Why I Am Running for the U.S. Senate from Maryland

Conservative big government is making government costlier and less fair. It is stifling individual freedom and democratic decision-making.--Allan Lichtman, Newsday.com August 7, 2005

After analyzing American politics for many years I am running as a Democrat for the United States Senate seat in Maryland being vacated by Paul Sarbanes. This election matters to everyone nationwide, since Bush has targeted our state as a top priority for picking up a seat in 2006 and holding his Senate majority.

My goal is to halt and redirect policies of the Bush administration that have imperiled our country. Americans are dying abroad, threatened in their liberties at home, toiling in a wobbly economy, and shackled to policies that endanger our survival on the planet.

As an historian I understand how President Bush and his allies have turned our traditions upside down. Today we have too much government intruding in our personal lives and too little government meeting our needs. This administration and Congress have built the biggest, most intrusive and least responsive government in American history, too often with the complicity of timid Democrats.

All of this amounts to a political revolution in the United States, creating a form of conservative big government that promotes not the general interests of ordinary Americans but the special interests of wealthy corporations. This creates a sharply upward redistribution of wealth and power that threatens long-term prosperity.

This revolution also is making government costlier and less fair, stifling individual freedom and democratic decision-making, and opening fissures between the wealthy and other Americans.

Government should not dictate our family decisions as in the Terri Schiavo case. It should not look over our shoulder when we browse the library or give away our property to corporate developers under “eminent domain.” It should not be subverting through so-called “tort reform” our Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury in civil cases.

To begin meeting our needs, we need a definite plan for withdrawing from Iraq and redirecting war costs to domestic needs. We need to reverse our dependence on fossil fuels that gouges us at the gas pump, makes our national security dependent on a few shaky regimes in the Middle East, and drives weather extremes like Hurricane Katrina.

I pledge during my first 100 days in the Senate to draft legislation with a goal of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels by 50 percent in twenty years. It is a matter of will, not technology. As President Kennedy said of the mission to the moon, we do such things, “not because they are easy - but because they are hard!”

I pledge to work for a country in which every qualified student has an opportunity for a higher education. In Maryland, state college tuition has climbed by more than 40 percent since Bush took office and the relative value of federal scholarships has plummeted. Surely the nation can benefit from having an educator to speak up for students amid the scores of lawyers, businessmen, and professional politicians in the Senate. Congressional proposals to help pay for hurricane relief by slashing aid to graduate students underscores the urgent need for one of us in the Senate.

I pledge to restore the financial integrity of government, to support a real minimum wage, and to redirect resources from corporate giveaways to priorities in education, crime control, the environment, and health care.

Like Paul Wellstone I will confound the cynics who say you can’t win without being a professional politician. I am not part of the problem in Washington, but I am prepared to achieve constructive change. For two decades I have worked to shape the great political debates of our time as a commentator for CNN, BBC, and all major networks and newspapers. As a professor of political history, I know how to make politics work for the people of our state and nation.

In the bare-knuckled boxing ring of American politics I have fought for racial and political justice as an expert witness in more than 70 voting rights and redistricting cases. In Florida, I uncovered the racial disparities in ballot rejection that cost African-Americans some 50,000 votes and Democrats the 2000 election. In Texas, I stood against Tom DeLay’s racial and partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. Across America, my work has brought voting rights to many millions of African-Americans and Hispanics.

Join me because you know we need a warrior in the Senate for the people’s interests.