It's time for new leadership to take America in a new direction.
My experience as a mother and a businesswoman tells me that the country is currently headed in the wrong direction -- and that together, we can change it. We must take back our country - starting with the House of Representatives in November.
Like you, I am doing everything I can to win back the House this year. I've given up my career, all my time and energy, and much of my life's savings to this task - because I know that we can win.
But the Republicans won't give up their power easily. They are vulnerable here in Washington State, where I'm fighting them - so they're sending President Bush across the country to my district, WA-08, to raise half a million dollars in one morning (tomorrow morning) for my opponent, Dave Reichert.
They know that control of the House is likely to hinge on a handful of seats in November, and they will do whatever they can to keep us from winning them.
Washington's 8th Congressional District is one of the most winnable districts in the country.
The 8th is a suburban and rural district east of Seattle, which runs from the northern cities of Bellevue and Redmond (which includes part of the Microsoft campus and many of its employees) through rural areas to the east and south, including Mount Rainier National Park.
It's one of the fifteen seats that we must win if we're to take back the House of Representatives.
The 8th voted overwhelmingly two years ago for Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. Half of the district's state legislative delegation in Olympia is Democratic.
Al Gore won the district in 2000, and John Kerry won it handily in 2004. Simply put, it's a district that's ready to turn blue.
The people of the 8th are sick and tired of the direction this administration and its cronies in Congress have set. Only 26% of them approve of the job President Bush is doing, and only 28% of them approve of the job the current Congress is doing.
They're ready to support a candidate who will take America in a new direction. A candidate who understands them and the needs of their families. I believe I'm that candidate.
I am the daughter of an Air Force veteran and a public school teacher. I grew up in military towns and attended public schools. Like many Americans today, my parents struggled to pay the bills while raising five kids. I worked hard in school, put myself through college, and went on to a successful career at Microsoft. I am now married to a military veteran and raising a young son.
I left Microsoft because I knew I had to commit myself to winning back our country.
Exactly a year ago today - on June 15th, 2005 - I filed to run for this office.
Since that time, we have steadily assembled the resources and the tools we need to win:
- We have raised three quarters of a million dollars from energetic grassroots donors who are ready to invest in a candidate who will represent them - not special interests.
- I've brought together a talented, passionate campaign team to run the kind of aggressive, people-driven campaign it will take to win.
- I have knocked on hundreds and thousands of doors, letting voters know that they have a real choice this November
Earlier this year, every other Democrat who was running in the primary (or considered running) united behind my candidacy, endorsed me, and contributed to my campaign.
Congressman Jay Inslee, who represents the 1st Congressional District to the north of the 8th, recently told The Stranger:
"The whole Washington State delegation is committed to this race. If you want to know where one vote could make a difference, one vote out of the 8th District could make a difference this year."
Rahm Emanuel, the Chairman of the DCCC, recently came to the 8th to support my campaign, and told our supporters at the rally that "This Microsoft mom is going to be part of us taking back the Congress."
And Matt Stoller, one of the contributing editors to MyDD, has said of me:
"Burner is incredibly smart and a natural campaigner going against vulnerable incumbent Dave Reichert. She is also young (35) and web-savvy, having worked at Microsoft, and these traits will serve her well in a House that is desperately in need of new blood. She has promised, for instance, to post on her Congressional web site a list of all meetings with lobbyists by her or any staff member, which is a fundamentally new approach to governance."
I am honored to be a "Netroots Endorsed" candidate.
I firmly believe the netroots is the next generation vehicle that will allow us to expand our democracy to include participation from everyone.
That's why I've written several diaries here at Daily Kos, visited Drinking Liberally, and spoke at the first ever Pacific Northwest Progressive Bloggers' Conference last January in Olympia.
I'm a practical progressive. I believe in broad-based opportunity, strong protection of individual liberties, and real equality for all Americans.
I understand how the families are the 8th are affected by our most pressing issues.
The war in Iraq is not an abstraction for me: it is family. My brother is in the 101st Airborne. He has served one tour in Iraq , and we cannot be certain he will not be required to serve another. He and I talk regularly about the soldiers' view of the facts on the ground - and about what Congress could do to make things better.
While I believe the Bush Administration misled the American people about the intelligence and the motivation for the war, I firmly believe we need to focus on a forward-looking policy that secures Iraq without an indefinite commitment of our troops and their families.
I want to be clear about something: our troops have done everything we have asked them to do, and they have done it with courage and a willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the greater good that puts nearly all of the rest of us to shame in comparison.
We asked them to topple a brutal dictatorship, and they did it faster than anyone believed possible.
We asked them to secure the nation and make sure there were no weapons of mass destruction, and they did that.
We asked them to keep the peace while the Iraqis formed an interim government and negotiated a constitution, and they did that.
We asked them to hold back an increasingly violent insurgency while Iraqis held another election, and they did that.
And now, they are there waiting while the politicians in Washington D.C. fail to figure out what's next, how we give Iraq back to the Iraqis, and bring our brave soldiers home. We owe it to them to have clear benchmarks to measure success. We owe it to them to ask the tough questions and hold this administration accountable. Unfortunately, the Republican Congress has been little more than a rubber stamp for George Bush - and my opponent is one of them.
The best thing we could do for our troops is to establish clear benchmarks in the key areas of security, governance, reconstruction, and internationalization. I am committed to bringing our troops home as soon as possible.
The people of the 8th also care strongly about protecting our environment. I share their values, and I will fight hard to do so.
Clean water, clean air, healthy ecosystems, and strongly protected federal parks, forests, and wildlife refuges are an important legacy we must leave for our children. There has been an unfortunate tendency in recent years to allow some companies to do things which are greatly profitable to them but which all of the rest of us pay for in environmental impact. When we allow companies to ignore their impact on these things, it means that we pay the environmental costs while those companies reap the profits.
I would fight to:
- protect Puget Sound from oil spills;
- protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from drilling; and
- protect all national parks, national forests, and wildlife refuges from development, mining, and environmentally-destructive resource extraction, as was intended by designating them protected lands.
I also believe in
fiscal responsibility.
I approach this the same way I have approached managing finances in my role as a businesswoman or in my household: balance the budget while making the best investments possible.
I find it unconscionable that the Bush administration wants to pile their debt onto our children, while slashing the investments in education, infrastructure, and technology development that would secure a better future for everyone. It is especially awful to do it in order to pad the nests of profitable corporations and the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.
Our current tax system places an unfair burden on middle class and working families - and the Bush administration and Republican Congress have made it worse. The President's tax policies are bankrupting future generations for the short-term benefit of those who need it the least.
Bush and his allies in Congress have riddled the tax code with new loopholes and subsidies that benefit special-interests and the very wealthy. By doing so, they have created a tax code that undermines the value of work and shifted more of the tax burden onto the middle class.
Under Bush, the middle-class share of the tax burden has risen while the wealthiest Americans' share has dropped. The corporate picture is, in many cases, even worse, with companies like Exxon Mobil receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies - at the same time they post the largest quarterly profits of any company in the history of the planet.
The tax system must be changed to ease the burden on the middle class and small businesses and ensure that large corporations and the very wealthy pay their fair share. This must be done in conjunction with balancing the federal budget and making smart investments in our national priorities.
My values are very different from those of my opponent's.
From voting for an energy bill that gave billions in taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies - to his opposition to stem cell research - to his support for the Medicare prescription drug program, Dave Reichert has not wasted any time forgetting all about Washington State families and siding with the special interests when he got to our nation's capitol.
Dave Reichert has voted with the President to pass an oil bill that gave billions of dollars to the oil industry.
He has voted with the President to cut billions from Medicare and Medicaid.
He has supported, like the President, the prescription drug program that helps drug companies more than seniors.
Reichert also supports the privatization of Social Security, and wants the government to interfere in private health decisions that are best left to a woman and her doctor.
And, like the President, Dave Reichert is opposed to important stem cell research.
Dave Reichert is out of touch with the voters of the 8th District. He's already made it clear that he supports the President's agenda. Earlier this year he even stated, on camera, that he "puts his trust in the President."
Just this morning, he told 710 KIRO host Dave Ross that he "felt honored" to have the President coming out to raise megabucks for him.
More recently, Dave Reichert told a gathering of self-proclaimed "Mainstream Republicans" in Washington that he does what the Republican leadership in Congress tells him to. Reichert was trying to explain how his voting record was "moderate", but succeeded only in making it clear where he gets his orders from.
(Click here to launch audio clip)
And I've been to district meetings here on this side, uh, within my district, where people have said 'Why in the world would I vote for you? It's just like voting for a Democrat, for crying out loud. I'm going to vote libertarian.'
And, I said, `You know what sir, that would be a huge mistake, and here's why.' (I wanted to explain to this person how things work back in Washington, D.C., and why certain votes have to be taken.)
Sometimes the leadership comes to me and says, `Dave, we want you to vote a certain way.' Now, they know I can do that over here, that I have to do that over here. In other districts, that's not a problem, but here I have to be able to be very flexible in where I place my votes.
Because the big picture here is, keep this seat, keep the majority, keep the country moving forward with Republican ideals -- especially on the budget, on protecting our troops, on protecting this country. Right? Being responsible with taxpayer dollars. All of those things. That's the big picture. Not the vote I place on ANWR that you may not agree with, or the vote that I place on protecting salmon."
You have to... be ... flexible.
And so, when the leadership comes to me and says 'Dave, we need you to take a vote over here because we want to protect you and keep this majority, I...I do it.'
That's not oversight, that's not accountability - that's a rubber stamp. The people of the 8th District deserve a better representative.
Dave Reichert is a Bush Republican, a Dick Cheney Republican, and a Tom Delay Republican. Tom Delay has given thousands to Reichert's reelection campaign. Dick Cheney was in Seattle a year ago today holding a fundraisier for Dave Reichert.
And tomorrow - President Bush will arrive in Medina for an exclusive, private gathering to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Dave Reichert. Reichert has said the goal for the fundraiser is $800,000.
We don't have the ability to call together wealthy pals to dump money into this race.
But we do have you.
Karl Rove sends Bush to very few districts around the country to raise money. The fact that Rove is sending Bush here is a clear sign that they are very afraid of losing this seat.
If we're to beat Dave Reichert - if we're going to take back the 8th this November - we need to maintain a competitive edge.
I have made a personal investment to win this. But ultimately, this race is in your hands. I need your help to show Karl Rove that bringing the President into a race is a bad move.
I need your most generous contribution today.
I am deeply honored to be "Netroots Endorsed" and supported by this community. And I am always open to your feedback and suggestions.
Thank you so much.