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Dwight Pelz Announces Candidacy for State Party Chair
Dear Washington State Democrat Activist,
Paul Berendt will step down as Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party. I am writing you to let you know that I will be running to serve as State Party Chair.
I bring to this position thirty years of progressive work in Washington - fifteen years as a community organizer, and fifteen years as an elected official. I believe I can offer the experience and the leadership to move the party forward in the years ahead.
Our next party chair must have the skills and the vision to build on the excellent progress the Washington State Democratic Party has made in the last decade. We need to maintain our high level of support for Democratic candidates. We need to invest in our grass roots capacity. We must maintain and build strong, local Democratic Party operations.
These are critical years for the Democratic Party in Washington. We will be a targeted state as Republicans attempt to defeat Sen. Maria Cantwell in 2006. Washington will be a critical state in 2008. The Republicans and perhaps Dino Rossi are poised to wage a vicious campaign against our Governor Christine Gregoire. In the Presidential race the nation will watch to see whether we can hold Washington as a Democratic State against whatever right wing candidate the Republicans put forth.
Perhaps as importantly, in the years ahead Washington Democrats must wage an ongoing struggle for the hearts and minds of our citizens. As the right wing in American gains strength in the neighborhoods of our cities and in the pew of our churches, it is vital that Washington stand out as a progressive beacon. We have an almost unique ability to turn back the property rights activists who would repeal our zoning laws, to move forward the right of all our citizens to marry and raise children, and to preserve a woman's right to choose regardless of the actions of a future Bush Court. We can build on our successes this year in Washington when we turned back the initiatives to repeal the gas tax and to cripple our tort system.
In the weeks to come I hope you can learn more about my qualifications for this job.
I began my work in Washington in 1975, working on Initiative 314 to fund public education through a corporate income tax. The next year I was the organizer for I-325, for nuclear power plant safety.
In 1977 my friend Rod Regan and I organized the initiative to repeal the sales tax on food in Washington. We were opposed by the newspapers, Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, and corporate Washington, but we ran a grass-roots campaign (there were no paid signature gatherers in those days) and we won. This was the last significant tax reform in Washington – the state that puts a bigger tax burden on the poor than any other state in the nation.
In 1978 I began ten years as a professional community organizer, trained in the "Saul Alinksy" school of community organizing. I founded the Light Brigade, a grassroots citizens group opposed to the WPPSS Nuclear Plants. As the WPPSS program was eventually dismantled we changed our focus and name. We became Washington Fair Share, a statewide citizens groups which today is known as Citizen Action. We had offices in Spokane, Yakima, Tacoma, and Seattle.
In l989 I worked as a union organizer for IFPTE Local 17 and Laborers Local 1239. In 1990 I was elected to the State Senate, where I represented South Seattle's 37th District for six years. As a senator, I passed legislation to increase funding for our public schools, blocked the pro-gambling legislation to allow mini-casinos, passed a bill to ban guns on school grounds, and fell one vote short of a bill to ban possession of handguns by those under the age of 21.
In 1997, I was appointed to take Ron Sims' seat on the King County Council, where I emerged as a regional leader on transit and transportation matters. When Tim Eyman's Initiative 695 resulted in METRO Transit losing critical funding, I led the effort in Olympia to restore the funding and keep METRO whole. As a member of the Sound Transit Board I have pressed for light rail, and insisted regionally that "we cannot build our way out of gridlock".
I have always been willing to do the hard work to get the job done. When I first saw Howard Dean I was so excited to see a candidate for President who would tell the truth about Bush and what he was doing to our nation and the world. I volunteered to draw up the statewide Dean field plan, and co-chaired the field committee, which sought to turn the Dean e-mail list into a team of Dean precinct workers. In order to demonstrate the plan I chaired the 37th District effort. I made over 1000 phone calls, recruited 100 Dean precinct captains, led a half dozen training sessions, and Dean carried the 37th.
As you may know I have just concluded a campaign for the Seattle City Council. I ran as the progressive candidate in the race, backed by the Democrats (King County Democrats, 34,36, 37, 43, and 46th Districts) the environmental community (Sierra Club, Washington Conservation Voters, and Cascade Bicycle Club) and by labor (King County Labor Council, Boeing Machinists, SEIU, Firefighters, UFCW, IFPTE 17, ATU, and several building trades unions). I was the highest ranked candidate by SEAMEC, Seattle' s gay civic group.
This is the energy, the leadership, the organizing skill, and the progressive track record I will bring to the State Party.
Sincerely,
Dwight Pelz
Posted on: 12/18/2005 9:47:18 AM
by robdolin@wuxx.com
URL for more info: http://www.dwightpelz.com/
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News leading-up to the 2004 Elections can be found in our old Blog
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