Vote Donna Edwards in MD-04

12 February 2008, 0156 EST

The Maryland Presidential Primary is tomorrow, and I still don’t know if I’ll vote for Clinton or Obama. But if any of our readers vote in MD-04, I want to urge you to vote for Donna Edwards against our incumbent representative, Al Wynn.

Donna Edwards has been a favorite of progressive bloggers since 2006, when she lost to Wynn by about 2700 votes. Now, our readers know that I’m further right than the median progressive blogger. I’m also a bit further to the right than Edwards. But she’d be a major improvement to Wynn, who, besides being far too cozy with corporate interests given the socio-economic character of MD-04, is running a deceptive and nasty campaign in a last-ditch attempt to save his seat.

From the Washington Post endorsement:

For her part, though, Ms. Edwards, a lawyer and foundation executive, has been an effective, energetic advocate for a range of liberal causes — the environment, higher minimum wages, stemming domestic violence, campaign finance reform. As a community organizer, she has been an unstinting voice for improving mass-transit options, although sometimes at the expense of building roads that the 4th District badly needs. Even in cases where she clashed with local developers, however, she won their respect as a sensible and no-nonsense adversary. Poised, persistent and principled, she would make a fine representative for the 4th District.

Mr. Wynn has long touted what he regards as a pragmatic ability to work across partisan lines. We’re all for bipartisanship, but in Mr. Wynn’s case, too often his stances have been unthinking and out of step with his district’s interests. His vote to scrap the estate tax suggested he was indifferent to his own middle-class constituents. By flip-flopping on fuel-efficiency standards and opposing campaign finance reforms, he showed his contempt for clean air and clean government. And he seems scarcely aware of the import of his votes to permit federal courts to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case and to support a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning: granting federal courts a license to meddle in private affairs and cramping free speech.

Maia and I canvassed for Edwards on Saturday. This was the first time I’ve volunteered for a political campaign since 1988.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.