If Democrats don’t flip the Senate in November, we might as well just crown Sen. Mitch McConnell king of America, because he alone will control our country’s future. The progressive priorities we’ve waited to advance for years and the massive effort we’ll need to rectify the vast wrongs of the Trump years: All of this will die by McConnell’s scythe.

That’s why Daily Kos is proudly endorsing three stellar Democrats who are all fighting to make sure that doesn’t happen by unseating Republican senators and sending McConnell and the GOP back into the minority:

Sara Gideon in Maine,
MJ Hegar in Texas, and
Raphael Warnock in Georgia.

Please send $1 to each of these candidates and join their battle to turn the Senate blue!

It starts in Maine, where Sara Gideon, the speaker of the state House, is taking on none other than Susan Collins, who has become the ultimate symbol of Republican depravity in the Trump era. For years Collins cloaked herself as a faux-moderate, but that masquerade came to a spectacular end when she voted to confirm alleged rapist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in spite of his spittle-flecked lies before the entire nation. No one is fooled any longer.

While Collins was busy giving lifetime tenure to anti-choice judges like Kavanaugh and the rest of Trump’s picks for the federal bench, Gideon championed reproductive rights and passed bills to protect and expand them. She also codified core provisions of the Affordable Care Act into state law to protect it from Republican attacks and steered the most aggressive carbon emission reduction and renewable energy goals in Maine’s history through the legislature.

Down in Texas, John Cornyn has long played the role of chief henchman for McConnell—literally so: He spent six years as second-in-command of the Senate GOP and became what Politico called the “top salesman”for his party’s (thankfully failed) efforts to repeal Obamacare. In fact, Cornyn could one day be the next McConnell, which is why the gun lobby, the private prison industry, Big Pharma, and the Koch network have larded up his massive campaign war chest.

MJ Hegar, by contrast, isn't taking a cent from corporate PACs, and she won’t take any crap from the likes of Cornyn, either: She flew over 100 missions in Afghanistan as a combat search-and-rescue helicopter pilot for the Air Force, earning a Purple Heart when her chopper was downed after taking fire during what nevertheless turned out to be a successful rescue effort. She came home to fight the Pentagon’s ban on women in combat roles and has continued that fight for women as a strong defender of reproductive freedom.

And finally, over in Georgia there’s Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat by Gov. Brian Kemp because she promised to use her fabulous personal wealth to fund her campaign. It turns out she may have been using her new office to boost her riches even further: She made millions in stock trades starting on the same January day her committee in the Senate received a private briefing on the coronavirus, even buying shares in a company that makes telecommuting software. She’s also levied vicious attacks against Black Lives Matter after the WNBA—she owns the Atlanta Dream—backed its players in supporting the movement.

Raphael Warnock could not be more different. For 15 years, he’s served as chief pastor at the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. once held the pulpit—and where, as one columnist recently put it, the right to vote “runs a close fourth” behind only the Holy Trinity. To that end, Warnock has helped registered hundreds of thousands of voters as part of his work with civic organizations. He’s been arrested—more than once—leading protests for health care, and he’s been a champion for criminal justice reform, calling out mass incarceration as “a scandal on the soul of America.”

All of these Democrats are running different campaigns in different states, but they share one thing in common: They all want to bring an immediate end to this terrible era of Republican misrule. The Republicans they’re striving to defeat are also united in a very dissimilar way: If they’re elected to another term, they’ll spend the next six years doing all they can to permanently burn Trumpism into the American body politic.

Let’s take the fight directly to the GOP, including in red states like Georgia and Texas, and swing states like Maine. And let’s be sure our front-line fighters in this battle have all the resources they’ll need to get the job done.

Please give $1 to our new endorsees so that we can flip the Senate and send Mitch McConnell packing!

Thank you,
David Nir, Political Director
Daily Kos

Daily Kos, PO Box 70036, Oakland, CA, 94612.