| | |  Editorials | Issues | August 2008 
Cindy Sheehan Tries a New Act
 Dale McFeatters - Capitol Hill Blue
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| | In this Sept. 12, 2007 file photo, peace activist Cindy Sheehan gestures while speaking at an Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.) Coalition news conference at the National Press Club in Washington. Sheehan is challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for failing to make progress to end the war in Iraq. San Francisco election officials on Monday said Sheehan, 51, turned in 214 more valid signatures than the 10,198 she needed to qualify for the November ballot. She will appear as a decline-to-state candidate for the 8th Congressional District seat. (AP/Gerald Herbert) | | |
Last May, ubiquitous activist Cindy Sheehan, perhaps sensing that her act was growing old, announced that she was retiring from the antiwar movement and going home to Berkeley.
It didn't last. Two months later she announced she was going to challenge Nancy Pelosi for her congressional seat because of the Democratic House speaker's failure to end the war in Iraq and impeach President Bush.
The challenge was widely dismissed as Sheehan once again being over the top - Bush is a bigger terrorist than bin Laden, the World Trade Centers collapse on 9/11 was a "controlled demolition."
Rather remarkably, Sheehan followed through and this week San Francisco election officials announced that she had collected more than enough signatures to get on the ballot and run as an independent against Pelosi in November. Given the celebrity of these two candidates, the Republican, Dana Walsh, may justifiably be feeling a little forlorn.
The Associated Press quoted a spokesman for Pelosi as saying the speaker welcomes the challenge. We'll bet. Pelosi is a political natural; Sheehan, a neophyte. Pelosi has, as of last month, a campaign war chest of $2.4 million; Sheehan - she says - has about $300,000. And last time Pelosi won with 80 percent of the vote. The conventional wisdom is that Sheehan will get flattened and the conventional wisdom is right.
But give the often-annoying activist credit for having the drive and initiative to quit heckling elected officials from the sidelines and get into the arena to try to become one of them based on the voter appeal of her ideas. |
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