As many of you know, I am running for Congress again in Washington's 8th CD against Dave Reichert. Last fall I lost to Reichert by 2.9% after the Republicans put $6 million into defeating me and brought President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove and Laura Bush into campaign for my opponent. We also learned this spring about what else the Republicans did, after the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform began investigating the slide shows that Rove's assistant, Scott Jennings, gave at the General Services Administration and other government agencies.
We learned that my campaign was Karl Rove's TOP target for last minute voter contact calls over the last days of the campaign. His operation made 585,164 calls into the 8th, 41,166 on Election Day. No other District in the nation received more calls than WA-08.
We are at a crossroads in this country. We need more Democrats and more new Democrats in office to take our country back. We deserve leaders who have a clear vision of what we're striving for. We deserve leaders who understand the technologies that are our best hope as well as our potential undoing. We deserve leaders who have an uncompromising commitment to justice, liberty, equality, and opportunity.
And when we have those leaders, we can build a greater America than the one we inherited. We can leave our children a legacy to be proud of.
For that, we need a new kind of candidate and a new kind of campaign. Last year, I ran my campaign by the book. This time I'm starting early so I can establish a deeper grassroots organization and create a robust online community that will help me build an even stronger base to defeat Dave Reichert. My first hire, after a scheduler, has been an online outreach director, Lynn Allen, a local progressive blogger and organizer.
As part of creating a new kind of campaign we are also starting early with videos. We want to be both playful and hard-hitting. We've been experimenting on our own and have now, just this week, brought on Dan Kully of Laguens Hamburger Kully Klose. You may recall that Dan created Jon Tester's creative ads, including the classic haircut ad.
So, I want to show you what we have done right off the bat. This video-clip was shot this week using mostly volunteer actors and went up on the Internet only today.
Last year, you gave me a lot of support and for that I am grateful. To run a new kind of campaign, we need money and we need it early. The end of the quarter is coming up and as you know, those end of quarter financial figures matter. If you are able, please contribute to my campaign.
Thanks for all you do. I'll be around for while to respond to comments.