Alan Grayson: the Democrat Who Punches Back, Enraging GOP Hacks and Tea Party Billionaires

Editor's Note: Alan Grayson's latest hard-knuckle approach to politics has hit the airwaves, going for the jugular against his opponent in the congressional election for Florida's 8th District, Dan Webster: "A new Grayson TV ad called 'Taliban Dan Webster' makes a series of biting accusations, alleging among other things that Webster, a former Florida House speaker, wants to make divorce illegal, even for abused women. The ad opens with images of terrorists holding machine guns and people burning the American flag. "Religious fanatics try to take away our freedom in Afghanistan, in Iran and right here in Central Florida," a female narrator begins.The ad cuts to images of Webster and a video of him saying 'Wives, submit yourselves to your own husband,' and 'Submit to me' with pictures of a woman clothed in a black burqa, a garment worn by women in Afghanistan and some other countries in the region."

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Late in July, during the heat of the Congressional debate on extending unemployment benefits, Representative Alan Grayson took to the House floor and charged Republican obstructionists with keeping "food out of the mouths of children." A YouTube clip of the moment instantly popped up on left-wing websites and earned Grayson an attack by Fox News and an appearance on MSNBC's The Ed Show, where the freshman Democrat said that if you are needy, "the Republican Party is the party that doesn't want to help you."

As has become customary, Grayson's rhetoric infuriated GOP partisans. Dan Gainor, a vice president at the Media Research Center (MRC), a conservative think tank that runs NewsBusters.org, tweeted, "I'll give $100 to first Rep. who punches smary [sic] idiot Alan Grayson in nose. He's a caricature of a congressman."

Grayson shot back in his pugnacious style, dubbing the MRC a "slur tank.... This is how the right wing does it. They pay people to clean for them, to cook for them, to drive for them, and now: To punch for them. Or, more specifically, to punch me for them. We knew they're crazy. It turns out that they're also lazy. Too lazy to throw a punch themselves.... But they're forgetting something. Something very important. We punch back."

Grayson used the controversy -- and a telephoned death threat to his office -- to raise money on the web for his re-election campaign, with appeals from Oliver Stone and Martin Sheen. Then he headed off to a Netroots Nation convention in Las Vegas, where the assembled progressives hailed him as a hero.

You think America's culture wars are over? Come to Orlando, where the battle for Florida's 8th Congressional District is shaping up as a bellwether slugfest. It's a clash that pits a left-wing Jewish Democrat against a right-wing Christian Republican in a swing district where middle-class, suburban evangelicals are thick on the ground. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has named Grayson a top target for 2010, reserving $800,000 worth of airtime for anti-Grayson TV commercials; the billionaire Koch brothers, through their organization Americans for Prosperity, recently dropped $250,000 in negative TV ads as well.

Bronx-born and Harvard-educated (three degrees), Grayson, 52, is an unapologetic man of the left, or as he describes himself, a democratic populist. He opposes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (each "a foreign occupation") and supports abortion rights, gay marriage, bilingual programs, unions, middle-class tax cuts and comprehensive, single-payer healthcare. The son of two New York City teachers union activists, he defended the embattled, now-defunct community organization ACORN on the floor of Congress, calls Arizona's immigration law "racist" and declines to join the periodic attacks on Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. Congress has not seen his like since firebrand Vito Marcantonio represented Harlem during the cold war.