How You Can Help: Birge and Singleterry For Somerset Freeholder

by: nathanrudy

Thu May 01, 2008 at 11:41:41 AM EDT

As some of you know -- and all of you should know (at least for the benefit of my ego - lol) -- I ran for Somerset County Freeholder as a Democrat in 2003 and 2004.  Somerset County is a pretty unforgiving environment for Democrats, and 2003 (Iraq War) and 2004 (Presidential) were particularly brutal years.

Needless to say I got my ass handed to me.  It wasn't worse than previous years, and better than some, but I had expected to do better.  

Well, this year things are different for any number of reasons.  We have a more active party grassroots thanks to DfA, Blue 7th PAC, Melonie Marano's Freeholder campaign last year (so close!), great local party organizations taking hold, etc.  We have a changing national environment that makes things more likely to go the D way.  We have an open seat in the 7th district and a great candidate again in Linda Stender.  And frankly the demographics for a ticket headed by an African American man or a woman actually help us in this county.

Speaking of that presidential race, we have more than 10,000 new Democrats in Somerset County thanks to the February primary.  Nice.

But the real reason we have a shot, besides all that nice environmental stuff, is we have two awesome candidates: Montgomery Mayor Cecilia Xie Birge and North Plainfield Councilman Doug Singleterry.

Doug came into Somerset County politics back in 2002 when he came to a Democrats 2000 event, and my friend Ben Dworkin sent him to me since we both lived in North Plainfield.  Doug and I talked and we got him involved, and then in the winter of 2003 Doug called me really excited about some guy from Vermont named Howard Dean.  He was a real early Dean supporter, was involved in Democracy for America, and was the treasurer for Blue 7th PAC (of Dump Mike fame).  In 2005 he became a Councilman in North Plainfield where we also passed a strong pay to play ordinance.  He's also a lawyer, but no one's perfect!  Doug's got a pretty awesome bio, too!

So we've got two great candidates, an environment that is tilting toward the Democrats, up-ticket races (Congress, Senate and Presidential) that are sure to help, and 10,000 newly declared Democrats just waiting for a chance to vote.

So how can you help?

• Well, a simple way is to join the Facebook Group.  The more people on the group being active the better it is for communicating online.
• Another easy way to help is to link to the Birge and Singleterry for Freeholder website.  The more links out there the more Google and Yahoo and the like will put the site at the top of rankings, plus your readers will stop by for a visit as well.  That'll really help get the word out.
• You can volunteer as well if you live in Somerset County or somewhere close by.  There's a lot of organizing and other work to be done over the spring and summer, and the more people working now the less work is needed later.
• Finally, you can send a little cash their way.  Yeah, I know everyone wants your money and the times are not great but without the resources to win they'll have a harder time doing it.  You can make it easy, donating just $5 a month on their form for a total of $35, or $20 a month for a total of $140.  Whatever you can do makes a huge difference if we all do it together.

So these are some easy and (except for the money) painless ways to help.  I hope everyone will get on board and help Cecilia Birge and Doug Singleterry break through in Somerset County!