Luedtke Updates Supporters on District 14 Delegate Run

District 14 Delegate Karen Montgomery's challenge to Rona Kramer has opened up a second Delegate seat in the district. (The first was opened when Delegate Herman Taylor decided to run for Congress against Donna Edwards.) MCEA Board Member and MPW contributor Eric Luedtke had briefly considered a run against Kramer, but is now running for Delegate. Following is a campaign update he emailed to his supporters today.

Friends,

First of all, thanks to each of you for your support and friendship. I wanted to provide a brief update about the progress of the campaign. We are still running on the assumption that there are going to be two open seats for the House of Delegates in District 14. Other names have been floating around, but so far no one has actually begun to run, so we have a significant head start. While we have only been organizing for two weeks, we have put together the beginnings of an extraordinary campaign in a short amount of time. Thanks to each of you who have played a role in that. Among our successes so far:

- Alice Wilkerson has agreed to come on as campaign manager part-time. As you may know, Alice ran Jamie Raskin's field campaign in 2006 and is both an excellent grassroots organizer and a policy expert. I'm proud that she will be coordinating the campaign.

- Our ActBlue site is now set up (http://www.actblue.com/page/ericluedtke), and contributions are rolling in - $1,000 in the three days since we starting publicizing it. We now have over $5,000 cash on hand and are approaching an additional $10,000 in pledges. Dave Karpf, a member of the national Sierra Club Board of Directors and an old friend, has agreed to do some proxy fundraising. This is a personal favor - the Sierra Club has not made endorsements in the race yet - but it is going to help in these early days.

- Although no organizations have endorsed yet, I'm continuing to sit down with people to get individual endorsements. We expect to be able to announce a number of significant endorsements, including those of three County Council members, when we set a time and date for the announcement. We're aiming to hold that around May 16th in either Burtonsville or Olney.

- Our first lit piece is designed and about to go to the printer. As soon as it's in, I'll be knocking on doors. With my being able to devote most of the summer to the campaign, I should be able to knock on every likely voter door in the district at least once.

Thanks again for all the support, and I'll try to update everyone again soon.

Eric Luedtke