State Senator John Marty is currently running for governor of Minnesota in 2010, and he is the author of the Minnesota Health Plan, a single-payer system he’s been fighting for.

New York has only an appointed senator at the moment, Kirsten Gillibrand, filling in for Hillary Clinton who left to become Secretary of State. This is a terrific opportunity to elect a new leader, and I can’t imagine anyone better than Jonathan Tasini to place in the United States Senate, an institution — if ever there was one — in need of shaking up, rattling about, hosing down, and radically redirecting.

Blue America is going to be working to get single payer candidates on the ballot in every Congressional district across the country. And no, those who cosponsored 676 when it didn’t matter and then vote to pass an abhorrent “compromise” don’t count.

Donate to Single Payer Candidates at Blue America

Florida State Senator Al Lawson is running in a primary race against notorious Blue Dog Allan Boyd in FL-02.

Digby, John, Jacqui and D-Day have been working non-stop on our campaign of cable TV ads to get one of the few senatorial culprits in the war against health care reform who actually has to confront voters next year–Blanche Lincoln–to reconsider her position.

Sometimes I have to pump some political courage into our candidates and incumbents and coax them to support difficult or controversial items on the progressive agenda. Our guest today isn’t that kind of candidate. Jonathan Tasini, whose politico-spiritual mentor is Paul Wellstone, is the kind of figure who I fully expect to call me and ask me why I’m not working harder to round up more votes for Employee Free Choice or against the War Supplemental.

Normally the grassroots likes ‘em and the Inside-the-Beltway Establishment hates ‘em. They cost a lot of money that can go to attacking the other party, cause friction in your own party, can… well when the damn base gets involved, anything can happen. Yes, it can; it’s called democracy.

In what looked– at least from the outside– as one of the most unlikely outcomes of the 2008 election cycle, Democrat Linda Ketner came within two percentage points of beating entrenched Establishment wingnut Henry Brown in a gerrymandered South Carolina district specifically drawn to be an easy win for Republicans. At the same time, Obama only managed 42% in the district. Linda was the only South Carolina Democrat who came close to ousting an incumbent last year. Until near the end of the campaign the DCCC and the punditocracy didn’t have a clue. The fact that Linda is openly gay and openly progressive on social issues– and very outspoken– caused quite a few people to not even give the race a second look.

There hasn’t been much of a spotlight focused on the Ohio Senate primary (May, 2010), except in Ohio– at least not yet. The Republicans have all but picked their candidate for the open seat, ex-lobbyist (for Oman and Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier) and pre-Mean Jean Schmidt Congressman Rob Portman who went on to serve as Bush’s Trade Representative and then his director of OMB, two jobs at which he failed spectacularly, particularly for Ohio working families.

Today we’re going to start looking at the contest by meeting the more progressive of the two candidates, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

Marcy, who is a kind of West Coast Donna Edwards, founded the Los Angeles chapter of Progressive Democrats of America and built a good solid base from which to start her race against Harman.