Judging from his official Website and a recent mailer I received - I'm a voter in his district - Democratic Congressman Albert Wynn (MD-04) has made opposition to the Iraq war a major component of his current political stance. While he had already declared a change of heart from his original pro-Bush position by the time of last year's election, when Donna Edwards gave him a tough contest during the primary - as usual in MD-04, the general election was a foregone conclusion in favor of the Democratic candidate - he has now adopted most, if not all, of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's positions on the topic. He even signed on as a cosponsor of HR-3760, which if enacted would establish a Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

As I note in my MyDD bio, I'm neither an expert on the politics nor the demographics of my district. Despite that, I think I know enough to say that this is not a high risk position for Mr. Wynn to take at this point. We certainly have a lot of DoD employees in MD-04, but most are rank-and-file regular working folk, rather than of the philosophically hardcore neocon variety, and they now likely regard the Iraq War as a disaster at least in its execution, and at this point likely also feel they were deceived* like so many others during the campaign to justify the invasion (*which was also Mr. Wynn's stance during the 2006 campaign). Down here in the southern part of MD-04, I would guess there is some eye-rolling at the Dept. of Peace idea - to the extent anyone is paying attention - but it's unlikely this will do any measurable harm to Mr. Wynn's support here in his traditional political base of middle-aged (and older), socially conservative, church-going African-American voters. It seems more plausible that this is an effort to placate more hostile constituents who are concentrated mostly in the northern part of the district and who, much to their continuing chagrin, were thrown into MD-04 during the most recent redistricting (a representative viewpoint from those folks seen in this Letter to the Editor).

Any would-be progressive challenger to Mr. Wynn - whether that be Donna Edwards or someone else - will likely again have an uphill battle in 2008. Whether this new aggressive stance on Iraq makes things even more difficult for a challenger remains to be seen. At the very least, Mr. Wynn isn't likely to be caught by surprise again, as he was by Ms. Edwards in 2006. However, Mr. Wynn has voted for several other stinkers (e.g., the Bankruptcy Bill), and that isn't likely to be forgotten by those paying attention. I also wonder whether any measurable portion of his conservative church-going base was appalled by the alleged behavior of his campaign staff, a couple of whom appear to have assaulted an Edward supporter (see here and here, for example). Whatever the case, Mr. Wynn's future votes and overall behavior will require close scrutiny. His seniority on John Dingell's powerful Energy and Commerce committee - which doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves, except from the lobbyists who properly recognize it as a major player in policy-making - will continue to provide him with ample opportunity for mischief.

I was unable to upload scanned images here of the mailer I received this past Thursday; whether that's due to my lack of proficiency, or it isn't permitted on this site, I don't know.[editor's note, by MurlandGuy] Thumbnail links to Wynn mailer added below. In any event, the information it contains is basically duplicated on his Website (same link as in first paragraph); note also the slide show-type photo montage on his official homepage, showing him at (I assume) the recent DC protest against the Iraq debacle. The mailer was a one-sheet heavy card stock mailer, approximately letter-sized, with glossy finish and print on both sides. One thing I noticed is that my full name and address were on the address label (which I peeled off before scanning the document). I don't recall this being the case with previous franked mailings from Mr. Wynn's office, but then again this hasn't been something I've paid attention to before. Does anyone know what the normal practice is in addressing franked mail, especially from Mr. Wynn's office? Also, is there any way to know if everyone in MD-04, or at least all registered Democrats, received this same mailer? My monetary contributions to Ms. Edward's campaign were sufficiently large to require me to report my name/address/employer/occupation (my name/contribution does in fact show up on the opensecrets.org Website in this regard), so if Mr. Wynn's office is doing some targeted mailings, I could have been easily identified as part of the group he would hope to placate in time for the 2008 campaign.

A final note - I occasionally do a cursory Web search for signs of public activity from Donna Edwards. Aside from her 23Jan MyDD post on behalf of TWFU (They Work For Us) and news notes on a couple local Prince George's County events, I haven't seen much. Given her history of community involvement, I have a feeling I must be looking in the wrong places. Does anyone know anything about any recent speeches, writings, interviews, etc. from her, or good places to look for such information?

UPDATE - ADDED 26Mar2007
Click on the following thumbnail images to see the flyer discussed above.
NOTE: I'm new to this image uploading business - when I click on either of these, it crashes my Safari browser, and I don't know if that is due to my outdated Safari version or is something else. I'll access them from another browser later Monday, and if I get similar problems, I'll yank these until I figure out what's wrong.
NOTE 2 [31Mar2007]: Image links work in Firefox and MSIE; fyi, you'll get pop-up ad(s) if those are not blocked by your browser.

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