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.

First 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

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!