Blair Blue Blog

For those of you who haven’t heard, there is a write in candidate for Congress to run against Bill Shuster in the fall. His name is Tony Barr and he needs your help. He doesn’t need money, at least not yet. What he needs is a little of your time on May 16^{th, 2006}.

The new voting machines are here and of course, there will be long lines as voters try to figure them out. Those voters without computer skills will intimidated by the graphics and the touch screen or fly wheel depending on the machine, and those voter with computer skills will be equally frustrated and annoyed that such a simple task has been dumbed down to such a point as to make it time consuming.

No matter which end of the learning curve you are presently at, I humbly urge your forbearance. The time you spend putting the name of Tony Barr on the ballot will be well spent.

How can I say that? I don’t know Tony Barr too well, in fact, I’ve only met him twice. I do know he’s a special Education Teacher in Everett. His Wife Liz, also a teacher, is the Webmaster for the Blair County Democratic Committee website, Blairdems.org, they have two small and from what I hear very rambunctious boys.

So how does that qualify Tony Barr for United States House of Representatives. It doesn’t. Why then should you spend your time on election day writing him in? Here’s why.

I’ve often made the joke, that the last guy who this area sent to Congress that wasn’t a Republican was a member of the Whig Party. I tried to confirm the truth of that today and couldn’t verify it but it’s funny and it has that ring of “Truthiness” that the GOP has been beating us up with since the black days of 2000 that saw the entrée of the Bush Administration.

Our district, the Pennsylvania 9^th, is considered a Republican stronghold. The RNC and for that matter DNC, don’t think that anyone who isn’t a Republican can ever win here. If you consider yourself even remotely concerned with what’s happening to our nation in this day and age, it occurs to me that you have a responsibility to try to prove them wrong.

Our two party system is flawed enough to allow even one district to have an unopposed candidate. The very nature of Democracy demands that we actually have a race. This means two candidates, this means actually talking about issues, this means that if there is no official candidate, then we should write one in. Tony Barr a special Education Teacher who lives in Claysburg has courageously offered his name.

Here’s another reason. Bill Shuster and the political flunkies of Karl Rove, Tom Delay and the rest of the desperadoes who have sacked and pillaged our Nation’s capitol have, in some Swiss back account somewhere, a huge stock pile of money for the defense of their nefarious schemes to enrich themselves that they pass off as government. Let’s make them spend some of it.

Let’s make enough noise, let’s kick up such a ruckass, that they have to spend some money to defend the Pennsylvania 9^th. Tony Barr doesn’t have even a decent portion of the $250,000, they say it takes to win a seat in Congress. But if the GOP is forced to spend money here, they can’t buy votes in Florida or Ohio or anyplace else with it. And with a little luck and the direct intercession of the Almighty, maybe Democrats can take back the House. If we can do that, we can reward Tony Barr and ourselves with a candidate who does have a little money and we can end decades if not a century or Republican ownership of our home district.

It takes courage to run for Congress, it takes ten fold that same amount of courage to run as a write- in and Ten fold that amount of courage to run without a realistic chance of getting on the ballot let alone actually winning. If courage is a virtue you hold in high regard then you will join me in supporting Tony Barr as a write–in candidate for the United States House Of Representatives. That’s T-O-N-Y (Space) B-A-R-R

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 8:04 am and is filed under Candidates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.