This story ran 8/8/2012 on Dane101.com

The four Democrats vying for U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin’s 2nd District seat staked out their differences Tuesday night in one of the last debates before voters choose a candidate in next Tuesday’s primary election.

As a debate among Democrats in a sharply progressive district, the candidates had a great deal to agree on, as they acknowledged immediately. “The difference really is about priorities,” State Rep. Kelda Roys said. “And, in some cases, our judgment of those issues.”

But State Rep. Mark Pocan, the longest-serving legislator in the room, said that as such, he would be best qualified by dint of that experience. “I want to hit the ground running from day one, but also take on the Tea Party,” he said.

Sharp distinctions, however, emerged between the two frontrunners, Pocan and Roys, and outsider candidates Matt Silverman, a lawyer and Iraq war veteran, and Dennis Hall, a security consultant. Hall and Silverman both decried “career politicians” (with Hall aiming the label pointedly at Pocan and Roys), and “politics as usual” in Washington D.C. …

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