More from the "you just can't make this stuff up" files:
Lisa “Lee” Whitnum, 51, a software engineer from Greenwich, has run for federal office as a Democrat in 2008, 2010 and 2012, using her candidacy primarily to advance her favorite issue – opposition to American support for Israel.
She challenged Jim Himes for 4th District Congress in 2008 and Richard Blumenthal for U.S. Senate in 2010.
In 2010, she showed up at the Republican State Convention in Hartford instead of the Democratic State Convention by mistake, and then filed a formal request that state Democrats re-cast their votes for Senate endorsements because she wasn’t there.
She’s running for Senate again this year, and made waves at a televised debate by calling primary rival and 5th District Congressman Chris Murphy a “whore” for supporting Israel.
Murphy said that Whitnum’s comments implying that Israel had something to do with the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. are “over the line.”
Whitnum is the author of “Anti-AIPAC not Anti-Semitic: Breaking the Israel Lobby’s Control, A Patriot’s Guide,” and sued Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy in 2010 for calling her anti-semitic.
Jewish groups have repeated Malloy’s contention.
That lawsuit was dismissed in March. Whitnum has also sued the Norwich Bulletin for not including her in a debate it organized.
Malloy has called Whitnum “on the fringe of the fringe,” and feels she shouldn’t be included in debates with the other Democratic candidates running for Senate this year.
Political Views
On her campaign website, Whitnum says that while she addresses “60 different issues,” her number one concern is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the influence that AIPAC (the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has on the U.S. government.
If elected to the U.S. Senate, Whitnum says that her first priority would be passage of a bill calling for federal prosecution of any U.S. citizen who moves to Israel and “commit acts of violence during the forceful taking of the homes, farms, and land of the indigenous Christians and Muslims (a.k.a Palestinians).”
Her second priority: A bill that would ban the sale of seafood caught by fishing companies that engage in deep water trawling. “The massive fishing trawlers destroy one deep-sea ecosystem after another, crushing coral reefs,” Whitnum says on her campaign website.
Her third priority if elected to the Senate would be to repeal the United States’ free trade agreement with Israel, and her fourth priority would be a bill banning the euthanization of unwanted shelter animals by gassing. “Instead, shelters should use the humane practice of lethal injection,” she said.
Whitnum also favors a constitutional amendment that would place term limits on U.S. senators and congressmen.
Whitnum has been harshly criticized by fellow Connecticut Democrats, especially from the more progressive wing of the party.
The blog “My Left Nutmeg” has compiled a long treatise on her views and biography.
Personal Life
Whitnum’s campaign website biography lists her as married without children. It says she holds a master’s degree from Harvard University in Administration, Planning and Social Policy and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Maryland.
Like her debate appearances, Whitnum’s campaign biography leads back to Israel. It says:
“Her father, Paul Whitnum was a British banker; her mother, an American teacher. Whitnum is secular Protestant. Both of Lee’s grandfathers fought in World War I; one suffered with shrapnel all of this life the other lost a body part from a bayonet. Lee’s father was a British pilot in World War II for the British Royal Air Force. Later he was stationed in India during the Zionist massacre at the King David hotel in Jerusalem. Seventy British officers were killed that day. Lee has a heightened awareness due to her family history. She is convinced if Americans knew the injustice and the price of the ongoing Zionist encroachment and expansion they would feel as she does. Modern day Zionism (aka the Settlements) must stop.”
Whitnum is famous for having once dated Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, writing a novel called “Hedge Fund Mistress,” written under the pen name Lee Roystone, and posting momentoes of her time with Kerry on a website called hedgefundmistress.com that received a lot of attention during Kerry’s run for president in 2004.
She also wrote a “young adult novel,” according to her website, called, “What About the Dead?,” currently unavailable on Amazon.Com.
Whitnum recently sued the town of Greenwich’s first selectman for allowing a bar mitzvah to be held at town hall.
So she hates Israel. Sounds like Kerry or Obama.
