Heartwarming "almost won" Philly story ...little money and shoe leather.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda

We're giving our first Sorest Loser Award to Terry Graboyes, who came in third in Tuesday's Democratic primary for a 175th District state House seat. Late Monday night, Graboyes whined to the People Paper's Catherine Lucey that her loss to Mike O'Brien was the fault of fellow candidate Anne Dicker.

"If Anne Dicker hadn't been there, I would have trampled," Graboyes said, adding she'll "never understand" why Dicker ran.

Hey, Terry: You had the support of Gov. Rendell and state Sen. Vince Fumo, and you still came in behind a woman who spent very little money campaigning and had no heavyweight political support.

You don't see Ralph Nader running around blaming Al Gore for him not being president, do you?

Anne Dicker, Rock Star
I'm a results-oriented person. When I work, I want to see the results of the work firsthand, so I can measure it and learn from it.

Sometimes that means briefly leaving the training schedule, rolling up my sleeves, and getting in the trenches with candidates and staff I've trained. I want to see if the DFA Training Academy meets the needs of the grassroots. I want to see the skills being used. And I want to know what kind of real-world feedback I can take back to the training program.

That's what I did this week.

Anne Dicker is one of the rock stars of DFA activists around the country. At the Philadelphia training, Anne Dicker stood up in front of the crowd and announced her candidacy for the open State House seat in her district. It's been a wild ride ever since. We didn't win the House seat. But we signaled a great change is taking place. We shocked everyone—the media, the candidates, the establishment. Now, the city of Philadelphia knows Anne Dicker and Philly for change.

We always say, "You have the power." I like to see us use it.

Posted by Arshad Hasan at 11:47 PM