From The Daily Beast
Insurgent congressional candidate Anthony Woods’ life story reads like Aaron Sorkin wrote it—he’s a gay, black Iraq veteran with a Harvard degree. He talks to The Daily Beast’s Benjamin Sarlin about running on his biography.
In every election cycle, there’s one candidate whose life story stands out among the crowd. In 2004, it was Barack Obama; in 2006, it was Vietnam vet Jim Webb. This year, an underdog candidate for U.S. Congress in California is the clear winner and it’s not even close. Anthony Woods’ biography—he’s a gay, black Iraq vet with a Harvard degree—reads like a West Wing script Aaron Sorkin threw into the wastebasket for being too over the top.
Woods, 28, is currently running in a crowded Democratic field to replace Rep. Ellen Tauscher in California’s 10th district, which includes parts of Sacramento and San Francisco’s East Bay area. (Tauscher is leaving Congress to serve in Obama’s State Department; there’s no date yet for the special election.) Though he was briefly an aide to Gov. David Paterson in New York, Woods is the political unknown in the field, which includes California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan.
