Congressman Dennis Kucinich to speak at NWroots 2011 in Seattle on July 9th

Hav­ing already made mul­ti­ple trips to Wash­ing­ton State this year, Ohio Con­gress­man Den­nis Kucinich will return on July 9th for the 2011 NWroots Con­fer­ence in Seat­tle. Kucinich has been mak­ing fre­quent vis­its here, pre­sum­ably in prepa­ra­tion for a redis­trict­ing that may leave him with­out a con­gres­sion­al dis­trict to rep­re­sent. Spec­u­la­tion is that he could set­tle and run in Wash­ing­ton’s tenth, first, sev­enth, eighth, or even third dis­trict. Demo­graph­ics for each of these dis­tricts will not be ful­ly known until redis­trict­ing is complete.

The Tenth Dis­trict will like­ly be an open seat. The Eighth may or may not include Mer­cer Island, where incum­bent Dave Reichert cur­rent­ly lives. The First Dis­trict will be vacat­ed due to Jay Inslee’s bid for gov­er­nor. The Third is cur­rent­ly a swing dis­trict and not safe­ly in Repub­li­can hands. There is talk that Jim McDer­mott may be appoint­ed Ambas­sador to India, which would leave the Sev­enth open (although I talked to a McDer­mott staffer last week who said the rumor that McDer­mott is angling for the India ambas­sador­ship is com­plete nonsense).

There are prob­lems with any sce­nario which includes Kucinich as a can­di­date, and it is not at all cer­tain he would be a good fit any­where in Washington.

State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair Dwight Pelz recent­ly made it clear in a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Kucinich that he’d rather the Con­gress­man not poke around the state in search of a dis­trict to serve.

Regard­less, Kucinich obvi­ous­ly sees poten­tial in Wash­ing­ton. It will be inter­est­ing to see how it all plays out. One thing Kucinich was clear about when I had din­ner with him last month is that he won’t run against an incum­bent Demo­c­rat any­where. If he has to relo­cate it will be in a dis­trict where he can run in an open seat, or against an incum­bent Repub­li­can. He will not take on an office­hold­er from his own party.

Kucinich will join Con­gress­men Jim McDer­mott and Jay Inslee, for­mer Cana­di­an Health Min­is­ter Ujjal Dosan­jh, and Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Jeff John­son at NWroots 2011 on July 9th.

NWroots is a region­al con­fer­ence for lib­er­al blog­gers, activists, and cit­i­zens inter­est­ed in pro­gres­sive pub­lic pol­i­cy. The event will fea­ture keynote speak­ers, pan­el dis­cus­sions, doc­u­men­taries, and a can­di­dates social.

The clos­ing keynote address will be deliv­ered by Ujjal Dosan­jh. In last mon­th’s Fed­er­al elec­tion, Dosan­jh lost his seat in Par­lia­ment and announced his retire­ment from pol­i­tics. He has pre­vi­ous­ly served as Health Min­is­ter in Paul Martin’s cab­i­net, Pre­mier of  British Colum­bia, and B.C.’s Attor­ney General.

The con­fer­ence will be fin­ished off with a spe­cial per­for­mance by the Total Expe­ri­ence Gospel Choir.

NWroots, which is being orga­nized by NPI and the NWroots Fel­low­ship, will be held at the Com­e­dy Under­ground in Pio­neer Square. Break­fast and lunch are includ­ed in the reg­is­tra­tion price of $50 ($25 stu­dents). An after-par­ty will take place one block away at the his­toric Cen­tral Saloon. It should be a fun and inter­est­ing day.

I hope you’ll join me and the NPI team at NWroots on July 9th!