Derek Kilmer as our own Brian Schweitzer, Dave Freudenthal Governors, Legislatures, Montana, Washington, Wyoming

Derek Kilmer is one of the few reasons why Dems up here in Washington can have some sense of victory after coming way too close to losing the Governorship and losing the Governorship and AG's office to Republicans. We won back both houses in the leg, and Derek did his part by beating Lois McMahan:

...he convinced voters in a relatively conservative swing district to vote their economic interests.

On Nov. 2, voters in a rural-suburban district in the south Puget Sound elected Kilmer, 30, to represent them at the Washington state legislature. He beat an honest-to-God right-wing Bible-thumping Republican incumbent - a Church Lady type named Lois McMahan. You may have heard of McMahan before. She got her 15 minutes in the spotlight in 2003, when she stalked off the legislative floor while a Muslim cleric delivered the day's opening prayer ("It's an issue of patriotism," she explained).

How did Kilmer do it? Part of it was sheer hard work, knocking on 15,000 doors over the campaign. Part of it was natural talent. Kilmer's a bright, credentialed young man: Princeton grad, Oxford Ph.D. He knows, and is known, in his district: he grew up in the region, and spent the last several years working at the local economic development board. Kilmer won support from both Chamber of Commerce types and left-leaning organizations like the Progressive Majority PAC and Howard Dean's Democracy for America.

He avoided ideological labels, but he put forward a positive message of progressive change, in the best sense of the term.

That sounds an awful lot like that "positive pragmatism" put forth by the chair of the chair of the Colorado Dems. In Derek's case it was a little easier, McMahan did her absolute best to look like an intolerant crazy. Even in a legislative district that is famous for a racial taunting incident at a high school basketball game, McMahan didn't seem to be the right person for the job.

Emmett O'Connell | November 21, 2004 | Comment on This Post (2 so far) Permalink: Derek Kilmer as our own Brian Schweitzer, Dave Freudenthal Governors, Legislatures, Montana, Washington, Wyoming

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