National issues will affect local races. Let your reps. know.

[AlinPA]

My local state rep. (R) just rang the doorbell; he is a polite young man and is respected in this area. I asked him to come in, and he stayed for about 10 minutes. I left him know where I stood on the Band-Aid-purple heart - Swift Boat stuff. He agreed with me! He said "I'm just your local rep. and I am not involved in that and don't like personal attacks". I told him not to get hooked up with the right-wing Christian Coalition, Jerry Falwell, et al crowd. He said "I know what you mean about those people and I stay clear of them". (He had a falling out with the right-wing fundamentalist rep. in an adjoining district who had helped him get elected) I kept the discussion on national issues, the war, Halliburton, etc. He seemed to be a bit pained about my talking about these things rather than local issues and I detected a frustration by him about the national party people, esp. Karl Rove. He seemed to get my message and appeared to agree on some of the things, esp. the environment and "gay marriage". On the latter, he said government has no place getting into that. We shook hands and he politely left. I'd told him that I'd think about voting for him so he marked "maybe" on his canvassing sheet. I'm voting for his Democrat challenger. I vote straight "D" . One at a time.

[welshTerrier2]

1. funny you should mention this

i've been working my butt off for a local candidate and frequently participate in strategy meetings ... I've really pushed to nationalize the campaign ...

in local races, you're only going to get so much mileage out of issues like state aid formulas, traffic patterns and property tax relief (which everyone is for but no one can deliver) ...

i think, though local issues are important, national issues are more likely to gain the attention of voters ... turnout in local primaries is almost non-existent ... if you want to talk to voters, talk to them about the big issues affecting their world ... talk about jobs, talk about the economy, talk about health care, talk about partisanship in Washington, talk about the corruption of the bush administration ...

it's hard enough to get voters interested enough to listen to discussions on the big issues; most local issues remain well below the radar ... if someone agrees with me on the big national issues, i'm confident they'll do fine on the local stuff ...