Darcy Burner launches third campaign for U.S. House, joins congressional sweepstakes

Declar­ing that “no one is above the law — not even the rich and pow­er­ful”, two-time Dave Reichert chal­lenger and Pro­gres­sive­Congress founder Dar­cy Burn­er for­mal­ly announced this morn­ing that she is run­ning for Con­gress for a third time after spend­ing the last few days ready­ing her new web­site and con­firm­ing to friends that she’s decid­ed to seek office again.

“I know first­hand how amaz­ing our coun­try is,” Burn­er said in a state­ment. “My fam­i­ly didn’t have a lot of mon­ey when I was grow­ing up, but my four sib­lings and I were raised to believe that we could be any­thing if we worked hard enough.

“Pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions had invest­ed in good pub­lic schools for me, and that edu­ca­tion made it pos­si­ble for me to earn a col­lege degree and start a career in busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy. My sto­ry is a nor­mal Amer­i­can sto­ry. It’s what my hus­band Mike and I want for our son Hen­ry and what all fam­i­lies want for their chil­dren. But today, for the first time in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, most par­ents don’t believe their children’s lives will be bet­ter than theirs.”

“Although our econ­o­my has dou­bled in size in the last fif­teen years, near­ly all of those gains have gone to the rich­est Amer­i­cans, while most Amer­i­cans are strug­gling in the wake of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Out­ra­geous­ly, the bankers and manip­u­la­tors on Wall Street whose greed caused our cur­rent cri­sis are rak­ing in record prof­its and tak­ing home stag­ger­ing bonuses.

“I am run­ning for Con­gress to fight back.”

“I will run the kind of vig­or­ous, pos­i­tive, grass­roots cam­paign that the vot­ers of the 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict want and deserve,” she added.

Burn­er also released a memo from her poll­ster, Lake Research Part­ners, which con­tends that “more like­ly pri­ma­ry vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton’s pro­posed new 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict sup­port Dar­cy Burn­er for Con­gress than sup­port all oth­er declared Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates combined.”

Of course, the prob­lem with that state­ment is that there is no “pro­posed new 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict”. It sim­ply does­n’t exist.

Nobody knows exact­ly where WA-01 will be locat­ed, not even the Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion… although its five mem­bers have a bet­ter idea than any­one else, giv­en that they are the ones tasked with pro­duc­ing new boundaries.

Each vot­ing com­mis­sion­er (of which there are four) has, of course, come up with his own map. Each map spec­i­fies where each com­mis­sion­er thinks the ten con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts should go. But those four maps are just their ideas. 

The Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion has­n’t even come up with pre­lim­i­nary joint plans for the con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts yet. The Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic com­mis­sion­ers did each team up to release joint plans for the forty-nine leg­isla­tive dis­tricts a few weeks ago, but even those still amount to com­pet­ing plans — not a firm draft pro­pos­al agreed to by the entire commission.

It’s pos­si­ble that the neigh­bor­hood where Dar­cy lives — which is cur­rent­ly in WA-08, not WA-01 — may not be in the new WA-01 at all. In fact, it’s pos­si­ble that WA-01 will not include any neigh­bor­hood on the East­side. Because Jay Inslee has declared his inten­tion to run for gov­er­nor, the Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion is treat­ing WA-01 as though it has no incum­bent. They can move it any­where they want to.

Slade Gor­ton has actu­al­ly sug­gest­ed renum­ber­ing all the dis­tricts in addi­tion to redraw­ing the lines for the exist­ing nine and adding in the new Tenth CD.

Now, it’s prob­a­ble that WA-01 may go on the East­side — it’s a log­i­cal place for it to go — but even if it does, it may include only part of the greater Eastside.

(To be clear, by greater East­side, I mean the cities of Mer­cer Island, Kirk­land, Red­mond, Belle­vue, Clyde Hill, Med­i­na, Yarrow Point, Hunts Point, New­cas­tle, Sam­mamish, and points east of those cities, includ­ing Issaquah and the Sno­qualmie Val­ley, and maybe part of the Ren­ton Highlands).

The list of Democ­rats seek­ing to suc­ceed Inslee was already long, and with Dar­cy’s can­di­da­cy, it’s now got­ten longer. The field includes sev­er­al cur­rent or for­mer state leg­is­la­tors (Roger Good­man, Marko Liias, Steve Hobbs, and Lau­ra Rud­er­man) as well as a few new­com­ers (Andrew Hugh­es, Dar­shan Rau­ni­yar). In addi­tion, Suzan Del­Bene, who chal­lenged Reichert in the 8th last cycle, is con­tem­plat­ing run­ning, but she has not announced a cam­paign yet.

Suzan, like Dar­cy, lives in what is now WA-08, not WA-01.

Late­ly, I’ve tak­en to describ­ing the 2012 U.S. House races in Wash­ing­ton State as the con­gres­sion­al sweep­stakes, because so many Democ­rats are launch­ing cam­paigns, despite not know­ing where our ten dis­tricts will be, or what the elec­toral land­scape is going to look like even in a few weeks. All of the can­di­dates seem to have the same thought… This is my year to run.

The grow­ing field of can­di­dates has left many Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists on the East­side (myself includ­ed) feel­ing overwhelmed.

Seat­tleites may be used to such an embar­rass­ment of rich­es; but his­tor­i­cal­ly, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has had trou­ble find­ing cred­i­ble stan­dard-bear­ers to run in sub­ur­ban dis­tricts, whether for Leg­is­la­ture, Con­gress, or local office.

But next year, Democ­rats are going to have the oppo­site problem.

As many read­ers are aware, I was involved in Dar­cy Burn­er’s first two cam­paigns for Con­gress (in 2006 and 2008). But I will not be involved in this one.

I made a com­mit­ment and a promise to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic precinct com­mit­tee offi­cers (PCOs) of King Coun­ty last year when I sought the office of Sec­ond Vice Chair. They unan­i­mous­ly and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly elect­ed me to serve, and my loy­al­ty is to them, first and fore­most. As a par­ty leader, I feel it is my duty and my oblig­a­tion to remain com­plete­ly neu­tral in con­tests where mul­ti­ple Democ­rats are run­ning… at least until the time comes to vote for a nominee.

I hope and expect that the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, under the lead­er­ship of our Chair, Dwight Pelz, will come up with a nom­i­nat­ing process that allows us to select nom­i­nees pri­or to the August win­now­ing elec­tion in eight months. Estab­lish­ing a nom­i­nat­ing process is the only fair and sen­si­ble way to fig­ure out who our stan­dard-bear­ers will be.

So, I have per­son­al­ly cho­sen not to take sides in the con­gres­sion­al sweepstakes.

Obvi­ous­ly, NPI will not be get­ting involved, either. NPI is a strat­e­gy cen­ter, not a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee. Although we do work on bal­lot mea­sures, we do not endorse can­di­dates or engage in elec­tion­eer­ing for or against candidates.

We do cov­er elec­toral pol­i­tics reg­u­lar­ly here on The Advo­cate (as exem­pli­fied by this post) and we do talk to can­di­dates about their cam­paigns — but that’s it.

I’d per­son­al­ly like to wish all the can­di­dates who are run­ning — Lau­ra, Dar­cy, Steve, Roger, Marko, Andrew, Dar­shan — good luck with their cam­paigns in the next few months, and invite all of them to keep us apprised of how their can­di­da­cies are pro­gress­ing. If noth­ing else, the 2012 con­gres­sion­al sweep­stakes and the nom­i­nat­ing deci­sion that results from them will be excit­ing to watch.