Democracy in Action photos-June 9, 2019 Iowa Democratic Party Hall of Fame Celebration Speeches: Gov. Jay Inslee

IDP Hall of Fame Celebration Speeches—Gov. Jay Inslee ... next >

Thank you Iowa Democrats. It looks to me like Iowa is ready for new president. And I'm happy, I'm happy to oblige.

And I've come to share with you the two reasons I believe we're going to make Donald Trump a blip in history. I believe we will do that. And I want to share with you the two reasons.

Number one, we Democrats not only embrace progressive values, but my state, the state of Washington, has demonstrated that if you want to have economic progress, you ought to have economic and social progressive values. Because it's going to drive him nuts when he finds out that he's running against aguy who's a Democrat, who has produced the single best economy in the United States and that's the state of Washington. And that's going to drive him nuts.

Now, I want to share with you why I believe we can demonstrate this, Any educators in the room, are there any educators? Okay, we got a few educators around. Well, I'm I'm a son of a biology teacher and so I think a lot about educators. I think one of the best things we can do have a quality teacher in every classroom. And that's why I'm proud to tell you, I'm a governor who got the biggest pay increases for educators in the United States. And we need to carry that on on a national level.

And I hear, I hear the Republicans saying, jeez, if we pay people living wage, how will the economy function? I'll tell you how it'll function; it will function like the state of Washington. Because I'm proud to say we have the highest minimum wage in the United States and the best GDP growth in the United States. Progressive values work,

I'm proud to say, I guess you could call us radical in Washington State, we believe that women should get paid the same as men for the work they do. And so we've passed a lot of protect gender pay equity so the boss can't hide the fact that he's paying more to the men and the women. This hasn't retarded economic growth; its brought a little bit of fairness in to the workplace.

We know that when we stood up for choice—and I'll tell you this, I've been in public life for 27 years, You can count on me today, yesterday, every day to move forward to pass the reproductive parity act, so not only women have a right a choice, they have a right to health care for their services, exercising that constitutional right. We've done it my state; we need to do it nationally.

We know in our state, diversity is not a weakness, it is a strength. It's why our economy is so good. We bring in people from around the world; we're not afraid of diversity. And that's why I'm proud to say I was the first governor in the United States to stand up against Donald Trump's Muslim ban. And I believe it was the right thing. And now I've beat him 21 times in court.

But the second reason we are going to make him a blip in history is that we understand the existential crisis of climate change. We understand the science, we fundamentally understand that this is our last chance to save this nation from this urgent and imminent cataclysm. We understand that there will not be another chance.

And when I thought about running for this office, I thought about being governor for a while because I've been very successful as indicated; I love the job. But I made a decision and it was a personal decision. I want to make sure that in my final days on Earth, I can look at my three grandkids and look them in the eye and says, "You know what? I did everything humanly possible to save you from climate change."

So I am running for president of the United States. And I can tell you, I can tell you that if I'm given this honor, I will wake up every day, and I'm pledging this to you today—and I'm the candidate who's making this pledge, and the only one so far—I will make defeating climate change the first, paramount and overriding duty of United States, and we're going to get this job done to defeat climate change.

Now we understand there's jobs. Donald Trump is wrong. These wind turbines in Iowa don't cause cancer, they cause jobs, We're going to put 8 million people to work.

Now we got to have, we got to pick the right candidate here. This is a big deal. We got to mobilize the entire United States industry. So I believe this too. The Democratic Party ought to have a full fair debate where we can look at this issue and everybody's called to account to put their plans on the table. This party needs to stand up.

We need to stand up to defeat climate change. We need to save our kids from the threat of asthma. We got to save the farmers from the floods. We got to put 8 million people to work in clean energy. We understand that this is the epicenter, the place where we understand the urgency of climate change. Iowa is on the front line of disaster, and it is on the cutting edge of technology. Let's go build a clean energy economy, Early to bed. Early to rise. Work like hell and organize. [music starts] I hope I'm able to win support. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you.

your support. Thanks a lot.

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