A couple of days ago I received a small ivory-colored envelope in the mail, with the imprint United States Senator Patty Murray on the back. It was clearly hand-addressed to me rather than coming from a computer-generated mailing list, but as I am the vice-chair of the local Democrats and a Democratic Party activist, I get fund-raising letters all the time and thought this was another one, so I put it aside.
It wasn't. It was something different.
I was leafing through the past couple of days of mail while waiting for my coffee to brew and brought this downstairs to read, fully expecting a fund-raising solicitation. As I know Senator Murray is in a pretty tough race this year, I've contributed before and will again, and will donate my time, too. But this was something different.
Tears filled my eyes when I opened the envelope and pulled out the short, entirely hand-written note inside:
September 6, 2010
Dear River,
I just wanted to personally thank you for your support. I know you have not been well, but your support is coming through anyway. Know I'm here for you too. Take care!
Patty
It's on her campaign letterhead rather than her official Senate letterhead, but I've seen her handwriting (especially her signature) on things before and recognized it. This wasn't written by a campaign staffer. No way. Not unless that campaign staffer can exactly copy not only Senator Murray's signature but her entire cursive hand.
I think I know what engendered this. A few weeks back, on Washington's primary day, Senator Murray and President Obama were in town to do a fundraiser luncheon for Senator Murray's campaign against whoever survived the contested Republican primary, which turned out to be former state legislator, campaign-law cheater, real-estate developer, two-time gubernatorial loser, and teabagger courter Dino Rossi. As I was going to be in the Northwest Kidney Center's home hemodialysis training program at their flagship facility when the lunch was going on, as the training program there is a world leader and justifiably renowned, and as the (non-profit then and still) Northwest Kidney Center opened the world's first dialysis clinic in 1962 and is a point of Northwest pride, I called the White House and Senator Murray's campaign headquarters to invite both Senator Murray and President Obama to come to the home hemo program that morning before the luncheon. Neither one had time to show up, unfortunately, though we would all have loved to have them come through for a tour. (But as an aside, when I was first starting in the training program, we got a tour by a bunch of what I was told were bigwigs, one of whom was the President's newly-appointed director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Dr. Daniel Berwick.)
I passed the note to Charles and he wound up with something in his eye, too. Senator Murray is a woman of great heart and I am so keeping this in a safe place. And there is no place her great heart is so exemplified as in the care and concern she has for America's veterans. No other Senator in office - perhaps no other legislator in office in Washington DC - is as strong a supporter of veterans' issues as Senator Patty Murray. I am not a veteran but there are an awful lot of veterans in my part of the state; a lot of our local kids graduate from high school and join the service. It's one reason I think Patty Murray needs to stay in office as our state's senior Senator, rather than getting replaced by the execrable Dino Rossi.
Patty's in a real fight this time. There are Rossi signs all over and Rossi voters all over, too, especially east of the Cascades, north of Seattle, and over here where I live. There's a "throw out the incumbents" mood in the state and in my legislative district in particular, a bellweather and the singlemost swing district in the state. Dino Rossi, if elected, would vote in lockstep with the Republican leadership in the Senate. He'd vote to repeal health insurance reform; do away with a woman's right to choose when and whether to have a baby; support pharmacists' refusal to fill legal prescriptions for things like birth control pills or AIDS retrovirals while refusing to return the unfilled prescription to the patient or to refer the patient to another pharmacy which would fill the prescription; make permanent Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country while raising taxes on the middle class and poor; privatize Social Security and Medicare; cause the Christian religion to influence policies for people of all religions to the greatest extent possible; and all the other things that Republicans and teabaggers have promised to do. He'd do his best to shut down any policies that originated with President Obama, and he definitely needs to stay home in Washington state (though we would really rather export him to someplace more in keeping with his values than the US).
If you're a Washingtonian, you know how important it is to keep Senator Patty Murray in office for at least another six years, and I hope you'll take a moment to contribute to her campaign or sign up to volunteer. If you aren't a Washingtonian, please contribute to her campaign anyway, because Dino Rossi in the Senate would be worse than Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham combined.
I am proud to be represented in the Senate by two remarkable women, Senator Patty Murray and Senator Maria Cantwell. And I am touched beyond words that Senator Murray took the time to personally write me a note. She's got my time, my contributions, and certainly my vote; she deserves them all.