washington business
What motivated you then to run for
the U.S. Congress?
The same things that motivated me to run for the state
Legislature. Sid Morrison was the congressman here and
had been here for 12 years and he ran for governor in 1992,
which of course left an opening. And I looked at what was
going on and I thought, ‘Gee, I think I can do this,’ so I
jumped into the race in 1992 and lost a very close race
to Jay Inslee … And between then, in ‘92 and ’94, that’s
when Hillary Care was there and there was a gun issue
that was huge and going on nationwide. So I decided to
run in 1994 and, obviously, I was successful. And the class
of ‘94 was the “Contract with America” class. That was the
first Republican majority in the U.S. House in 40 years, so
it was a pretty significant time. It was quite a change in
Washington, D.C. I didn’t realize it so much then, but as
I look back now, that really was quite a culture change in
Washington, D.C.
You ended up becoming chairman of bo Ѡ)9