As usual Rachel Maddow digs into Inslee’s history and motivations creating an accurate portrait of Jay Inslee. Great questions, exceptionally articulate answers, a great interview.
Rachel mentions this Rolling Stone piece on Jay Inslee:
By ANDY KROLL
On paper, Inslee’s résumé should make progressive voters swoon. As a congressman, he voted against the Iraq War, the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the bank bailout after the 2008 financial crash. As governor, he’s signed into law the first state net-neutrality bill, declared a moratorium on the death penalty, proposed a public option for health care and unveiled a plan to pardon thousands of low-level drug offenders. But he enters the race with a modest war chest, little name recognition (one recent survey found that 24 percent of his own state’s voters either didn’t know enough about him or didn’t have an opinion) and a paltry online presence (his Twitter account has 27,000 followers; Sen. Kamala Harris’ has 2.4 million).
“He gets really angry about situations where those without privilege are run over by those” that have it, says Brian Bonlender, Inslee’s former chief of staff. “It’s part of who he is and how he thinks.” In 1992, Inslee ran for an open seat in Washington’s fourth congressional district and won on a platform that included reducing carbon emissions — an unheard-of move at the time.
His first stint in Congress lasted just one term. He cast a critical yes vote in 1994 to pass the assault-weapons ban — a vote he says cost him his seat. In his Republican-leaning district, the debate over the ban had reached the point where protesters picketed his office and flooded his staffers with angry calls about how the ban would lead to a national gun registry or a new-world order run by the United Nations. “It was the right vote then; it’s the right vote now,” he says today. “I knew it was going to be lights out, but I vote on conviction, so I did.”
Yesterday the Washington Post reported that the Inslee Campaign has passed the one million dollar mark in fundraising. www.washingtonpost.com/…
To contribute to Inslee’s campaign:
secure.actblue.com/…