Catching up with the challengers: Democrat Darcy Burner brings tech savvy and a 'Responsible Plan' to the 8th District

In 2006, upstart politician Darcy Burner (D-Carnation) came out of nowhere to nearly capture the 8th District Congressional seat from incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Auburn), who defeated her by 7,000 votes and three percentage points. In 2008, she is back for more.

The reasons that caused her to run in 2006 still have not fundamentally changed. She believes the country is still headed in the wrong direction, and that "a tremendous amount of work" must be done to put it on the right track. Burner was encouraged to run again by the positive reaction she received from friends, neighbors, and perfect strangers around the district.

"In the months after the race I was out and about in the district doing normal things," Burner told PolitickerWA in an interview last week, "grocery shopping, taking my son to the park and people would come over to me and say, ‘We believe in you and we want you to do this again. We think you can do it, we think you can win and we're 100% behind you because you've got to fix what is broken.'"

More importantly, though, is the personal aspect.

"I still have a son," Burner noted, "that I want to be able to look in the eyes 30 years from now and tell him I did everything I could have done to fix what was broken."

Specifically, Burner has a vision of what government ought to look like. She believes the priorities of the government should be to treat everyone fairly, reward hard work, stay out of citizens' private lives, keep the promises it makes and leave the next generation a better world than the one that exists today.

"In all of those areas there are things that need to be done," Burner said, and particularly in the military.

Burner, who comes from a family steeped in military history, her husband, father and two brothers are veterans, knows up close the failure of the government to stick up for veterans. Her brother retired last year after 20 years in the Army, and has not been able to obtain educational benefits because of the way the GI Bill has been altered over the years.

"The promises that we make to the men and women who serve in our military about taking care of them when they come back," Burner insisted as she tapped the table for emphasis, "we are not fulfilling, and that is not acceptable."

She also thinks that the government is not providing due diligence to uphold programs like Social Security, and that the government's obligation to provide children with a substantial education has been diverted by No Child Left Behind.

"What we've been doing with No Child Left Behind is undermining a lot of school districts all over the country," Burner noted, "and, in fact, increasing the dropout rate which, last time I checked, having a kid drop out probably makes them far behind."

Burner would look to reform NCLB, as opposed to scrap it entirely. She acknowledges that measuring the things that are working is a positive, but to rely on it so fully is a mistake.

However, the failure that Burner sees as the most drastic is the policy that she has become quite famous for in the last month: Iraq.

"I, like probably every other Democratic candidate in the country, have been getting the same questions over and over again which is, ‘how are we going to get out of Iraq?' It isn't enough for [voters] to say that we are going to end it," Burner said. "They want to know how."

For a long time she expected an answer to come out of Washington, D.C., but it never happened. So she took matters into her own hands.  Last August she began working with retired Major General Paul Eaton, a Washington resident and former Security Transition Commanding General in Iraq, to put together what would be a responsible end to the war.

 "He understands, as do I, that there is this basic problem that the American people have been presented with this false choice," Burner said of Eaton. "You can either stay the current course until we run out of money or soldiers, which ever happens first, or complete chaos, the end of the world as we know it, death and destruction, the collapse of civilization."

She believes that people don't buy that, and they have been clamoring for some other way, especially given the notion that even Gen. Petraeus has admitted there is no military solution in Iraq.

"Voters are smarter than that," she said, "they know there is a responsible way to end this war but they are extremely frustrated that nobody has laid it out."

In addition to the popularity of the Responsible Plan, which now boasts 50 House candidates and 4 Senate candidates as endorsees up from an original 10, for its stated goal of promoting a responsible end to the war in Iraq, there is also the matter of leadership that the plan inherently addresses.

"I think that one of the keys of being an effective legislator is in fact getting other people to move in the same direction so that you can actually pass effective legislation to solve a problem. And this demonstrates, in a fairly clear way, that that is a set of things I am capable of doing and frankly to a much better degree than for example my opponent."

That also plays into one of the themes Burner's campaign has been frequently speaking to, the claim that the incumbent, Dave Reichert, has been an ineffective representative for the 8th District. They cite a congressional ranking that puts him at 401 out of 435, up from 419 last year. Burner further talks about inaction on transportation projects in the district like SR 167, SR 520 and I-405 even though Reichert is on the Transportation Committee, and suggests he has not attempted to take a leadership role on important issues like health care and Iraq.

Burner also strongly believes that the 8th District, home to Microsoft, needs a representative who understands computer technology and the issues that coincide with it like patent reform, net neutrality, and spectrum auctions.

 "You're going to have to have somebody who understands technology be able to do that, and technology I certainly understand. I don't think we have any other former Unix, C/C++ programmers running for congress," joked the former Microsoft employee. "I will be arguably the most tech savvy member of the U.S. House of Reps, and this district deserves that."

Speaking of that tech experience, Burner sees her time at the software giant as important experience for a Congress because of its competitive, results focused atmosphere which Burner believes translates into creating a results-focused Representative that help change the way they do business in Congress.

She also got her start in electoral politics there when she was elected president of the company's 3,000 member women's organization that ensured they treat women equally in areas like leadership and pay equity.

In addition to Iraq, education and technology, Burner knows that the economy is important this time around in the 8th District.

"The truth of the matter is that I am more fiscally conservative than the person I am running against," Burner claimed as she touted her support of "PayGo" rules that require sourcing for all budgetary changes, rules that Reichert opposes. She also wants to work on lowering the deficit in way that doesn't tax the middle class in order to achieve a higher level of confidence in the future of the economy and the notion that "people who work hard can do well."

Now, a bona fide politician with a national following and a near victory under her belt from 2006, Burner has a new perspective on the 2008 race. Through the end of 2007 she had raised nearly $900,000, and has at least $400,000 from the first quarter of 2008 (that ballpark number has been confirmed by PolitickerWA, but exact figures will be released by the campaign soon).

The money and name recognition have allowed Burner to run a much stronger campaign this time around. They have been active in fundraising, increasing grassroots support and working with the public since well into 2007 when they set up a series of locations for would-be constituents to test their Christmas toys for dangerous chemicals, and the campaign expects those components to help Burner overcome the 3 points that kept her from Congress two years ago.

She has an office that overlooks the traffic snarl of I-405, and a staff that includes knowledgeable veterans like campaign manager Derek Humphrey and spokesman Sandeep Kaushik. But perhaps more importantly, Burner has the strong support of local Democrats, and netroots activists from all over the country whose admiration and financial support of Burner have grown since the Responsible plan. She was named one of 21 recipients of the DCCC's Red to Blue program, which has raised $8.2M so far and designed to provide financial assistance to the strongest Democratic candidates across the country.

With all this current good will going for her, and building from her bootstraps, rags-to-riches candidacy of 2006, Burner is putting together about as strong a challenger's candidacy as is possible, which of course puts her in merely tossup with the incumbent. But a tossup means 50-50, and those are odds that every Congressional challenger in the country would envy.