Dan Lipinski, Congressman IL-3

He’s supposedly a Democrat, but he certainly fails the small D definition when he originally got the position by his father putting a fake candidate, Ryan Chlada, into the Republican nomination and then after the elder Lipinski was renominated, he bowed out and had his son placed on the ballot to replace him.

Chlada was a Cicero town employee and ran a bar. And didn’t like the spotlight very much. He was even found by Fox Chicago for this newscast:

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Lipinski went to Congress despite never having to seriously campaign. IL-3 is thought of as socially conservative with a lot of Reagan Democrats, but that simply isn’t the case anymore. In 2004, John Kerry got 59 percent of the vote. It is a liberal District now.

Most interesting then was his voting record. Despite being out of town for years, he was marked as having voted in person since 1990:

Until his dad crowned him a congressman, he spent 15 years out of town working at universities in North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee. Somehow, while being a resident of other states, he managed to vote here, not by absentee ballot but in person. Election judges in his father’s 23rd Ward marked him present in every Chicago election since at least 1990, according to official records.

Oddly, Lipinski, can’t recall casting those votes. “I’m trying to think back to that time,” he told me. “I honestly cannot remember.”

Now, the voting records are, wait for it…, mysteriously missing.

Lipinski isn’t just a guy handed a Congressional seat, he’s a supposed Democrat with an incredibly reactionary record. His ACLU rating–one of the lowest Democrats outside of the South/border states. He has zeros from NARAL and Planned Parenthood.

So no family planning at all. Dandy. He and Costello were the only Illinois Democrats to get zeros–the rest? 100s.  When the chance was there to vote for contraceptive use by those receiving money in other nations, he voted against it and he voted against funding Planned Parenthood under Title X–contraceptive funding.
From the Family Research Council–71 percent approval. To get that? He voted to remove the power of the Courts to review cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance. He voted against embryonic stem cell research. He voted to not allow those who win federal civil liberties cases related to religious cases to receive court fees. IOW, if you sued to protect your civil liberties and won in a religious liberties case, you could not be compensated for the costs incurred to enforce your rights.

He’s from a heavily Latino District–his rating from the the leading anti-immigrant group–60%. And that’s down from 71 percent and higher previously.

A big zero on the gay and lesbian measure from Progressive Punch

Drum Major Institute focusing on progressive policies for families, 50 percent.

And, of course, he voted to ignore the 4th Amendment and give one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations ever the ability to listen to domestic phone calls without a search warrant.

Lipinski must go. He has a conservative agenda in a liberal district. He ignores his constituents including the 20 percent Latino population in IL-3 and he has little interest in actually being a democrat-small d intended.

Support Mark Pera in his bid to unseat Lipinski.

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Updated to eliminate two votes from his father that were listed in the Planned Parenthood vote ratings.