Reply #48: Cegelis has been working her butt off ever since. Couple of blogs about her...

[madfloridian]

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/11/9/192227/127

"After the primary, Christine Cegelis could have easily went and said "screw it" and walked away from politics, especially given the number of knives stuck in her back by the party leadership. I think many of her more "green" and independent supporters did just that unfortunately.

Instead, after the primary, she went back to her job as an IT professional; a job held for her by her employer - a Republican - who admired what she was doing. After a few short weeks of being out of the political spotlight, settling back into a normal life, she took a position with Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) as a Midwest organizer. She gave up a secure, comfortable, good paying job with benefits, took a pay cut, and started traveling between several states in the Midwest helping to manage field organizers working 10-plus House races.

Using her experience gained on the ground in IL-06, Christine helped field organizers in these races be more efficient, not recreate the wheel, and provided feedback and guidance. This put her in a car on the road a good deal of the time between the May and the General. From an email:


We had 36 organizers on the ground in 7 states 11 Congressional districts and one Senate race (Brown in Ohio). We used a micro-targeted list to only contact voters that we considered swing voters. <...> Wisconsin is a great example. They had over 8,000 voter contacts and the race was won by just over 6,600. The Kissell race is another place where with 2 organizers on the ground we had close to 10,000 voter contacts. Our goal was to have quality contacts with the voters at least 3 to 4 times."

And this blog:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Blue-grits-and-the-Penthouse-Party

"Now the 2008 election stretches before them and blues with grit are wondering, as Connie Baker put it to me: ‘Can democratic people take over the Democratic Party?’

It looks like a long shot. In 2004, Baker worked for Christine Cegelis, an anti-North American Free Trade Agreement, pro-non profit healthcare peace activist who took on arch-conservative Henry Hyde in a special election and won 44 per cent of the vote despite being massively outspent. In 2006, instead of helping Cegelis (who had strong grassroots support,) Emanuel went on a candidate-hunt, approaching half a dozen people to run against her in the primary until he found Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran who towed the Emanuel line on every topic.

Led by Emanuel, all the prominent Democrats in the country – John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi – endorsed Duckworth. She outspent Cegelis ten times over, narrowly winning the primary, but she lost in November, one of the few Democratic defeats of the night.

Today, Cegelis and Baker are active in organisations including Turn DuPage (County) Blue and the Greater Chicago Caucus, a grass-roots coalition of minority and peace and justice groups they hope will be able to shift the result of elections and the direction of the party. But Emanuel appears to be on the warpath again, encouraging primary contests against blue grit backed candidates who show, frankly, too much independent support. As 2008 approaches, blue grit democrats have already had a considerable impact. You can tell by the stops every contender has added to their campaign itineraries (to attend the Campaign for America’s Future-sponsored ‘Take Back America’ conference, for example, or the bloggers’ convention, ‘Yearly Kos’)."