Washington Business Spring 2015 | Page 19

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