My Next Congressperson???

Backs up Bonnie Raitt and is not Sue Kelly and was interviewed by Steven Colbert. Just three major pluses....

An Endorsement for Congress

An unusually lively Democratic primary race in the 19th Congressional District last month ended with a resounding victory for John Hall, a singer-activist-politician who has spent a long time on the outskirts of renown and is now poised to move into the thick of it. Mr. Hall has been politically engaged for decades, having helped to organize the No Nukes concerts of the late 1970’s with friends like Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Graham Nash. But he has always been better known as a founding member of the 1970’s band Orleans, whose Lite-FM hits “Still the One” and “Dance With Me” can still worm into your brain and stay all day, if you let them.

Mr. Hall is still a musician, but he is not a political posturer or dabbler. As a member of the Ulster County Legislature, he helped to write the first zoning law in Saugerties, served two terms on the Saugerties Board of Education and was elected its president. He joined citizens’ groups to protect the Hudson River and to oppose plans for a nuclear plant in the Hudson Valley and then decided — spurred by disillusionment over the war in Iraq, among other things — to run for Congress.

Mr. Hall gave an impressive performance in winning over Democrats in the diverse 19th District, which covers all of Putnam County, most of Orange and parts of Dutchess, Westchester and Rockland, from West Point to Peekskill to Katonah. His platform is ambitious and coherent, with calls for universal health coverage, a return to fiscal discipline and a full-bore national effort to achieve energy independence. He blends a deep-blue idealism with a crisp command of details; it’s best not to get him started on “low-head” hydroelectric power, for instance, if your time is pressing.

The incumbent, Sue Kelly, entered Congress in the “Contract With America” class of 1994. She has nurtured a reputation as a moderate, occasionally annoying conservatives and straying from the party line on environmental votes. But she has mostly been a go-along-to-get-along party member, supporting the Bush administration’s tax cuts, stoutly defending its handling of the Iraq war and voting this month for President Bush’s dangerous bill on military commissions, a measure that affirms the administration’s ad-hoc subversion of cherished principles of justice and decency.

She is a rank-and-file loyalist in a party that is tired and fiscally reckless. On issues that Congress has bungled, and where independence would have been welcome — immigration, or homeland security, a particularly pressing topic in a district with a nuclear plant in its backyard — Ms. Kelly has not strayed far from the pack.

For voters in the 19th District who want a lawmaker of energy, steady conviction and clear principles, John Hall is the obvious choice. We enthusiastically endorse him for Congress.

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