DelBene, Celis give 1st District a clear choice for Congress

Oct. 20--WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene is estimated to be the 10th-wealthiest member of Congress, with a net worth of at least $38 million from her stints at Microsoft and other companies as well as her husband's tenure as president of Microsoft's Office division.

Yet the Medina Democrat has devoted much of her freshman term to issues concerning the other 99percent: raising the minimum wage, college affordability and job training for people on food stamps among them.

That populist focus is a central piece of DelBene's re-election strategy against her Republican challenger and fellow former Microsoft employee, Pedro Celis. It also frames the fundraising pitch for a candidate who -- after sinking $4.5 million of her own money into two previous congressional races -- is attempting this time to finance her campaign solely with outside donations.

DelBene won her first term in 2012 with 54 percent of the vote, the narrowest margin among the 10 House members of the state's congressional delegation. Though Celis squeaked through the top-two primary election in August with 16.5percent of the vote, with two other Republicans splitting the field, DelBene may be this year's most vulnerable incumbent.

DelBene, 52, ascribed her gravitation toward issues of equality, economic opportunity and concerns of working-class families to her childhood experience with financial upheaval. Her stepfather, a pilot for Northwest Airlines, lost his job when DelBene was in the fourth grade, plunging the family into years of itinerant living in search of work.

Today, DelBene is the second-wealthiest woman in Congress, behind Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., according to annual rankings by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. DelBene's 2014 financial-disclosure form shows she and her husband own assets, including their Medina home and stock funds, worth between $38million and up to $130million, based on the ranges of values reported to the federal government.

Congress members report their assets in broad ranges rather than exact amounts.

For voters in the 1st Congressional District, DelBene and Celis present clear ideological choices. She praises the Affordable Care Act for extending health coverage to millions of people who were uninsured or uninsurable -- and her husband even worked with the Obama administration in helping to implement the program.

Kurt DelBene volunteered for an unpaid, six-month gig a year ago to lead the group brought in to fix the botched rollout of healthcare.gov, the federal health-insurance website. He had recently left Microsoft, and his wife passed his name on to the White House.

Kurt DelBene is now with the Seattle venture-capital firm Madrona Venture Group.

Celis for his part denounces Obamacare, which requires virtually all Americans to carry coverage, as a federal power grab that should be repealed.

DelBene supports the so-called Buffett Rule to raise income taxes for millionaires. Celis wants to cut taxes and regulations "wherever possible."

DelBene was appalled by the U.S. Supreme Court'sHobby Lobby decision to exempt businesses whose owners have religious objections to contraceptives from having to provide insurance coverage for birth-control pills or devices. Celis celebrated it as a win for religious freedom.

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, DelBene has tried to forge herself as a liberal voice on immigration reform. Last year she helped House Democrats roll out a bill that would allow immigrants living here illegally to eventually seek citizenship and to permit more work visas for high-skilled foreigners.

She followed that up by enlisting 57 of her fellow House Democrats to sign a letter urging President Obama to halt deporting immigrants here without the proper legal documents but who otherwise are law-abiding.

After classified records leaked by Edward Snowden in the summer of 2013 revealed warrantless spying by the National Security Agency (NSA), DelBene repeatedly spoke of the need to "rein in the NSA" and to curb covert collection of phone and email records of innocent Americans turned over by Verizon, Microsoft, Google, Apple and other companies.

In May, DelBene voted against a successful House bill to limit the NSA's dragnet collection of phone records as not stringent enough. Civil-liberties groups also dropped their support for the bill.

DelBene, however, did not express similar outrage to recent reports that Navy criminal investigators were routinely snooping on civilians' computers in Washington state and elsewhere to troll for child-pornography crimes.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, calling the surveillance "extraordinary" and "massive," threw out the Navy-obtained evidence that helped convict an Algona man of distributing child pornography.

DelBene declined to describe her reaction to the ruling, saying it would be inappropriate to comment on a court case.

DelBene also has offered few detailed ideas on how to pay for spending on roads and infrastructure, education, research and other programs she advocates. She said she would do away with subsidies for oil companies and "tax exemptions that are not working for us." She favored letting Bush-era income-tax cuts expire, but that applied only to households earning $450,000 or more.

Asked if entitlement programs should be part of the discussion about reducing the federal deficit and debt, DelBene brought up her support for increasing the current $117,000 cap on income that is taxed for Social Security.

The Social Security Trust Fund -- money that now covers the shortfall between payroll taxes and benefits -- is on track to be wiped out by 2033, according to the trust fund's trustees. But DelBene opposes raising the retirement age or reducing Social Security benefits.

As for Medicare, the biggest long-term burden on the federal budget, DelBene favors controlling health-care costs and protecting benefits, not raising eligibility age or premiums as urged by some deficit-reduction experts.

DelBene, a former Microsoft marketing executive, has raised nearly $2.2 million through Sept. 30 for the current election cycle, or 3 1/2 times as much as Celis' $614,000 total. More than $60,000 of that was Celis' own money. Celis, 54, a native of Mexico who lives in Redmond, is a retired, elite Microsoft software engineer.

DelBene has consistently used the threat of outside spending against her by conservative groups as a fundraising hook. But Celis has received scant financial support from Republican political-action committees, "super PACs" and other groups.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, for instance, which has spent $41.6 million on independent expenditures to elect GOP House candidates around the country, has dropped nothing on the DelBene-Celis face off so far.

By contrast, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) exempted DelBene from having to chip in to help elect fellow House Democrats. Her fellow freshman U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, has forked over $105,000 to the DCCC this year.

DelBene has drawn her heaviest financial support from Microsoft employees and executives. Donors to her current campaign include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates Jr., former Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and his wife, Connie, and General Counsel Brad Smith. Gates' wife, Melinda, has donated previously.

Perhaps the biggest boldface names among Celis' donors are Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman and his wife, Betty.

Kyung Song: 202-383-6108 or ksong@seattletimes.com. Twitter @KyungMSong

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