NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, February 25th, 2015

U.S. Representative Derek Kilmer to speak at NPI’s 2015 Spring Fundraising Gala

Tonight, we are very pleased and excit­ed to announce that U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Kilmer will be the open­ing speak­er at our sev­enth Spring Fundrais­ing Gala, which will take place April 10th at the Mer­cer Island Com­mu­ni­ty & Event Center.

U.S. Representative Derek KilmerFirst elect­ed to the U.S. House in 2012, Con­gress­man Kilmer rep­re­sents Wash­ing­ton’s 6th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, which includes the Olympic Penin­su­la and most of the Kit­sap Penin­su­la. It is a beau­ti­ful dis­trict, home to rugged moun­tains and majes­tic beach­es, many of which are pro­tect­ed as part of our nation’s sixth most-vis­it­ed nation­al park (as of 2014).

Pri­or to his elec­tion to Con­gress, Kilmer rep­re­sent­ed the 26th Dis­trict (south Kit­sap and north Pierce coun­ties) in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, most recent­ly as a state senator.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kilmer has already dis­tin­guished him­self in Con­gress by work­ing on leg­is­la­tion to mit­i­gate the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of mon­ey in politics.

As his office explained in a news release pub­lished back in January:

From his first days in Con­gress Kilmer has been a strong pro­po­nent for cam­paign finance reform. The Close the Flood­gates Act was orig­i­nal­ly intro­duced by Kilmer in December.

Kilmer is a spon­sor of the DISCLOSE Act to bring trans­paren­cy to the elec­tion process by uncov­er­ing cam­paign-relat­ed spend­ing by out­side groups and cor­po­ra­tions and an amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion to over­turn Supreme Court deci­sions on cam­paign finance and clar­i­fy the role Con­gress plays in set­ting lim­its on cam­paign financing.

He’s also push­ing for Con­gress to take up and pass the Gov­ern­ment by the Peo­ple Act to mag­ni­fy the impact of small-dol­lar contributions.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kilmer has also been a depend­able advo­cate for Native Amer­i­can tribes. Fol­low­ing his arrival in our nation’s cap­i­tal, he intro­duced the Hous­ing Native Heroes Act (to help home­less Native Amer­i­can vet­er­ans) and the Adop­tion Tax Cred­it Trib­al Par­i­ty Act (to allow fam­i­lies who adopt Native Amer­i­can chil­dren with spe­cial needs to receive a tax cred­it that oth­er fam­i­lies are already eli­gi­ble for).

Fol­low­ing his reelec­tion to Con­gress, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kilmer was named to the House­’s pow­er­ful Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, which his pre­de­ces­sor Norm Dicks (often jok­ing­ly referred to as Wash­ing­ton’s third sen­a­tor) served on for years.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kilmer is a fun­ny and engag­ing speak­er, and we’re delight­ed to have him as part of our speak­ing pro­gram this year. We hope you can join us on April 10th. If you haven’t yet bought your tick­et to our 2015 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala yet, we urge you to do so now using one of the but­tons below.

A house­hold tick­et admits all the mem­bers of an imme­di­ate fam­i­ly and is a good val­ue if you plan to attend with your spouse or chil­dren. (The gala is a fam­i­ly-friend­ly event, and young peo­ple of all ages are welcome!).

These are our tick­et rates:

  • Indi­vid­ual ($70, admits one person)
  • House­hold ($100, admits an entire family)
  • Liv­ing Light­ly ($25, for stu­dents and activists on lim­it­ed incomes)

Buy a ticket to the gala

$100

$70

$25

 

 

Click above to buy a tick­et using a cred­it card.

Here’s what else you can expect at our 2015 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala:

  • A full din­ner buf­fet with veg­e­tar­i­an and veg­an choices
  • Beer and wine selec­tions from our cash bar
  • Oppor­tu­ni­ties to min­gle with fel­low activists and elect­ed leaders
  • A chance to win a scrump­tious dessert for your table at our sec­ond annu­al Dessert Dash, orga­nized by our Host Committee
  • A fam­i­ly-friend­ly atmosphere

If you’d like to RSVP for the gala on Face­book, you can do so here.

Stu­dents who want to vol­un­teer to help put on the event can get in the door free. If you’re inter­est­ed in vol­un­teer­ing, please get in touch with us.

In the weeks to come, we’ll be shar­ing more details about our 2015 gala, includ­ing the names of our oth­er speak­ers. We hope you’ll help us make our biggest event of the year a suc­cess by buy­ing your tick­et and com­mit­ting to attend.

See you on April 10th!

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One Ping

  1. […] Shel­ley is also a long­time sup­port­er of NPI; she par­tic­i­pat­ed in NPI’s very first Spring Fundrais­ing Gala in May of 2008. We’re delight­ed to have her as our Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies this year. She’ll be shar­ing a stage with U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Kilmer, who we announced as our open­ing speak­er last month. […]

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