Everyone is gushing over that clever campaign ad by Massachusetts State Rep. Carl Sciortino, who’s running in a crowded primary for now Senator Ed Markey’s vacant house seat.

Sciortino, who is openly gay, tells voters about coming out to his conservative tea party father…as a Massachusetts liberal.

Since the ad aired on Boston area cable, it has received national attention and over 200,000 hits on YouTube.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee quickly endorsed Sciortino, carrying with them resources in terms of ground troops and financial support up to the Massachusetts’ 5th in advance of the Oct. 15 special election.

Today, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee endorsed Massachusetts State Rep. Carl Sciortino for Congress in the race to fill Ed Markey’s former House seat in the state’s 5th Congressional district. According to a press release, “This is the PCCC’s first endorsement of the 2014 cycle. Carl has already been endorsed by leading House progressives including, Reps. Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Alan Grayson, and Mark Takano. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has over 5,000 members in MA-5, more than 33,000 members in Massachusetts, and nearly 1 million members across the country.” In an e-mail message going out to supporters today, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s Matt Wall writes, “Carl Sciortino showed bold leadership in the PCCC’s first-ever Open Debate by supporting prosecuting Wall Street bankers, Elizabeth Warren’s Glass-Steagall bill, increasing Social Security benefits, Medicare-For-All, and reversing Citizens United. Carl was a leader on Syria by being the first to announce he opposed bombing Syria and successfully getting his opponents to follow his lead a week later.”

A national liberal group will begin fundraising for Democratic congressional candidate Carl Sciortino.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committeeon Tuesday plans to endorse Sciortino, a state representative running for the 5th District congressional seat, and send out a fundraising email to its supporters on his behalf. It will also send staff to Massachusetts and recruit volunteers from among its members to support his campaign, said PCCC spokesman Matt Wall.

“Among several good candidates, Carl proved these past two weeks that he is the type of bold leader we can count on,” the PCCC writes in a fundraising email that will be sent to the group’s national supporters. In particular, the organization points to Sciortino’s early opposition to the use of U.S. military force in Syria.

The PCCC has proven to be a powerful force in past Massachusetts elections. The group raised more than $1 million from its members for Democrat Elizabeth Warren’s successful 2012 U.S. Senate campaign. It was less involved in Democrat Edward Markey’s 2013 U.S. Senate campaign but still raised $35,000 for him. The group, which says it has 33,000 Massachusetts members, held an online debate with five of the 5th District Democratic candidates last month.

The liberal group Progressive Change Campaign Committee said Wednesday that it is endorsing Democrat Carl Sciortino in the special election primary in Massachusetts’s 5th District.

Sciortino is one of seven Democrats vying for the nomination to succeed now-Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the solidly blue district.

The organization hailed Sciortino’s opposition to military intervention in Syria as well as his positions on issues like financial reform, campaign finance and Social Security.

“Among several good candidates, Carl proved these past two weeks that he is the type of bold leader we can count on,” PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor said in a fundraising email that the group planned to send to its members.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has endorsed state Rep. Carl Sciortino (D) in the special election to fill Sen. Edward Markey’s (D-Mass.) House seat.

It’s the progressive group’s first endorsement of the cycle, and comes with fundraising support and access to the PCCC’s thousands-strong member base.

Sciortino has been running as the progressive in the race against five other staunch Democrats in Massachusetts’ heavily Democratic fifth district.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will be running a unique online debate on Saturday featuring all five Democratic candidates in the 5th Congressional District.

The debate, which will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 10, will be run through the website OpenDebateQuestions.com, which the PCCC is debuting for this event. The public will submit questions and then vote on which questions they like. Massachusetts voters will pick the top 50 questions, and moderators will choose from those questions to ask the candidates. The candidates will participate via video from remote locations. So far, people have submitted more than 300 questions.

A progressive group announced Tuesday morning theyai??i??ll be hosting a ai???first of itai??i??s kindai??? debate in Massachusettsai??i?? 5th congressional district, where five Democrats are vying to replace the seat now vacated by Sen. Ed Markey.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says their ai???Open Debate,ai??? where all questions will be submitted and chosen by the public, could serve as a model in future races and someday (they hope) presidential races.

ai???Open Debates, where the public submits and votes on the questions, will hopefully be a game changer in our political process. What starts here in Massachusetts will hopefully become the norm for local, state, congressional, and even presidential debates in the future,ai??? said PCCC spokesman Matt Wall.

Rep. (now Senator) Ed Markey (D-Mass.) won his special election Tuesday for the Senate seat of Secretary of State John Kerry. Markey defeated Republican Gabriel Gomez. […] Markey joins Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who used his election to put out an email solicitation for donations to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to elect more progressives like Markey.

Warren, a Harvard University law professor, has become a liberal darling in her first race for elected office. She helped President Obama create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and won a featured speaking slot at the Democratic convention in Charlotte. “Progressives just won our marquee race of 2012 and elected a leader who will shake up the corridors of power from Washington to Wall Street,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of Warren’s earliest supporters. The group raised more than $1 million for Warren.

Elizabeth Warren’s blockbuster debate performance this week successfully exposed Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) as a shill for Wall Street and as someone who perpetually sides with Republican extremists like Grover Norquist — who once said he wouldn’t even be open to raising taxes during a war or huge natural disaster.

A new poll out by Public Policy Polling shows that Brown’s approval rating is plummeting while more and more voters are viewing him as a typical partisan Republican rather than an independent voice:

Warren leads Scott Brown 50-44. The big change over the last month is that Brown’s image is finally starting to take a hit. His approval rating is now a +7 spread at 49/42, down a net 14 points from mid-September when he was at 55/34. There’s an increasing sense that he’s been more a partisan voice for the national Republican Party (45%) than an independent voice for Massachusetts (44%). That’s a 10 point shift from our last poll when voters thought 49/40 that he’d been more of an independent voice.

Click here to sign up to make calls to help bold progressive Elizabeth Warren win.

(Photo credit: Flickr user Adam Glanzman)

During his debate with President Obama last night, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney boasted of being governor of Massachusetts while the state was ranked best in the nation in education.

Romney is likely referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, which the Department of Education uses to grade states based on student knowledge in reading and mathematics.

Indeed, Massachussetts’ ranking has been impressive, and it ranked first in the nation in 2005 and 2007 in math and reading scores for 4th and 8th graders, both years under which Romney was governor. What Romney didn’t note was that the state also ranked first in 2009 — long after he had left his position.

In fact, it was also that way before Romney ever became governor. Here’s a table showing NAEP scores for Massachusetts from 1992 to 2003, drawn from a UMass Amherst report by researchers Stephen Jirka and Ronald Hambleton (click on it to expand it):

As you can see, Massachusetts significantly outperformed the nation every year tested. Some of this has to do with the public policies followed by the state, but it also has a number of social benefits that boost its educational potential. That includes the lowest number of uninsured individuals and the second-highest per capita income among all states.

Can Mitt Romney really take credit for his state’s educational results when they were already high before he took office and remained high after? No, the most he can take credit for is not catastrophically ruining an already good system.

Two just-released polls find that progressive champion Elizabeth Warren is now leading incumbent Senator Scott Brown (R) in the Massachusetts Senate race.

First, here’s a poll from theAi??Western New England University Polling Institute:

Of the 444 likely voters interviewed for the survey, 50 percent said they would support Warren if the election was held today, 44 percent said Brown, and six percent said they were undecided. Among the larger sample of 545 registered voters, Warren led Brown by 12 points, 53 percent to 41 percent, with six percent undecided. The margin of sampling error for the sample of likely voters is plus or minus 4.6 percentage points, and the margin of error for the sample of all registered voters is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Second, here’s the results from a new Public Policy Polling survey:

Things have been going Elizabeth Warren’s way in the Massachusetts Senate race over the last month. She’s gained 7 points and now leads Scott Brown 48-46 after trailing him by a 49-44 margin on our last poll.

Warren’s lead is likely a result from her excellent convention speech and voters’ increasingly realizing that Brown has been a shill for Wall Street during his time in the Senate.