Pennacchio: Progressive Populist

File this under: Better Late Than Never (my excuse is a bad earache, long wait at emergency room & volunteering for Bill Peduto this weekend). Anyway, here's my thoughts on last Friday's reception. First, I was quite eager to see and hear Pennacchio in person. I already know that I like his positions on the issues and I especially like the fact that he is openly pro choice and pro-gay (as opposed to Santorum-Lite Casey, Jr.). I have to admit that I and a friend confessed to each other that we wanted to check him out to see how he presented himself:

Would he inspire confidence?

Would he come off as too Kucinichy?

Too elitist?

Too web-only?

After all, we ARE talking about a COLLEGE PROFESSOR from the EAST with a hard-to-spell ETHNIC name.

We wanted to see if this was a guy who could play in the Burgh and The T.

I have to say: I like what I saw.

Pennacchio came off "regular guy" enough -- OK, smart regular guy.

I was pleased to hear that he's doing much outreach beyond the stuff all you BlogLovers know about. He's speaking to Labor (Casey's supposed strong point) and rural groups and women's groups and everybody else. He's building a real organization from the ground up.

He also has more of a wide-ranging background than one might suppose (damn if I even know what a 'grange' is).

In other words, folks, he's got a good shot at running as a POPULIST. Something that I don't believe the privileged son of a governor can really run as.

I did try to take some notes, but my pen went MIA and I rushed out of the house without any notepad and I was reduced to scribbling in eyeliner in my address book. I do remember the quote that Comments from Left Field mentioned:

"If you elect me to the U.S. Senate I will be on the losing end of more 99 to 1 votes than any Senator in history."

So the guy is a progressive populist.

I took down four points in my notes, which given the smearing qualities of the eyeliner pencil and the smallness of my address book, came out a bit garbled.

I can make out the following:

Pennacchio will run a Campaign of Inclusion

He's truly pro Democrat

He's the candidate of reform

He's pro choice.

So if you've taken a look at his website (chuck2006.com) and you don't like having the Machine tell you who the candidate will be and you want to know what you can do to help, the answer is:

At this point the campaign needs $$$ to be taken seriously and move to the next level. (Check out a suggestion found in the comments section of this post at Froth Slosh B'Gosh for more on that.)

Also, if you haven't already seen it, Shea has a fantastic post Honey, There's a Senate Candidate in our Shower... at her blog, Urban Democracy, which also was a recommended diary at Daily KOS.

It's a MUST READ!

UPDATE:
P.S. I forgot to mention that it was great to finally meet so many Pgh bloggers in person!