The above video link includes Blue America candidate Rick Penberthy on local news standing up for the rights of workers against the potential anti-union activities of the NLRB, discussed by Jordan earlier.

For those of you who may have missed it, Rick sent you a video "thank you" for your efforts on his behalf this past weekend.  His office also released the following to the press yesterday:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Kevin Cate, Campaign Manager
CELL PHONE: (813) 394-0457

PENBERTHY TAKES MESSAGE TO THE
BLOGGING WORLD FOR SUPPORT  


 
Crystal River, FL— Congressional Candidate Rick Penberthy (FL-05), took a pit stop between four conventional campaign events this weekend to live-blog on national political blog, www.FireDogLake.com.
 
“We actually were forced to stop at a local wi-fi enabled McDonalds in Crystal River because our schedule was too booked to get Rick back to the office,” said Kevin Cate, campaign manager.
 
Two rounds of coffee, 160 posts, and over 50 individual contributions later, Penberthy’s campaign had their first round of direct mail completely funded by FireDogLake users.
 
“This is one of the valuable lessons that Howard Dean gets, Democrats get, but a fact that the DCCC fails to acknowledge- supporting worthy candidates in every precinct produces Democratic gains everywhere. It’s just common sense,” said Penberthy.
 
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has not recognized Florida’s 5th Congressional District as a competitive race despite Republican incumbent Ginny Brown-Waite’s close ties to the Republican culture of corruption, her disregard for any efforts to bring troops home safely, and for her lack of fiscal responsibility in Congress.
 
“Our message resonates with every American that wants our troops back safely, that wants their healthcare to be affordable, and their constitutional rights to be guaranteed. If it takes blogs like FireDogLake to circumvent the DCCC and fund my campaign- then that’s what we’ll do.”
 
To read the entire blog archive, visit:
 
http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/07/08/blue-america-rick-penberthy-fl-5th/#comments

Here’s a little more you might like to know about your efforts this past weekend.  Sam Seder had Rick as a guest on his Air America show today, most likely after encountering him here this past weekend.  This site raised, by the last figures Howie Klein gave me, $2,000.00 for Rick’s direct mail campaign through Howie’s ActBlue page last Saturday, and Rick got a few hundred more through his other ActBlue page.  The goal at the outset was to raise $1,500.00.  As a result of this fantastic success, Rick’s first mailing will be much larger than anticipated, in part because a larger post card buy allows for reduced per-unit costs and wider distribution through the expanded scale of the project.  In an essentially rural district like Florida-05, that’s a very big deal.   Our average FDL community donation was $39.50.

This is a new model of progressive infrastructure building and candidate promotion emerging from the netroots and grassroots.  Take a look at this ActBlue page.  Barbara Boxer’s PAC is in the lead in fundraising by number of donors, followed by the combined netroots page mainatined by Matt Stoller of MyDD and Markos (who authorized this message) from DailyKos.  Then comes the Howard Dean group, which as far as I can tell, is no longer active, and then Atrios’ page.  The next two, for Paul Hackett and Ciro Rodriguez, are no longer active.  Then comes Wes Clark’s page (still active) and Christine Cegelis’ page (inactive).  Then comes FDL.  Meanwhile, here’s Howie’s page from DownWithTyranny.  Since DWT and FDL form a kind of unified axis in fundraising, if you combine the results from those two sources, factoring out the inactive funding sources in the top ten ActBlue list, we’re in the upper echelon of funding sources, and we specialize in picking real progressives as early as possible to give them a fighting chance to win.  We get them attention and early money when the DCCC is focused on other candidates with better corporate-friendly credentials (ahem).  Everybody, give yourselves some credit.

Next week, Howie’s Blue America series will highlight Coleen Rowley of MN-02.  You may remember Coleen for her warning to the FBI to take Al Qaeda seriously before 9/11.  Coleen was a Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2002.  Check out this MyDD interview with her.  She’s running against a truly politically putrid wingnut, for whom Geedubya’s policies are not right wing enough.  Howie will have more for you next week.

Rick Penberthy is a great, gracious guy and we’re more than glad to have been able to give him our helping hand.  Anyone reading this from FL-05, please volunteer for Rick’s campaign.  As we continue to build progressive infrastructure like this, new candidates will continue to arise through people power on the ground, not just insider favoritism from Washington, DC.  Hell, DC insiders want to tell Democrats in CT whom they should have represent them in the Senate, no matter what the people themselves think.  Thankfully, I’m betting DC is unlikely to get its way, and as we keep doing what we’re doing, the next chairs of the DSCC and the DCCC may well be asking the locals whom they want to represent them.  Blogofascism?  No:  democracy.

Not bad for a bunch of rabid lambs. 

(Note:  This news was too good not to pass along.  Snark will be back to Late Nite before you know it!) 

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