Tuesday, June 18, 2013

We Have a Democratic Challenger for the Blue KY-6

UPDATE Below

Candy Barr took Kentucky's Sixth District last year because the Sixth's majority Democratic voters couldn't bring themselves to vote for repug-lite conservadem Ben Chandler.

A real Democratic candidate should be able to crush Barr. The question what kind of Democratic candidate Elisabeth Jensen is.

From the Herald:

Longtime education advocate Elisabeth Jensen has launched a campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Rep Andy Barr in Central Kentucky's 6th Congressional District.

Jensen, a Democrat and director of the Lexington-based Race for Education, said she decided to challenge Barr, a freshman congressman who faces re-election in 2014, because she thinks young people and families need better representation in Washington.

The 19-county district includes Lexington.

"I think Congress is not working and we need something different," Jensen said. "I think we need a voice for families and children and I don't think we have that right now. I think I can be that voice."
Jensen, a Lexington resident who has one son, is making her first run for public office. She is a 2011 graduate of Emerge Kentucky, a leadership class designed to encourage more Democratic women to run for public office.

She has volunteered in campaigns for several Democratic candidates, including Gov. Steve Beshear and U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, who lost to Barr in 2012. She was an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2012.

Beshear and Chandler are both DINOs who neither seek nor deserve the support of Democratic voters looking for liberal values, but not all their supporters are conservadems.

I am more concerned about the label "education advocate." If that means advocating for more money for public schools and public school teachers, then we might have a winner.

But if Jensen's advocacy is for Michelle-Rhee-style "reform" that steals money from public schools to pay corporations or freakazoids to run unaccountable charter schools, then she's a Chandler/Beshear clone who will give Sixth District Democratic voters no reason to get up out of their armchairs in 2014.

UPDATE: If Jensen is serious about improving public education, she should be familiar with the facts laid out in this article.

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