By Xinhua,
Los Angeles : U.S. anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has launched a congressional campaign, in an uphill effort to snatch incumbent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from her seat in the November election, a report said Saturday.
Sheehan, who became famous after years of her personal peace mission, was at San Francisco City Hall Friday to take out papers for her independent run for Congress. Her name would not show up on the ballot without over 10,000 signatures from voters in the district.
“It’s an uphill battle. But I’m excited about the signature-gathering process. It’s going to be an opportunity to talk to people about our campaign,” the California woman told the San Francisco Chronicle daily.
Sheehan, 50, became the public face of the anti-war movement when she mounted a demonstration outside President George Bush’s Texas ranch that lasted from 2005 to 2007. Sheehan’s son, Casey, was killed while serving in Iraq in 2004.
She was a regular speaker at anti-war gatherings across the country even after pleading exhaustion and closing down “Camp Casey” last year, and has been campaigning virtually full time since moving to a San Francisco district, which was currently represented by Pelosi in the House.
Sheehan has until Aug. 8 to collect the needed signatures to be a candidate. Her campaign will have people setting up ironing boards and card tables on street corners throughout the city, seeking voters who want an alternative to Pelosi.
Getting on the ballot will be the easy part for Sheehan, but challenging one of the best-known and most powerful Democrats in the country in the election would be a uphill effort, said the Chronicle report.
Sheehan said she was determined to run against Pelosi because the speaker refused to start impeachment proceedings against Bush.
Calls for impeachment from Sheehan and other progressives did not move Pelosi, who already had declared that impeachment was “off the table” when it came to the Democratic congressional agenda.
Pelosi, a 10-term congresswoman, routinely collects around 80 percent of the vote in the San Francisco-only district.
However, Sheehan has name recognition, particularly for her Camp Casey crusade.
“I’ll represent everyone in San Francisco, not just the corporate elite,” she was quoted as saying. “I’m working class, myfamily was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled.”
The newspaper said that many congressional Democrats, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, do not agree with Pelosi on the impeachment issue along with other progressives.
And impeachment against Bush is not Sheehan’s only concern. She said that Pelosi’s refusal to vote for an immediate end to the Iraq war and to support single-payer health care showed she is out of touch with San Francisco’s progressive roots.
Sheehan, who has raised more than 100,000 dollars for her race mostly from outside the district, said she.
“Even people who I won’t represent are willing to back me, because they know what I’ll do in office,” she said. “Many people in San Francisco know me, and they know my persistence.”