Bernie O’Hare conducted a great interview with congressional candidate Sam Bennett, who’s challenging Charlie Dent in the 15th. I think he’s splitting it up into parts, but here’s my favorite piece of Part 1:
Question: How are you qualified to represent us in the U.S. House of Reps., having never served as an elected official before? (Bennett has never won a primary in which she ran opposed by another Democrat.)[Answer:]“This makes me uniquely qualified to represent us. The folks in Washington, including Charlie Dent, have shown a unique inability to collaborate and come up with curative solutions to solve our nation’s problems. I have that ability through my status as a community leader. After an election is over, we need to lay down our partisan weapons.”
Dent/Bennett
For KPers in the 15th: is Bennett making any headway at all against Dent? I understand that she isn’t the strongest candidate, but one would think she could at least keep it interesting in a swing seat like the 15th, no? Any thoughts?
It Depends
I’ve lived in the 15th for a while now and I think it depends. A traditionally run campaign (ie, DNCC comes in and does exactly what it was trained to do) cannot beat Charlie. He’s well-liked, well-funded, and entrenched.
But I think that seeing that Charles Dertinger get 43.5% of the vote (with only $70,000!!) and Greta Brown (Green candidate) get 2.5% of the vote means that the district can swing toward Democrats. But it won’t be with traditional messaging, etc. Not sure yet what type of campaign Sam is running…
I see...
Gotcha. I know Dent has retained his popularity in the 15th, but I thought it might be a little more of a race. Bennett still has some time, but from what I understand, even a lot of the Dems in the 15th aren’t that thrilled with her? Kind of unrelated question: has the Kanjorski/Barletta race gotten underway yet? I know the NRCC committed a lot to Lou’s campaign and I wonder if any ads have started in the 11th yet? Appreciate the update, Greg.
I think she needs help
My mom is friends with Sam Bennett. They do local progressive Democrat mom stuff together. She’s got really good management and private sector experience and from the kind of poorly-written descriptions of her positions on her kind of crappily designed website, she does fit the bill of a solid progressive candidate. Last I heard, don’t Democrats have something like a 45,000 person advantage of registered voters in the district? She’ll deliver the vote that progressives want, but I don’t think she has experience running a larger campaign like this. I sent her campaign manager, Hannah Miller, inquiring as to what they were doing because I’ve seen virtually no mention of her in the media, and not much effort that she is in fact employing an online effort to hype her campaign. My mom said her campaign office is only open until like 6 during the week, which leaves no time for night-time volunteer work. With the positions she’s advocating, she should really be appealing for help on blogs like DailyKos and keystonepolitics. Unfortunately, the campaign doesn’t seem to be taking a very aggressive approach. I think Obama will ultimately help her in our district, but she really should start hitting Dent. People who read this blog should start posting updates on the Bennett/Dent race in PA-15 on DailyKos and elsewhere. He’s a total Bush Republican. Easy win if we try hard enough.
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