I was there today, and just watched it again--Wow, he does rock. People, tell everyone you know that Hurst is the man. The only thing that will hurt him is people thinking,"Oh I always vote for Davis, I guess he's alright". No way...there's a CLEAR CHOICE this election and Hurst is it. A good analogy would be you have some talented athletes, that don't work hard and sort of make it--then you have some with no talent that work hard, and they sometimes make it, AND then you have the Michael Jordans and Tiger Woods of the world, who work their asses off and they have talent ta boot--that's Andy Hurst--talent and Hard work, now go tell someone who lives in the 11th that Hurst is their candidate this time around!

In making calls for Webb and Andy Hurst I have found several times that a voter would be for Webb but said they worked for the Government (they meant the federal government) and that Davis had always done great things for government workers so they were going to vote for Davis. Tom seems to have a grip on their imaginations, convincing them he has protected them and helped them. Anyone have any info on exactly why they are so convinced Davis is good for government workers?

Davis touts the donations he gets from unions as evidence that they want his leadership to continue.  As it turns out, he is sitting on a postal reform bill that needs a conference commitee to iron out some typical minor differences between the Senate bill that passed seven months ago and the House bill.  Davis won't even appoint a Committee member to the Conference.

Postal Reform began 11 years ago and little has been done.  Presidents continue to appoint cronies to head the Post Office, wages continue to drive costs, and email and the fact that the floor fell out of long-distance charges mean income continues to drop.  In the meantime, Davis has learned the postal unions are some of the few unions that still have clout and money.  There are four employee unions and three unions for managers. Davis has engaged in what Democrats on his committee have called "churning," dragging their collective feet on the bottom to see how much money comes up.  And it is plenty.  The reform bill is addressing the unrealistic cap on some wages, the need to close some facilities, and cut back hours, so it means a lot to them.  When they donate the cap to his campaign committee, they donate to one of his PACs, or his wife's campaign, hoping to get a favorable result.  As it turns out, they are inadvertantly lengthening the matter. It looks like Davis would rather suck them dry for his own power than to do the job we are paying him to do-pass meaningful legislation.

Davis never supported the workers swept into the Homeland Security Administration when this loyalty-obsessed Administration threatened to take away their job protection and fire them at will, if they were to, say, question that there were no WMDs in Iraq.  He has not said a peep about his own constituents, Joseph Wilson and Valarie Plame, who were outed by this vengeful Administration as punishment for writing the NYT editorial, "What I Didn't Find in Africa."  True supporters like Chris Van Hollen did object.

Davis also supports "right to work" laws which force unions to give union benefits like arbitration representation to employees who won't pay union dues. 

Davis has done little to protect the integrity of the work done by science-based employees at EPA, FDA, HHS, CIA, OSHA, and NOAAA whose conclusions have been undermined for so many years. Why, when EPA scientists said asbestos dust made Manhattan unsafe after 9-11, the Administration hushed it up. The EPA inspector general confirmed the cover up three years ago, the first worker on the site died of asbestosis in January, and other contaminated workers have to sue for benefits.  After that, is anyone willing to believe the air and drinking water in New Orleans is safe, or are more cover ups ongoing?

Davis does throw them a bone once in a while.  But he is not half the friend to Federal Employees that Andy Hurstwould be.

There are good summaries of postal reform at postcom.org and nalc.org

Andrea Chamblee, your response to my question about Tom Davis' apparently good reputation among Government workers deserves to be a seaprate diary, pretty much just as you've written it, we may be able to promote it.

We need to get this information out to voters big time. Have you sent any of this to Andy's headquarters, to Andy himself?

When I went canvassing one Saturday in July, at the suggestion of a friend, I never thought I'd actually get to meet Andy Hurst.  I had heard the name, and voted for him in the primary but that was because I didn't believe Longmeyer had run a good campaign the last time and I was looking for something different.

Boy did I choose right.  Andy Hurst is about as different as a politician can be.  He was laughing and telling jokes to us.  You can tell from the video that he thinks like a normal person, not a politician.  Something should be right, by God, why isn't it.  This is like "Mr. Smith goes to Washington".  And he's funny and smart too.

Most importantly, Andy Hurst believes in the things I believe in.  He's against the war in Iraq, and against government corruption.  He'll have to drive into D.C. every day just like the rest of us.  I'm more excited about this campaign than I've been about anything political in a long time.

Taking it to the Streets.... That should be Andy's campaign song!!!!!!!

You need to do a write up on Dailykos - it you want to see a real candidate - and someone that needs to knock out Tom Davis - the congress representative who would really track down steroid use in Major League Baseball instead of investigating the corruption in Contractors in the Iraq War.