Blue America Welcomes Back An Old Friend: Darcy Burner

NEVER GIVE UP!



At 11am PT today, Darcy will be over at Digby's Hullabaloo to talk with Digby about fixing Congress and answer questions from readers about her run for Congress. Back in 2006, when Blue America was just a young PAC, she, along with Donna Edwards and Sherrod Brown, seemed like our best hopes for progressive congressional candidates emerging from out of our own ranks, conversant with the way the new technology had merged with progressive politics. Many, in fact, saw Darcy as the first Netroots candidate. She was the brilliant former Microsoft executive who famously declared that she knew she had to step into the arena when she realized that she needed to leave a better world for her young son, Henry.

We endorsed her enthusiastically in both of her heartbreakingly close losses, in 2006 and 2008, and followed with interest her subsequent work in Washington, DC, with the Progressive Caucus Foundation. While there, she worked closely with Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison and learned the inside workings of Congress, built relationships and alliances with other progressives, and deepened her policy knowledge to truly impressive heights. Yet throughout it all, Darcy has closely maintained her connections to the Netroots and her commitment to the progressive movement we've been trying to build from the beginning. She was one of those rare people with the integrity and backbone to be in Washington without being of Washington.

Still, we couldn't be more thrilled that she is back home in the Pacific Northwest and ready to give it another go. We are proud to endorse her for the congressional seat in the new WA-01 district. We need people like Darcy in Congress more than ever, because, as she says:

We can’t fix what’s broken with our country if we don’t fix Congress. Our Congress is full of crooks who trade on insider knowledge, of people who have sold their souls to the very people who have broken our country. Even the good ones, the members who want the right things, too often give up too easily on important fights, or can’t figure out how to fix the deep structural problems that undermine us.

We need people there who are tenacious and who won’t give up when things get hard.

Indeed we do. And Darcy is nothing if not tenacious.

It's not going to be a cakewalk. She will be facing a primary from a self-funding caricature of the one percent who was lured into the race by consultants who have been ripping her off and by DCCC czar Steve Israel, who wants middle-of-the-road order-takers who won't give him a hard time and who have lots of their own cash. And the probable GOP opponent will be very well financed. (Aren't they all?) She's going to need our help. And here's the place to give her some.

Don't forget to surf over to Digby's Hullabaloo at 11 to meet her in person. We need people like Darcy to remind DC insiders-- of both parties-- about stuff like this, stuff they don't want to be reminded about: