Political Note #211 Marc Friedenberg PA CD 12
2019 Special Election
May 21 is only a few days away
In 2017, Special Elections got special scrutiny. They became focal points or excitement, of hope. Democrats thought they might win races in places they previously had no chance of winning. The Democrats didn’t win those special elections.
Democrats got something that was as good. Momentum. They closed the gap. Candidates in the 2017 special elections for Congress ran better than in previous elections. They created the momentum that led to the Blue Wave of 2018.
Pennsylvania’s twelfth congressional district? There is no excitement here. The Republican who resigned is the perfect Trump appointment. Tom Marino has been appointed Trump’s Drug Czar. Some drug czar. According to the Washington Post and according to 60 minutes, Marino was the chief advocate of the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act. Proposed in 2014. Again in 2015. Passed in 2016.
The drug industry lobbied heavily for this bill. The Drug Enforcement Agency lobbied against. Wikipedia describes the new law: “The legislation aimed to weaken the DEA’s authority to take enforcement action against drug distributors who supplied unscrupulous physician and pharmacists with opioids for diversion to the black market…. . The new legislation would have made it “virtually impossible” for the DEA to stop these sales, according to internal agency documents, Justice Department documents, and the DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II.”. Marino and colleague and new Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn appear to have harassed the drug diversion enforcer for the DEA into retirement. Is there any possible benign explanation for this?
The Republican nominee to replace Marino is Fred Keller. He is a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and a trustee of the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System. He had been operations manager of the Conestoga Wood Specialties plant. He touts his commitment to balanced budgets in the legislature and to requirements that state agencies post their expenses online.
Keller expects to be elected. In this newly constituted Congressional District, Tom Marino was elected in 2018, during the Blue Wave victories of many Democrats, with 66% of the vote.
Marc Friedenberg https://marcforpa.com/ was the Democratic nominee in 2018. He is again in this special election. A victory would be extraordinary. A closer race than Marino’s would be a good sign for Democrats throughout the country.
Marc Friedenberg is not a politician. He is an academic. A particular kind of academic. He is a graduate of Columbia law school and an expert in cyber law and internet privacy. He is not teaching at a law school, but at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. While in practice, he sued big banks for fraud. He saw the banks as centers of greed, corruption, and carelessness. The attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the enormous tax breaks for wealthy corporations were the impetus for his entry into politics.
Academics are professional learners. In the race again, every time he turns around he finds another Republican travesty. His most recent – structurally unsound roads and bridges in Pennsylvania combined with the state budget shortfall in the Department of Transportation. These dangerous bridges will not get fixed. Marc Friedenberg is up for the infrastructure deal the Democratic leadership talked to President Trump about.
Help Marc Friedenberg https://marcforpa.com/ make a dent. He may be an amateur as a politician, but he knows his way around the modern world. Will he win? Probably not. Can he set an example for Democrats for the future? Absolutely. He cannot escape being an example. If he loses by 30 points, that will be taken as a sign the Democratic House is in danger. If he loses by 10 or 15 points, that would be a sign that an even bigger Blue Wave is coming. Help push that wave. Give Marc Friedenberg some last minute money.
