At Daily Kos, our goal is to elect and support more and better Democrats. For a long time, it appeared that Rep. Marie Newman met that standard and then some. It’s why many of us supported her when she challenged Chicago machine scion Rep. Dan Lipinski in the Democratic primary for Illinois’s Third Congressional District in 2018. It’s also why many of us supported her when she sought a rematch against Lipinski in this southwest Chicago district—and won it, ending a 38-year hold on this district by the Lipinski family. Dan’s dad, Bill, won the seat in 1983 and handed it to his son in 2005.
Since then, Newman’s been best known for standing up to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s blatant transphobia. Newman has a trans daughter; indeed, she says she entered politics specifically to make life better for her daughter. She even went as far as to hang a trans pride flag in front of her office—directly across from that of Greene.
Well, as of Thursday, Newman has been exposed as a fraud. That’s about the only takeaway you can have from a devastating report in The Daily Beast that reveals Newman not only offered to give a potential primary challenger a job on her staff, but briefly offered to put her policy positions up for sale as well.