Open Letter to Sen. Bill Brady and the ISU Community,

ISU College Democrats were pleased to welcome State Senator Bill Brady to campus Wednesday. As the opposing civic organization at ISU we welcome any addition to the debate on the future of this state and nation, even when we vehemently oppose what visiting candidates stand for. Sen. Brady is no exception. We thought that since he had an opportunity to address the College Republicans we wanted to have the opportunity to address our fellow students and introduce the other side of Sen. Brady we are sure he didn’t speak about.

• Brady recently said on WMAY radio in Springfield, “I think we should teach the Bible in our schools,” and later went on to say that he believes we should be teaching evolution in our public schools, “I think we should teach everything that educates our children, and I think bringing God and the Bible into that is critically important.” This sounds like something former Republican Senate hopeful Alan Keyes would have said.

• Brady claims that he, “will lessen the burden on Illinois taxpayers and provide property tax relief for Illinois families, senior citizens and businesses,” while at the same time he, “will empower and benefit students in the classroom.” We wonder how he will be able to help students when he is promising to cut the main revenue stream to our public schools.

• Better yet is Brady’s staunch support for the radical pro-life agenda in Illinois. This last year saw Democrats in Springfield stand up for a woman’s right to choose and expand insurance benefits to cover birth control while the governor issued an executive order that requires pharmacists to fulfill their job description and not impose their personal moral values on women. Does Sen. Brady really want to take Illinois back to the days of back alley abortions?

• And most recently Sen. Brady claimed that he will support, “the moral values that make Illinois families strong.” We wonder if that includes voting against covering 253,000 CHILDREN in the state of Illinois who did not have health insurance, as Sen. Brady did. Under Democratic leadership Illinois passed the All Kids program to become one of the few states in that nation to offer insurance to our most vulnerable citizens.

As we said above, we welcome Sen. Brady to campus. We wish he had been here more often when it came to halting the state budget cuts to higher education that have especially hurt Illinois State University, but we’ll take any opportunity to expose Sen. Brady as the true radical conservative, Alan Keyes want to-be that he is. 2006 should be an interesting election regardless of which Republican eventually takes on the record of accomplishment that Democrats have accomplished in the past four years.

Democratically Yours,
On behalf of all ISU College Democrats