Meeting My Congressman: Rick Larsen

I was invited to a Town Hall Meeting with my Congressman, Rick Larsen (D-WA), in Arlington last Saturday. So I packed up the family, my wife Evelyn and two daughters, and we braved the snow and ice to drive to the Arlington Boys and Girls Club. We had front row seats as part of an audience of about 40 people.

Rick Larsen (no relation by the way) has always been the most responsive of my three state representatives as far as answering emails and letters is concerned. (Maria Cantwell could learn a thing or two from Congressman Larsen.) But I was curious to see what he was like in person. Rep. Larsen gave a brief overview of the First 100 Hours program the Democrats have been working on since they were elected into the majority: ethics reform, exposing earmarks, returning “civility” to the House, implementing the rest of the 9/11 Commission recommendations, keeping WMD out of the hands of terrorists, raising the minimum wage, stem cell research, etc. This only took him about 20 minutes and he didn’t seem to posture and over-hype things like so many politicians do (but there weren’t any television cameras so he may not have felt the need). But he did admit that “Iraq is a cloud that hangs over everything we are trying to do.”

Then Rick started taking questions. This was the most interesting part of the meeting. People asked a lot of questions on a lot of topics. There were few weirdoes (“I’m worried about terrorists. Will you ban cell phone use on the highway?”) and a few people were there to pump their pet projects (“Will you support the right of horse owners to ride in National Parks?”), but most of the questions showed an admirable level of intellect, knowledge and concern on the part of those who attended. It was good to share concern over Iraq, the environment, and other topics with others in my community, especially when my opinions seem so “far out” to most of the people I work with and live near. For a conservative district there were a lot of liberal concerns.

The most memorable exchanges were these:

Rick said he did not think the Congress would support Bush’s troop surge.

He said that the Democrats would not try to impeach the President because “he is done in two years” and because he didn’t feel that Democrats had been elected to impeach the President. I did remind him that George Bush deserved impeachment even if he didn’t get it.

Rick felt that our concerns about military action against Iran were not founded. Several of us disagreed with him on this one and I asked why we were raiding Iran’s Consulate in Iraq, but the Congressman felt that no military strikes against Iran would happen. I hope he is right. Larsen also said that “talking to Iran and Syria about Iraq was probably a good idea.” Imagine that, wanting to talk to people instead of bombing them!

He also expressed concern that we were passing the cost of the war onto our children.

When my turn came I asked the following: I appreciate the actions the Democrats are taking so far, but my concern is a more fundamental one. When I talk to my daughters about our government, I find that I have to describe two governments: the representative democracy we are supposed to have and the money dominated government we actually have. I feel that our representatives should only be taking money from us, not from corporations and lobbyists. Would you support some kind of publicly financed campaigns?
Unfortunately Congressman Larsen was unwilling to support publicly financed campaigns. He said that it was up to the voters to judge the honesty of our representatives and to throw the bums out if they aren’t doing a good job. Not a surprising answer really coming from an incumbent congressman with all the fundraising advantages that come with it.

All in all I was encouraged by the experience. I felt like Rick Larsen was actually interested in our opinions even if they did not match exactly with his. And it was good to expose my children to part of the democratic process. In 2003 and 2004 I was disappointed in Larsen’s support of the Iraq War, but that was during a time when the majority of his constituents supported the war. Now that a majority of us in this district have made it clear that we do not support the Occupation of Iraq, it is good to see Rick Larsen shifting to represent us. I hope he can use his new seat on the Arm Forces Committee to bring our military involvement in Iraq to a close.