On the ground with Darcy Burner

One of us: Darcy Burner at Netroots Nation I first met Darcy Burner in October of 2006, a few weeks before election day during her first run for Congress. As I explained a few months ago, I was nearing the end of a journey during which I had met a couple dozen candidates for Congress over the course of the previous several weeks, and it would have been easy to just count down the days, go through the motions, and just get everything over with. But Darcy was different: She was not only a technologically savvy progressive who fit right in with the burgeoning netroots movement, but a genuine and sincere person outside of her candidacy. Getting to know her was one of the highlights of the entire experience.

Running against entrenched Republican incumbents with a shot of local popularity isn't the easiest thing, and after Darcy's narrow loss in the race against Dave Reichert, I promised myself that I would come up to the Seattle area for any subsequent runs she made, and did exactly that in the fall of 2008. But this year, things are dramatically different: I just concluded a summertime visit last week.

Redistricting has completely altered the dynamics of the race for the new First District: Instead of being forced to run against a relatively popular incumbent, the district is now an open seat, which has brought out a horde of other Democrats looking for a shot at Congress. While in previous races, Darcy had a relatively simple time advancing through the primary to the November general election, she now faces very well-funded opposition in her efforts to take on Republican John Koster, who will almost certainly advance to the general. According to recent polls, Darcy's main competition among Democrats is Suzan DelBene, a former executive at Microsoft, who has already dumped $1 million of her personal wealth into purchasing this seat. The difference between Darcy and Suzan DelBene isn't just the size of their checkbooks, though. This is what DelBene had to say about her ideological leanings in Congress:

I would most likely not be in the Progressive Caucus. I would expect to be in the New Democrats Caucus. I think that's a place that is fit for what I think needs to happen in terms of getting our economy moving and for breaking this idea that Democrats aren't also supportive of business in our economy and I think that's where the New Democrats have made a lot of progress.

With Darcy in her campaign office I happened to arrive Washington right when things were getting very interesting. An independent expenditure campaign supporting a third Democrat, Laura Ruderman, had just released some mean negative mailers against DelBene. While it was known at the time that this independent expenditure was being managed by supporters of Ruderman, subsequent campaign finance reports disclosed that the series of advertisements and mailers was being funded to the tune of six figures by Ruderman's mother, Margaret Rothschild. I was in the studio audience for a candidate forum while this scandal was breaking; DelBene attacked Ruderman over her supporters' spending in the race, which merely opened the door for both Ruderman and Darcy to make mention of DelBene's efforts to buy the race.

So, in a nutshell, this Democratic primary comes down a a multimillionaire putting seven figures into a campaign and then being offended when a Rothschild responds with six figures, all while Darcy works to raise the grassroots money to get her own message out. And it's quite a progressive message. While other candidates were trying to argue whose attempt to buy the election is more moral, Darcy was making public presentations in just about every major population center in the district side-by-side with Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton (ret.) about the importance of ending the war in Afghanistan and spending that money to rebuild infrastructure here in the United States. The next day, she was a guest on The Young Turks, and the transcript speaks for itself:

Burner and Eaton present on Afghanistan

Cenk: Shocking! Republicans succeed. Why? They fight, right? They might be wrong, but they fight. Now, Elizabeth Warren also getting a ton of donations in Massachusetts, I just read a story today, they're like...wow, why? Well, it's because she fought the banks. For example, what would you do with the banks, Darcy?

Darcy: We have a huge number of bankers who have broken the laws and they should go to jail. It's long past time the people who brought down the economy for personal profit paid for it.

That's the Darcy Burner that this community has known and loved for many years. But as Joan McCarter wrote earlier this week, voting has already started and Darcy is going to need all the resources she can get if she is going to have a chance to defeat the big money that is being spent in her race. Now that ballots are dropping for the August 7 primary, we need to pull together to make sure she gets to campaign through November.

Please chip in what you can to make sure that Darcy has the resources she needs to win her primary. Every dollar will help.