Yesterday’s announcement that Tom Geoghegan has decided to run to fill Rahm Emanuel’s seat in the Illinois Fifth generated buzz online, with many progressives chomping at the bit to see more from a true progressive voice in a climate ripe for (more) change. Well today Geoghegan’s name can be found in the opinion pages of two of the nation’s most respected newspapers: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
In the WSJ, Thomas Frank, author of Whats the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, applauds Geoghegan for taking on the system in a big way despite what direction the general consensus seems to be going. Above all, Frank highlights Geoghegan’s commitment to sound economic policy—an issue that he’s been on the right side of for years, even before the current economy took a turn for the worse.
Here's an excerpt from Thomas Frank's column:
To begin with, Mr. Geoghegan thinks big while Democrats in Washington tend to think small, proposing a stimulus package here and better oversight there. The government's goal, as he explained it to me a few days ago, should not merely be "to pump up demand again." It should be to enact sweeping, structural change, "to get in a position where we're not bleeding jobs out of the country."
This is supposed to be a time for bold ideas on the left, with the failures of the free-market consensus becoming more glaring and more painful by the day. And Mr. Geoghegan's ideas should be part of the debate.
Good stuff, right?
As if that weren’t enough, Geoghegan also contributed an op-ed in today’s edition of the NY Times. Drawing on his years of experience in the non-glamorous world of labor law, Geoghegan makes an uncompromising case for why today’s government is backwards in so many ways, pointing out how in four states, we will have US Senators assuming office with only the blessing of a single vote from the states’ governors. The issue is not partisan. All these senators will be Democrats, as is Geoghegan, but the issue lies in the truth of the law. The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution gives American citizens the power to choose their elected officials. In a time of pay-to-play scandals, corruption, and big-monied government, could there be a more important priority than to have an elected official like Geoghegan who recognizes, if we want a strong democracy, we must always be people-powered.
Here's an excerpt from Geoghegan's NYT op-ed:
It may have been a while since many of us read the 17th Amendment, which was ratified in 1913. Its first paragraph replaced the indirect election of senators by state legislatures with “direct” popular election by the voters. The second paragraph, which you may have skipped in school, deals with vacancies. It states that when seats open up unexpectedly, governors “shall issue writs of elections to fill such vacancies.” The plain enough meaning is that the governor will issue an order for a special election. But for decades now governors have opted not to issue writs directing new or special elections. Why are they ignoring the Constitution? To increase their own power, of course.
While this has been happening for decades, the corrupt nature of the practice has finally become too obvious to ignore in Illinois, now that the United States attorney has a court order to have the governor bugged. Yes, the F.B.I. complaint against Gov. Rod Blagojevich paints him as especially corrupt. But the fact is that a certain amount of political horse-trading is inherent if officials, rather than voters, fill Congressional vacancies.
This is why the writers of the 17th Amendment required special elections. It is also why governors and legislators have always been eager to stop these elections. They resented having to give up the old system, in which they picked the senators. As Governor Blagojevich allegedly said on tape of his opportunity to fill Barack Obama’s seat, this “thing” is “golden.”
For more on Tom Geoghegan, check out geogheganforcongress.com