Political Gaze

Jeff Pertl, right, speaks with a voter.

Progressives are closely watching three Dane County Board races in which political newcomers are challenging right-wing incumbents.

Former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold today endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Warren is fighting to take back the seat that Republican Scott Brown picked up following Ted Kennedy’s death in 2009.

Saying a near death experience while serving in Iraq changed his mind on the issue, Minnesota Representative John Kriesel criticized his fellow House Republicans Saturday for their plan to vote on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

In urging lawmakers to reject the measure, Kriesel said his experience in Iraq affected how he viewed many things in life, including gay and lesbian relationships. He said Republicans are wrong to interfere in the private lives of Minnesotans.

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, supports adding a plank supporting marriage equality to the Democratic Party platform. – Photo: Courtesy

Gay rights advocates want the Democratic Party to include a marriage equality plank in the platform that will be adopted at the national convention in September.

Adam Ebbin. – Photo: Courtesy

Virginia elected its first openly gay senator, Democrat Adam Ebbin, in a district that encompasses a swath of suburban Washington, D.C., making him one of more than 50 LGBT candidates elected to office in the Nov. 8 election.

Tammy Baldwin – Photo: Courtesy

Although the election is more than a year away, Tammy Baldwin is the current Democratic frontrunner in what is destined to be a fiercely competitive race for retiring Herb Kohl’s U.S. Senate seat.

Sandy Pasch, center, talks with supporters at a fundraising event. – Photo: Courtesy

State Rep. Sandy Pasch decided to run for public office several years ago while listening to a public radio report about what was happening at the Capitol. The big topics on the legislative agenda of the day were enacting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and deciding whether to call the Christmas tree at the Capitol a “holiday tree.”

Rick Santorum debates Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. Although Santorum nearly tied Romney in Iowa, he finished fifth on Jan. 10. – Photo: Courtesy

Rick Santorum's surge to second in Iowa sent his religious right devotees over the moon and left his LGBT detractors dismayed.

''Every single American deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law,'' Obama told HRC supporters in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 1. – Photo: Courtesy

President Barack Obama did not stake out any new positions during a speech Oct. 1 to the members of the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights groups. But the president did take on the Republicans who want his job, rebuking the candidates who did not defend a gay servicemember booed by the audience at a recent debate in Florida.

A political group that promotes the corporate interests of billionaire David Koch has begun phone bank operations on behalf of Republican state senators targeted for recall in Wisconsin.

U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin is seriously considering a run for the Senate seat that’s being vacated by retiring Sen. Herb Kohl, putting her on track to possibly become the nation’s first openly gay U.S. senator.