Well spent
Friday, January 16 2009
Two years ago I went to DC to lobby for SCHIP expansion, as part of Ecumenical Advocacy Days. (I don’t consider myself a paragon of Christian virtue, but I try to live up to my own beliefs, sometimes.) Call me crazy, but I think it ought to be easier for parents to insure their kids. I got sick when I was still a kid, but was lucky to have well-off parents. Lots of kids don’t have that advantage, and SCHIP makes life a little fairer for them.
My Representative at the time was Ric Keller (R-FL8), who won the seat in 2000. The GOP primary in 2000 was marked by such rancor among the candidates that (if memory serves) the RNC had to intervene to tell them to cool it. Keller was considered too conservative for the district, but somehow won anyway. Since then he distinguished himself by filling his Capitol staff with hotties, dumping his wife for a member of that staff, and voting more-or-less in lockstep with President Bush. In 2007, one of those staff hotties assured me that Keller supported the pending SCHIP bill. Of course, Keller voted against it.
I’m not so naive that I took this personally, but it did get under my skin. Some of that irritation found its way into my checkbook: I sent about $200 to his opponent, Alan Grayson, who ran on a progressive platform. Grayson won – in something of an upset for the GOP in Central Florida – and was sworn in last week as a member of the 111th Congress. The third thing Grayson (D-FL8) did as a member of Congress was vote for a new version of the SCHIP bill, so as far I’m concerned: that was money well spent.
