Dean supporters moving forward
Many of you have asked me what Governor Dean and his supporters are up to these days. DFA (Democracy for America) groups are still alive and meet once a month at meetups. The Nashville group has decided to actively support at least one General Assembly race Janis Sontany is the State House incumbent in the 53rd district, one of 5 women who voted against the constitutional amendment regarding abortion in committee, defeating it 5-4 when it looked to have enough votes to pass the full house, shockingly. This courageous vote has earned her a primary challenge, so we are doing what we can to volunteer and help her out.

Nationally, DFA promotes a group of 12 candidates around the country every few weeks, running for everything from local school board to US Senate, known as the "Dean Dozen." Some are incumbents, some challengers, some who can expect to win, some who probably do not. Hopefully, Dean supporters are showering them with money and volunteer work. It's an interesting list. Check it out. My favorites are Rob McKenna, running for Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections in Florida on a pledge to provide verified paper trail for all voting machines, and Kim Hynes, running for State House in Connecticut. Regular Dean readers know her from her constant blog commenting. Eventually she was inspired to run herself, instead of just making noise. Now, Gov. Dean himself will be speaking at a fundraiser for her, even though by all accounts she has virtually no chance of winning. She does believe that by energizing enough liberal Democrats and young people to vote in that race, they may just tip the scales in Chris Shays' Congressional race. In a small way, her campaign could help turn control of the US House back to Democratic control. That is the kind of thinking and effort going into the Dean effort these days.

I did some door-to-door work for Representative Sontany this morning, and I heartily recommend that kind of involvement. She is accustomed to campaigning only with her family, so when a half dozen of us showed up to help out, you could tell that it's nice to have that kind of support. I know, you think you don't have time, but there are a million things you can do to help a campaign.