Congressman Christopher Shays, a 19-year incumbent Republican, has made every effort this election season to convince voters in the fourth congressional district that he is an independent voice in Congress.
Indeed, at a time of bitter partisanship in Washington, the Congressman has gone against President Bush and members of his own party on a number of issues, voting to fund stem cell research and against drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
We appreciate the Congressman’s independence, and we wish that more members of Congress from both political parties would put aside partisanship for the benefit of their constituents.
However, on issues of importance to college students and other citizens, Shays has been wrong more often than he has been right over the past two years.
He has blindly supported the Bush administration’s failed policies in Iraq, and we wonder why it took him 14 trips to the war-torn country to realize that a timetable for American troop withdrawal was necessary.
We were also deeply troubled when Shays said, in an apparent momentary mental lapse, that the Abu Ghraib torture scandal was pornography, and not torture.
He also incorrectly said that the acts were comitted by members of the Maryland National Guard, when they were actually committed by members of the Marine Corps.
Such an error is especially troubling given the fact that Shays promotes himself as an expert on defense policy.
Most importantly, however, is that a vote for Shays is a vote for two more years of the incompetent and corrupt Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.
For those reasons, we strongly endorse Shays’ opponent, Democrat Diane Farrell, for Congress.
Farrell, a bright and charismatic former Westport First Selectwoman, could do more in Congress to benefit college students and other citizens than Shays, especially if she is part of a newly elected Democratic majority.
As a Congresswoman, she would stand up even stronger than Shays had on progressive causes, such as promoting stem cell research, raising the minimum wage, and protecting a woman’s right to chose.
Moreover, in response to a question posed by The Mirror about expanding aid to college students, Farrell delivered a more concrete answer than Shays, offering a proposal that would increase the amount of aid made available through the federal Pell grant program by more than $1,000 per student per year.
And while she has good ideas on how to better help college students and low income families, Farrell would also be a voice for fiscal responsibility.
She managed a balanced budget as First Selectwoman, and one of her biggest gripes with the war in Iraq is the amount of tax-payer money – more than $250 million a day – that the war has cost.
We don’t think Shays has been a bad Congressman during his 19 years in Washington, but we believe that Farrell could do much better if elected on Nov. 7.
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