To the 6th District,

Thank you. Thank you to everyone who phone banked, donated, wrote postcards, put a sign in their yard, and did a thousand other things to make our victory possible.

Thank you to everyone who voted in our election - regardless of who you voted for. Democracy matters, and only survives so long as we exercise our civic responsibility. My victory depends on those who voted for me, but the job itself does not exist without your collective participation.

When our founders set up our government, they only made one institution - the House of Representatives - fully democratic. You can lose the popular vote but get to be President through the electoral college. You can represent 1/68th of the people represented by a Senator in California and still have just as much power if you happen to be from Wyoming. But the House is representative. It's why I love it, and why there is no place I'd rather serve.

But that puts an obligation on you as well. The People's House belongs to you, and civic participation demands more than just showing up at a poll every 2 years. A representative government, predicated on the consent of the governed does not survive without your regular and consistent participation.

That is especially true in turbulent times when voices seek to elevate the power of the few over the will of the many. But don't lose heart; such is the nature of the government our founders created. I am eternally grateful for our founders' wisdom, but they were still just a bunch of flawed human beings. We should be careful not to over-lionize them, lest we view any current deficiency as a fall from prior grace. They themselves knew this. Consider how Benjamin Franklin described the process by which the Constitution was drafted:

"...when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views."

That sounds a lot like the current Congress, doesn't it? Franklin didn't encourage ratification of the Constitution because it was perfect, but rather because he didn't think they could have done much better in the circumstances. When he said that the result of that process gave the American people "a Republic, if you can keep it", he was keenly aware of the inherent limitations in its creation.

We've kept it now for 244 years. Not because it is perfect, but because the American people have held fast to the idea that it is worth preserving. Your parents and grandparents bequeathed that idea to you. Your job is to preserve it for the next generation.

And in that regard, I am heartened and reassured by the results of the last election. They reminded us that the majority of the American people, and the people of this district are pro-democracy, pro-science, pro-opportunity and pro-equality. They believe in those founding promises and voted their beliefs.

For that, most of all, I thank you.

Just don't quit. Keep engaging. Keep participating in this beautiful experiment. Keep modeling the behavior of the many, not the nihilism of the few. Keep insisting that the rule of law matters. Keep up the constant empathy and tolerance that true equality demands. Keep leading with love.

Sean Casten