First Congressional District Democratic challenger Heather Ryan is getting a good start smacking the repug incumbent around pretty good.
Ryan uses Whitfield's own words against him to call attention to his utter uselessness as the people's representative. In a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal, she writes:
I read with great interest Congressman Ed Whitfield’s long diatribe regarding “doping” in the horse racing industry (Courier-Journal Op-Ed; March 23, 2008) and could scarcely control myself in asking aloud, “Are you serious?”. With all the problems Kentucky’s First Congressional District faces, Congressman Whitfield chooses to focus his attention on the problem of steroid use in the horse race industry rather than problems that face average, every day citizens of the district for which he represents.
(SNIP)
During a time when our economy is reeling from the immense debt incurred by an unsustainable war, when people in Western Kentucky see their decent paying jobs shipped over seas with each passing day and when tens of thousands of his constituents find themselves without health insurance, Mr. Whitfield can find something more applicable to his constituents about which to write a 14 paragraph rant than injustices within the horse racing industry.
Mr. Whitfield has been the Representative for Kentucky’s First Congressional District for thirteen years. During that time, he has introduced just one piece of legislation, which bans eating horse meat. I contend that the people of KY-01 are more interested in making ends meet than the problems with horse meat. Mr. Whitfield is so out of touch with the people for whom he was elected to represent that it is not only frightening, it is dangerously close to a dereliction of duty.
Heather Ryan, you'll remember, is the military veteran whom Mitch McConnell got fired from her job because her 12-year-old daughter, Heaven, dared to challenge the Senate Minority Leader about his support of the Iraq Catastrophe.
Heather went from fired to fired up, doing what no other Democrat in the entire First Congressional District of Kentucky had the balls to do: file to run against Mitch protege and utter waste of oxygen Ed Whitfield (R-actually lives in Tennesee).
So far, the Kentucky Democratic Party is pretending Heather Ryan doesn't exist. Which, considering what allies of the republicans state and national democrats are proving to be this year, is probably for the best.
As MediaCzech at Barefoot and Progressive recommends, Give Heather Turkee.
Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.
