Hell To Pay: Nominate Dan

I’m going to make no secret about who I think should be nominated this week for tomorrow night’s Hell to Pay fundraiser: Dan Seals, IL-10.

Aside from being a worthy candidate on his own merits–and being a repeat nominee for Hell to Pay help–this week it got personal. Very, very personal. As in an attack by his scummy rival not only on Seals, but on Daily Kos itself. It all began October 5 when the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll showed our Orange to Blue candidate Seals trailing Republican incumbent Republican Mark Kirk by a mere six points.

And thus an absurd freak-out by the Kirk campaign began, with Kirk’s pollster going nuts, claiming that the “ultra left-wing Web site Daily Kos” had undersampled Jewish voters (of course, a well-known Republican voting bloc) intentionally:

It is no surprise that DailyKos, which has come under attack by Democrats like Harold Ford Jr. and Lanny Davis for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic content, chose to conduct its poll on the Jewish High Holy Day of Rosh HaShanah.

Some kind of near-instant karma must have been at work, because just a day later, a Roll Call/Survey USA poll was released showing Seals –gasp!–ahead of Kirk by eight points. Markos caught the hilarity of the bind the Kirk campaign now found itself in:

But what’s really hilarious is that the Kirk campaign spent the entire day accusing us of being anti-semitic and fighting hard to discredit a poll in which they led. Now, just a day later, they face a poll, from a non-partisan news operation, that shows them getting their ass kicked.

Aside from the challenge to our Daily Kos honor at stake, there are also the reasons to back Seals this week that were laid out in previous nomination threads: his office was broken into, and the notorious right-wing money machine known as Freedom Watch did a massive cable ad buy against him.

Now the notion behind Hell to Pay has been, from the beginning, to inflict fiscal pain on Orange to Blue candidates’ rivals who get out of hand and smear Democrats, our O2B candidate, liberals in general or progressives. Surely smearing Daily Kos falls into that category. Other nominations this week are welcome in the comments as usual, and a poll will go up this evening with those suggestions. But for now, I urge the selection of Dan Seals this week to send an immediate message to the Kirk campaign. Nothing precludes people giving to other candidates as well on Orange to Blue during these fundraising drives; indeed, the spillover effect seems to be wonderful for all candidates, with all boats being raised a little higher after Saturday nights.

Note: Hell to Pay is for Orange to Blue candidates, so guys, please make your nominations from that list. Also, previous recipients — Andrew Rice, Al Franken, Darcy Burner and Charlie Brown — for now will be ineligible until our other candidates are taken care of as well (although feel free to donate to any and all worthies over on the list).

Nominate away. Remember the criteria: the opponent of an Orange to Blue candidate has smeared, lied or underhandedly attacked in an inappropriate way liberals, Democrats or their challenger. Please provide links and a summary argument about why he or she should be considered this week. These will be used in the voting thread later today.

You can also donate now to help us reach our new $1.25 million goal for all our candidates.