PA 8 - Murphy v. Manion
Submitted by PAforClark on July 5, 2008 - 6:33am.
Democratic politics
PA-8 is one of the Philly suburbs that has been trending Democratic recently, but could easily move back to the Republican column.
Tom Manion was recruited to run against Patrick Murphy because he is a former Marine and his son, also a Marine, was killed in Iraq last summer. Other than that, Manion is a typical Republican with some FEC complaints pending for possibly accepting in-kind contributions from Worth & Co in Pipersville -- the site of the recent sham townhall by John McCain.
Patrick Murphy has done a credible job so far in Congress. He stands up on the Iraq War issue, but more importantly has been very active in investigating and taking steps to resolve long-time flooding problems on the Delaware River.
"In 2006, Patrick Murphy was the wet-eared political greenhorn running earnestly for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
While many respected the young lawyer's military service in Iraq, few thought Murphy could oust a well-known freshman Republican whose party long had dominated Pennsylvania's Eighth Congressional District.
Two years after Murphy's paper-thin upset of Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, the tables have turned.
Murphy, 34, now finds himself the favored freshman incumbent under attack by a political novice also linked, indelibly, to the Iraq war.
Tom Manion, 54, a Marine-turned-pharmaceutical-executive, was sadly dragged into the limelight last year when his son, Marine First Lt. Travis Manion, was killed in action in Iraq. Announcing his candidacy in January, Manion said his son had "given me a wake-up call that my service to this country is not over."
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20080608_Now_it_s_Murphy_facing_challenge.html
I don't know about the politics of it, but I was at a family party last Saturday and was talking to my friends cousin, who son was blown up in a Humvee in Iraq.
The Humvee was ripped in half, he was blown 20 or 30 feet away from it and survived, but suffered from TBI and is now dealing with PTSD. He was so discombobulated that he actually got back up and went back to the Humvee and tried to drive it away, not realizing that the back half of the vehicle was laying a few feet away, completely severed. Three of the others that were in the Humvee were lost.
He's been at Camp Lejeune since, and has been having a hell of a time.
So I talked about some of the things that General Clark talked about at the Vietnam conference (Link) (Link, talked about a lot of the issues brought up in the Vets series on TBI and PTSD and the like (Link).
These people aren't political. In fact they're anti-politics. But when I asked how it was going with getting help, he said that Patrick Murphy had personally gotten involved with them and got them in touch with several people to help. I told him I wasn't suprised, and that's why it was so important that so many vets ran during 2006. Anyone else in that seat and he'd have gotten a stock xeroxed response letter from a staffer.
So, hopefully people hear about how these guys are working directly when they hear stories like this from their constituency, because no amount of media dollars can match that kind of service from a Rep.
He is getting good local press on his job performance and as I posted originally, he is doing credible work on issues other than the Iraq War.
The local congressional race, though, is far down on the topics that we discuss at work, etc...I don't know how others feel about Murphy at all.
I haven't read much about Mannion - just enough to know that his son was killed in Iraq. Which is less reason to run for Congress, than many other reasons...
"It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and one to hear." - Henry David Thoreau
They've recruited a vet to run against Sestak too. We're eagerly awaiting this quarter's FEC reports to see how the unknown running against Joe is doing. Virtually no one here has ever heard of Joe's opponent, but I did see a lawn sign for him yesterday. At the end of last quarter, Joe had $2.2 million in the bank and his opponent had $140K. But Joe's been busy supporting Hillary and working in Congress this quarter, so the picture may not look so favorable when this quarter's reports come out. On the bright side, Joe has done a FANTASTIC job in Congress. He's no typical freshman and the local media knows that. Delaware County which has always been so incredibly biased toward Republicans, is pretty darn happy with Joe, so all the intangibles point toward Joe keeping his job.
It would be interesting to get a local's take on Patrick Murphy's race. Do we have any Clarkies there?
We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.