Hans Zeiger

May 6, 2010 – Zeiger Elementary School, Puyallup

 

 

Thank you Bruce Dammeier. Thak you for your example of statesmanship and your service to the 25^th District. There could be no better mentor and future seatmate than Rep. Bruce Dammeier.

 

I should point out some Zeigers who are here: my aunt Mary and uncle Ernie, my uncle Karl, my aunt Sally Zeiger Hanson, my aunt Kay and uncle Jerry Buccola and cousins Jenny and Molly Buccola, my brother Ross and sister Lisa, my parents Kim and Walt—they’re the ones to blame—my grandma Virginia Nisker and Dave Christianson, my uncle Bill Zeiger, and the man who says he had to pay a lot to get this school named after him, my grandpa Ed Zeiger.   

 

When they dedicated this building 14 years ago, somebody said that there were so many Zeigers in Puyallup that they had to start a whole new school just to accommodate them.

 

You know, Zeiger means “Pointer,” like the pointer on a compass. So the mascot of this school is the Explorer, the Zeiger Explorers. But I understand there’s an older meaning of the name in Germany that has to do with one who dwells near a signboard, in other words a homeless person who sits by a sign outside of an inn begging for food. I once thought of living up to my name, but there are lower depths to which a human being may fall, and so, you see, I have turned to politics. I ask for your forbearance.

 

For 56 years, starting in 1932, this was a Democrat district. In 1932, State Senator Nifty Garrett celebrated his Democrat victory in the 25^th District by calling his friends down to Olympia and riding up the steps of the state capitol on a donkey. Well, when we win this year, I will ride an elephant up the steps of the state capitol. You’re all invited to come down to celebrate. The trouble with that is that elephants make messes, and nobody will know how to deal with that in Olympia.

 

If this was once a Democrat district, conventional wisdom says that it is a swing district today. But this year, the voters are going to demonstrate that the 25^th District is a Republican district. 

 

All of us are aware of the real challenges to the future of our families, our schools, our businesses, and our community. A new generation of Americans is discovering that economic prosperity doesn’t last forever. Our generation must be tested on the question that has faced every generation of Americans since our founding. It is the question of self-government—whether you and I can govern ourselves without the rule of a tyrant or a bureaucrat, whether we can take responsibility for our families and jobs, whether we can make something of the opportunities that God has given to us.

 

Too often, government has assumed that you and I aren’t capable of much on our own. More and more, individual initiative, voluntary cooperation, free enterprise, and community spirit have given way to a belief that bureaucracies can solve our deepest needs. And today, despite its long and dismal record of ineptitude, government promises grander visions than ever before.

 

At the same time, in this economy, our resources have run low. And so the task before us is the business of setting priorities.

 

In the next few minutes I want to talk about the priorities that I’ll choose if I’m elected to serve this district in Olympia. My sense of what is important is so powerfully informed by the lessons that many of you have taught me over the years, lessons that echo through the generations.

 

In the century after our nation’s founding, the first pioneers came to the Northwest to seek opportunity in places like Puyallup. Puyallup means “The Generous People,” and I like to think that we live up to our name. Of course, I don’t think that Ezra Meeker was thinking about our generosity with our tax dollars when he named the place.

 

When I’ve spoken to groups these past few months, I’ve talked about the generous men and women in the history of this community who have made it an exceptional place. I’ve talked about the Populist governor John Rogers, the berry entrepreneur and Progressive state senator William Paulhamus, the budget cutting public intellectual Warner Karshner, the education statesman Buster Brouillet.

 

I’ve also talked about our heroes in war—about an overweight town bully named Albert Tresch who earned a Silver Star for his bravery at the fall of Coreggidor and survived the Bataan Death March. Lt. Eddie Myers, the Viking quarterback and class president who was like a father to his men as they liberated Europe, who died in a barn in the middle of the night in a little place on the western front called Welshbillig.

 

These past couple years I got to know Bob Mizukami, who passed away last week. Bob and his brother Bill served in the all-Japanese American 442^nd Infantry Regiment, which saw some of the most difficult service in the European theatre. Bill was killed. Bob came home to be the first mayor of Fife. The week before Bob died, I called him to talk about our campaign. He said that he was proud of what we are doing.

 

Others I knew as heroes growing up. I should mention a few who are here tonight. My second grade teacher Mary Wiley Langdon is here. She was a wonderful teacher. Bob Tate was here earlier. Bob is the father of Randy Tate, who was a young guy when he decided to take on a powerful Democrat in 1988, worked hard, and won. One who couldn’t make it tonight is Cameron Lefler, who grew up in Boy Scout troop 174, where he was mentored by my grandpa and others. He served in the Marine Corps, and then he became a King County Sheriff’s Deputy. After September 11, he reenlisted in the Marine Corps and served two tours in Iraq as an infantry squad leader. He earned a purple heart during a firefight in Fallujah. Last year, back with the Sheriff’s Department, he rescued a drowning man from the Green River and carried him half a mile to safety.

 

These past few months I have fallen more deeply in love with this place called Puyallup than ever before. I have met people who sat in my great grandpa’s science class at Aylen or in my great grandma’s kindergarten class at Meeker, or who taught with grandpa Ed at Wildwood, who watched my dad run the ball at Sparks Stadium years ago, or who volunteered in PTA with my mom. And then I sat on Conrad Thiede’s front porch in Northwest Puyallup for an hour and a half as he explained to me sixty years of history in the neighborhood where I grew up. Today I know better than ever why my grandpa Ed always says that it’s the people who make a community. And every person matters.

 

Everyday I go out door to door, I meet people from every walk of life and every point of view who wake up every day and live their lives as best they can. I hear stories about the daily struggles of good men and women. I talked to a woman in Edgewood whose family business can’t make it in this state’s business climate, and she’s thinking of starting over in Idaho. She’s not the only one. Last week I got a call from a business owner in downtown Puyallup who’s about had it with our state’s bureaucracy and wonders whether he can make his next house payment. His family farmed in the Valley for generations, but he too mentioned Idaho.   

 

I’m fascinated by these people as they go about their lives, their “course of human events.” They carry within them this great drive to live with purpose. They struggle each day to provide for their families, to serve their neighbors, to make some little mark on this world.

 

These are the generous people.

 

And these are the kinds of people in whom our state’s founders placed all of their confidence when they wrote the first Article of our State Constitution. They wrote, “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights.” 

 

Isn’t that beautiful?

 

And isn’t it a shame that our lawmakers in Olympia have forgotten that?

 

They voted to overturn Initiative 960, which said that two thirds is required to pass a tax increase. So they raised our taxes by $800 million and passed a budget that is silly. But they did not and never will repeal Article I of our state Constitution. Because government still derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that means that the people of the 25^th District will have a choice in this year’s election.

 

I believe that government should live within its means, just as you and I have to live within ours.

 

I believe that we can set priorities in state government in order to fund our most important public needs: public safety, K-12 education, and care for the most vulnerable. I am convinced that we can do that without raising taxes. And I believe that we can do it without sacrificing other public priorities.

 

I believe that we can fully fund K-12 education while introducing some badly needed reforms to make our schools more competitive. I believe that we can protect our environment through public and private conservation without further stifling our economy under burdensome regulations. I believe that we can secure affordable health care for more people without a centralized federal model, but with reforms at the state level like rolling back mandates and limiting costly lawsuits. These are a few of the things that I’ll advocate in Olympia.

 

I’ll take the work seriously, but I’m counting on you to never let me take it too seriously. Psalm 2 says that God looks down from heaven at the rulers of the earth and laughs. I can’t imagine anything funnier than Olympia, Washington when the legislature is in session.

 

And we should never lose our awareness that the really serious stuff is what happens in families, small businesses, churches, community organizations. Those institutions form the substance of liberty. And I happen to believe that those institutions are a heck of a lot better at caring for people than any bureaucracy ever was.

 

Liberty and generosity go hand in hand. On one hand, we must give of our fortunes, and sometimes of our lives, to have that precious thing called liberty. On the other hand, we must be free to love and to give—to serve our families and our communities, as it is only possible to do when you are not forced to do so by the tax collector.

 

Liberty runs in our blood around here. One summer day, ninety-five years ago, the headline on the Puyallup Valley Tribune announced that a special train was coming. Word spread around town. And that afternoon, everyone in Puyallup dropped what they were doing. The schools were out, and the shops closed early, and the people made their way downtown to see a train—a train carrying the Liberty Bell. Why did that bell mean so much to those people? What about it drew them out along the railway to see it and join their neighbors in celebrating it?

 

Well, the Liberty Bell stood for an idea. It’s an idea that each generation must affirm, the idea contained in the Declaration of Independence and echoed in our state constitution, that all human beings are created equal and that we must give our consent to be ruled. It’s a message that needs to be spread, just like word spread around town that day 95 years ago that the Liberty Bell was coming. The Liberty Bell itself tells us that there is a message to spread, in the words of Scripture: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” 

 

This evening, I am thankful to God that the land in which I have chosen to stand for public office is a free one. I pledge to you my best efforts to help keep it that way. And I thank you all for your support.

 

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