Please join me in voting for Democrats Patty Murray and Jay Inslee. We all deserve an effective, hard-working Congress that continually moves our economy and country forward. These last 20 months have been a struggle jumping roadblocks that Republicans erected. Even so, under President Barack Obama’s leadership, huge forward progress has been achieved. Without his aggressive actions and approaches even more jobs would have been lost and our unemployment rate would have been much higher. Murray and Inslee will continually push and shove to keep this forward movement going as they help create more jobs. What would our Puget Sound area economy be like without the about 50,000 Boeing jobs that Murray helped save? With a stronger economy fewer people, especially children, will be in poverty. Our public education system will be more effective. Murray and Inslee will work on improving our health care system and our environment.

On the other hand, if many Tea Party candidates get into the Senate or House, the combined atmosphere of Congress will undergo a very negative transformation. I am sure many Tea Partiers are fine people. However, I have observed their groups being belligerent to people below and even above them in the social hierarchy, blaming them for problems the country is facing. I hear no positive plans from them to fix problems. I see hate on their signs and hear hateful messages from them. Hate and prejudice certainly do not move our country forward. They want to take back their country. How far back do they want it to sink? When we vote, we do have power in our choices. We are in recovery mode. To continue our forward progress, shift into [D] not [R].

Helen Hoover

Kingston