Diane Benson Featured in Article about Female Candidates

[Blue_In_AK]

http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/

AK-AL U.S. House candidate, Democrat Diane Benson, is one of the woman candidates featured in an article published on the progressive web site, Truthout, late last week. The article, by Maya Schenwar, is titled Women in the Running. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050808J.shtml

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Alaska's Diane Benson, who garnered about 94,000 votes against Don Young in 2006, while spending only something over $200,000 in a grassroots campaign, compared then rather favorably against the gubernatorial campaign of Tony Knowles and Ethan Berkowitz. The latter males, while spending well over $1,000,000 on their campaign against a woman they outspent by over $300,000, pulled in only about 97,000 votes. And they lost in a three-way race against two Republican-oriented tickets.

In 2006, the Alaska Democratic Party was discouraged by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's then-chair, Rahm Emanuel, from supporting Benson's campaign against Young. Emanuel's strategy of concentrating on supporting male candidates who favored anti-union free trade treaties, lax regulation of the mortgage industry, and were willing to rubber-stamp George Bush's war policies, was contrasted in 2006, by Democratic National Committee Chairman, Howard Dean's 50-state strategy, which tended to back more progressive candidates, and far more females than did Emanuel.

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The now-disgraced Jake Metcalfe's fervent support of Rahm Emanuel and his anti-progressive policies in 2006, have been replaced in 2008's Alaska campaign map, by Emanuel's warm embrace of Ethan Berkowitz's campaign. Emanuel has emerged as the most fervent member of the Joe Lieberman-founded, anti-net neutrality, anti-union, pro-international deregulation group, the New Democrat Coalition. The NDC is, in reality, a kind of Blue Dog Democrat lite. Though Berkowitz has stated to me, that "under no circumstances will he feel obligated to Emanuel for the largesse," that's not likely, though, for any freshman member of the house. Berkowitz has to sound tough, though, to face off against the considerably tougher, considerably taller, Benson.

Benson has pulled in endorsements from the National Organization of Women, the National Women's Caucus, the Alaska Women's Caucus, and is garnishing increasing material support from Emily's List, one of the country's most effective PACs. Recently, when two Alaska state-level functionaries of the National Womens' Caucus participated in a fundraiser for Berkowitz, they were admonished by the national organization.

Benson's support in Alaska's Native community is growing rapidly. There are several reasons for this, not least of which was the Native and women's rights communities' responses to Anchorage Daily News reporter Lisa Demer's May 1 article, Native Women Address Violence Rates. Benson, who before the article, had participated in scores of such confidential conferences in Alaska and elsewhere, once the horrific specifics of her years in foster care as a child became public, decided to use the scrutiny this violence is now getting as an opportunity to bring more attention to this important issue.

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