Inslee, 68, is the first governor to enter the Democratic contest and has the longest political resume of anyone in the race.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Friday became the latest Democrat to launch a 2020 presidential bid, asserting in a video that he is the only candidate who will make combating climate change the nation’s top priority.
“We’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we’re the last who can do something about it,” Inslee says in the video. “We went to the moon, and created technologies that have changed the world. Our country’s next mission must be to rise up to the most urgent challenge of our time — defeating climate change.”
Inslee, 68, is the first governor to enter the Democratic contest and has the longest political resume of anyone in the race.
In 1992, after two terms as a state legislator, he was elected to represent a largely rural, Republican-leaning congressional district in central Washington. In Congress, Inslee attracted national attention by voting for the 1994 assault weapons ban, immediately making him a target for the GOP.
“People are fed up with crime and want something done to protect them and their children from violence,” Inslee told reporters at the time, standing by his vote.
Inslee lost in that year’s Republican wave, but he mounted a comeback in a neighboring district four years later. One of the most potent attack ads run against him had portrayed a fictional call from Bill Clinton, thanking Inslee for being so loyal; in 1998, Inslee ran his own version of that ad, with a Newt Gingrich impersonator thanking the Republican incumbent for helping him impeach the president.
