Darcy Burner's Primary Is August 7-- That's Soon

Just over a week ago we spent a little time with Washington state Senator Steve Hobbs, an unabashedly conservative Democrat, who would like to move up to represent Washington's new first congressional district in DC. He's in an August 7th jungle primary race with 4 other Democrats and an unhinged Tea Party Republican, John Koster. The other Democrats are Darshan Rauniyar, who, like Hobbs, isn't showing up on any polling, and the three front-runners, conservative millionaire Suzan DelBene (New Dem and choice of the corrupt DC Establishment), conservative former state Rep. Laura Ruderman and progressive activist (and Blue America endorsee) Darcy Burner. With all those ConservaDems and the Tea Party guy splitting the votes of people who think that way, Darcy Burner has been the top Democrat in every single poll without exception.

The King 5/SurveyUSA poll showed Darcy with a lead of more than five to one over DelBene, the big-spending self-funder who that DC Establishment is backing. FIVE TO ONE! That's how clueless and out of touch with America the DC Establishment is! Darcy, according to their survey, is the only Democrat competitive in head to head match-ups with the far right-wing Republican, John Koster. What the SurveyUSA polling shows-- a confirmation of the internal polling Koster made public in March-- is that Darcy is leading her Democratic opponents with 46% among those who have already decided to vote Democratic. Ruderman and Hobbs tied for second with 17% and DelBene was a distant loser with 13%.

Even after DelBene started spending massive amounts of her husband's cash hoard, daily polling over the last month never showed Darcy dropping from a 2 to 1 lead over her and Darcy has been particularly strong among Democrats and left-leaning independents in the northern counties, new territory for her, DelBene and Ruderman. DelBene dropped several hundred thousand dollars into TV ads and then followed up with 4 mail pieces-- one of which was targeted at Whatcom County where she was desperate to win the Democratic Party's endorsement. Her flash mailer didn't do the trick; Darcy won the endorsement with 73.04% of the vote.


Last week a SuperPAC supporting Laura Ruderman struck back against DelBene with a powerful and destructive mail piece that went to every likely Democratic voter in the district, hitting her on her string of business failures, which is likely to prove very effective since she's basing her entire campaign on what a "successful" and "savvy" businessperson she's been. The Ruderman campaign made sure WA-1 Democrats knew that in "the latest Suzan DelBene mailer, she claims 'she went on as a senior level executive at Microsoft and as an entrepreneur creating jobs at technology startups.' Sounds good, doesn’t it? The problem is that it’s not really accurate. After DelBene left Microsoft, she worked at Drugstore.com. It started out as a success story as it’s stock went from $18 to $70. However, it ended up going down in flames, lost $115 million and the stock plummeted to $8/share. In the end, Walgreens bought what was left of the company. Then, DelBene went to “Nimble Technology” assuming the role of CEO. Again, the company never turned a profit and the remnants of the company were sold to another company. In other words, jobs briefly created were lost as both companies were sold in a firesale. I know what you are thinking. She may be the nominee for the Democrats. Don’t tell people this stuff... Trust me, the Republicans already have it."

Why would Ruderman turn so negative against DelBene? First of all, they're competing for the same conservative-leaning, low-info Democrats. Secondly, DelBene's strategy from day one-- cobbled together in DC-- has been to starve her opponents of resources while she writes her own checks, Romney-style. Her campaign-- backed by ConservaDems like spectacularly unpopular Gov. Christine Gregoire and sleazy New Dem Rick Larsen-- are insisting that Democratic donors and constituency groups "sit it out," either giving no endorsements or endorsing everyone. DelBene and her Establishment allies know that if they can keep the progressive candidate, Darcy, from having the resources to communicate, they can buy the seat-- and win the same way Romney beat Gingrich and Santorum.

When DelBene entered the race, she told KUOW radio that, "Democrats don't compromise enough with Republicans." Think about the depths of a millionaire's out of touch with reality mindset inherent in that attitude-- and what it would mean for a Member of Congress. That leads straight to the Blue Dog/New Dems caucus. In fact, the New Dems have already endorsed her campaign. DelBene publicly told the King County party activists that "Democrats aren't friendly enough to business" and she spoke of using deregulation as a primary means of stimulating the economy at a recent King5 debate.

Please help Blue America elect Darcy Burner to this seat-- by keeping conservative corporate shills John Koster (R) and Suzan DelBene (D) out. Here's where you can contribute to her grassroots campaign. August 7th. That's less than a month away! And voting starts July 20. See that magazine cover up top? Your contribution is likely to help her send copies of that to voters in WA-1. Here's another page from it (you'll have to click on the image to read it):




UPDATE: MoveOn Members Vote To Endorse Darcy!

From her campaign's press release:

Darcy has built a powerful, grassroots campaign spanning the entire new 1st District-- from King County all the way up to Whatcom County. And now, in a crowded field of seven candidates, Darcy emerged as the clear favorite, earning 51% of all the votes cast by MoveOn's 19,000 members in the district-- more than twice as many as her nearest competitor.

When Darcy heard about our endorsement, she said:

"I am honored to receive the endorsement of MoveOn.org and the support of their more than 19,000 members living in the 1st District. This is a year in which millions of people working together will overcome the influence of big money and big business. I look forward to working with MoveOn's members to show how it's done so that we can end the war in Afghanistan, fix our broken Congress, and get our economy back on track for people who work for a living."