying that he would have voted for the war and doesn't believe that a change of course is necessary.
The central question of this campaign is this. Which candidate will side with the people of New Jersey and which candidate will support the Bush status quo? The answer is clear. While I will proudly continue stand up to President Bush and stand up for New Jersey, my opponent's record shows he cannot be trusted to make the right choices.
My political career began with what some might call my own personal crashing of the gate. Both of my parents worked tirelessly to provide for our family - my mother as a seamstress at a garment factory and my father as an itinerant carpenter. They could not have been more proud of me than when I was accepted into the honors program at my high school. Unfortunately, it turned out that I would have to spend about $100 to buy the required books. Despite all of their hard work, $100 was still an enormous amount of money for our family.
This seemed completely wrong to me. Why should public school students be forced to pay extra for their books? I was so insistent that our principal relented and offered the books for free. I didn't want special treatment, though. I wanted the school to do the right thing for all of the students. Not content to sit on the sidelines and merely complain, I launched a petition drive when I was 19 to put our school board seats up for election, and when we won, I ran for a seat on the board and won. Throughout my career, I've carried with me the number one lesson learned in that first race for school board - always stand up for what you believe to be right, no matter what.
But the stakes today are higher than they were back then. Today, the Bush administration and the Bush Congress are leading our nation on a reckless course. And as one of only one hundred members of the United States Senate, I've worked to stand up to their agenda at every turn, whether the issue was the war in Iraq, Social Security privatization, port security, education funding, or the minimum wage. Time after time, the Bush Republicans in Washington have taken the wrong position.
My opponent in this race sees things differently. Tom Kean, Jr. is running to join them in Washington, to be another vote in support of the Bush agenda. During his tenure in the New Jersey State Senate, he's voted against raising the minimum wage while voting for tax cuts for millionaires. He's claimed to be an environmentalist, and yet he's voted against making polluters pay more for cleaning up toxic spills. He claims to be for stem cell research, but has voted against it three times in the last year alone. On the war in Iraq, Tom Kean, Jr. supports the Bush position, saying that he would have voted for the war and doesn't believe that a change of course is necessary.
The central question of this campaign is this. Which candidate will side with the people of New Jersey and which candidate will support the Bush status quo? The answer is clear. While I will proudly continue stand up to President Bush and stand up for New Jersey, my opponent's record shows he cannot be trusted to make the right choices.
Comments are closed for this post.