[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eId0V321I7c[/youtube]

Last week, I went down to Vancouver to cover the campaign kickoff for Republican U.S. congressional candidate Jaime Herrera. Herrera is the GOP-establishment-anointed candidate for the 3rd congressional district, which includes all of Southwestern Washington, up to Olympia. (Incumbent Rep. Brian Baird (D-3, WA) is retiring.)

Herrera, who has raised about $200,000, is running against Olympia financial consultant and Tea Party fave David Castillo in the de facto GOP primary. Democrat Denny Heck, a former Booth Gardner aide and TVW founder—who has raised over a half million dollars, mostly from his own check book—is likely to be the Democratic candidate in November.



Conservative U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA, 5)—the fourth ranking Republican in GOP House leadership (and the highest ranking Republican woman) and Herrera's former boss—introduced Herrera.  U.S. Senator Slade Gorton and Herrera, obviously, also addressed the crowd, composed mostly of GOP electeds. McMorris Rodgers and Gorton stressed Herrera's role as a young (she's 31), smart candidate in an imminent Republican takeover. Herrera herself condemned an increase in government powers and federal spending—from both Democratic and Republican administrations who have spent like "drunken sailors" and "teenagers with credit cards."

Herrera, who also talked up her small-town credentials and her own financial struggles, said her "jobs plan," (which she sarcastically referred to as "radical") involved "leaving businesses and entrepreneurs the freedom to succeed or fail based on the value and the merits of their goods and services."

Her speech highlighted different components of the Obama agenda, particularly the health care bill and the climate bill that passed in the House last summer, pegging them as assaults on personal freedom and "your back pocket." She said, for example, that the climate bill was akin to a 15 percent across-the-board income tax.

Although, editor's note, how the government will manage the impact of those permits, which would help move the U.S. toward meeting international emissions standards and could include a cap and dividend to taxpayers, remains unclear as proposals continue to be debated.

And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee points out—noting Herrera's anti-government-spending rhetoric—that as a state House Rep. in 2009, Herrera voted to spend $341 million in federal stimulus money in Washington state.