Friends,

Two years ago, I watched Capitol Police with their weapons drawn stave off violent insurrectionists undertaking the most serious attack on our democracy in more than 160 years. Amidst gunshots, tear gas, broken glass, and bloodshed, I wondered if our democracy would survive.

So far, it has. The last two years have replaced the fear and despair I felt that day with cautious hope. Accountability is being visited on those who committed illegal acts of brutal violence in the service of their warped politics. Almost all the election-denying fabulists who sustained the lie that undermined our republic were defeated at the polls this November.

Thanks to your hard work in Connecticut and around the country.

Our essential institutions held and are holding firm, at least in their role as guardians of our democracy. We reconvened the night of January 6th amidst the wreckage to certify the election. Our courts consistently turned away the Giuliani-inspired madness that came before them. Enough Americans stared into the abyss of lie-fueled authoritarianism and chose to step away.

It is ultimately those Americans, all of us in fact, that will determine the fate of our democracy. Here we still have work to do.  Too many of us thrill to the demagoguery that equates opposition with treason, see political debates as an existential threat rather than a constructive process, and think that violence might be justified against other Americans.

We counter that kind of thinking by defeating it at the ballot box. There is nothing particularly glamorous about the volunteering, phone calls, and activism that turns back the Kari Lakes, Doug Mastrianos and Donald Trumps of the world. But it is at the core of defending our republic.

You did a lot of that in 2022 and I could not be more grateful to you. Your hard work in the last six years has been the definition of patriotism.

If we keep at it and work every day to improve the tone of our politics, I am confident that we can keep our republic.

To help improve the tone of our politics, I’d like to point you to a documentary I produced as chairman of the Committee on Economic Disparity. It’s entitled Grit and Grace and tells the story of three very different American families, each navigating challenges with the can-do spirit that is such a marker of American life. This is not 30 minutes on politics or even on policy. It’s fundamentally about empathy, dignity, and commonality.

If we can restore those things into our politics, I think we will prove worthy of our great democracy.

— Jim

Paid for by Himes for Congress

Himes for Congress
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