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Since the news broke that Congressman Mark Foley of Florida sent sexually explicit emails and IM's to teenage congressional pages, Foleygate has outraged many of the GOP's cherished Christian "values voters." If any candidate can persuade voters that progressives have as much or more "values voters" moral integrity, it's probably Laesch.The son of Christian missionaries, Laesch grew up in Liberia, a country where political corruption and violence was a way of life. Laesch and his family moved back to the United States in the late-1980s and settled in Newark, Illinois, where his mother took up farming and his father translated bibles.
Laesch joined the Navy in 1995 and rose to a post in Bahrain as an intelligence analyst. His job included monitoring video footage from Iran. At the time, a popular parade route in Iran had been painted with American and Israeli flags so that soldiers could trample them when they marched past. But after Iran's moderate president Mohammad Khatami came to power, Laesch noticed the flags were removed. He saw the move as an opportunity for the re-establishment of cordial relations, which was then thwarted when President Bush dubbed the country part of the Axis of Evil. "Our actions create an equal and opposite reaction on their side," Laesch says, "And this is why terrorism is growing."
Honorably discharged from the Navy in 1999, Laesch studied history and political science at Illinois State University and was drawn to politics. In 2004 he talked with men who worked at a Maytag factory in the town of Galesburg that was shuttering and moving to Mexico. "That bothered me," he says, "U.S. companies sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers is a national crisis and we must start to reclaim American jobs now!" Laesch also managed the congressional race of Democrat David Gill, a doctor running for the 15th district of Illinois, because of his commitment to health care reform.
When Laesch's brother, Pete, was sent to Iraq a week after his wife gave birth to a child, the munitions sergeant urged his brother to run against Hastert. "It hadn't even realistically crossed my mind," Leasch says, "But when Pete got his orders to Iraq, I said, 'I'm gonna do it.'" Like many "military-experienced democrats," Laesch believes the U.S. needs to set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq. Laesch argues that a widespread belief among Iraqis that U.S. forces are on an imperialist mission is fueling the insurgency. He also wants to see a wider peacekeeping role for the United Nations and the Arab league, but doubts the Bush administration possesses the diplomatic resources to pull it off.
After controlling both houses of Congress and the White House for most of Bush's six years in office, the GOP party has come unmoored from its Grand Old Party ideals that in 1994 unseated the Democratic majority on claims of corruption. Illinois District 14 Republicans are increasingly outraged by the revelations that Hastert used a federal road project to pad his bank account. A former high school wrestling coach who entered politics a man of modest means, Hastert secured a $207 million earmark in the highway bill last year for the Prairie Parkway, a road that serves about as little purpose as its name implies, many locals say, but which will run within a few miles of land Hastert bought in 2002 near Plano, Illinois. Hastert and his business partners then sold the land to a developer, netting a cool $1.8 million.
Democrat Jack Davis has opened a significant lead over Republican incumbent - and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman - Thomas M. Reynolds in the NY District 26 congressional contest in growing dissatisfaction with the four-term incumbent's handling of the Mark Foley sex scandal. Davis today leads Reynolds 48 percent to 33 percent in a new Zogby International poll conducted for The Buffalo News -- a lead that has steadily widened over the last 10 days. On Sept 28 it was Reynolds leading with 45 percent to Davis' 43 percent. Reynolds' GOP House seat had been considered "safe" for the GOP in November, but I think one can now consider it a wide-open race...
To say it's an uphill battle fighting against the incumbent House Speaker Dennis Hastert is an understatement - but given how things are going in Reynolds NY District 26 congressional contest, I would say maybe it's possible to beat Speaker Dennis Hastert after all.
From the start, Laesch has been running his campaign on a shoestring, with no money to run television or radio ads. It is unlikely that the national Democratic Party is going to rush to invest much in bolstering Laesch's campaign, given his low visibility and lack of resources. But, maybe some grassroots money will give him the boost he needs - http://www.john06.com/donate
