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1) November 7th Elections: This year's midterm congressional elections were historic. The House and Senate changed hands for the first time in twelve years and Virginia elected a new Senator, Jim Webb. I was honored to have been given the opportunity to continue serving Northern Virginia in the House. For the first time ever, we will have a woman Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
2) Iraq Town Hall with Congressman Jack Murtha: Last January, over 1,000 people packed the National Rural Cooperative Building and an overflow room down the street in Arlington to hear Congressman Jack Murtha explain his plan to redeploy our troops out of Iraq. The event lasted nearly three hours and was broadcast live on C-SPAN. The first televised town hall focusing on post-invasion Iraq, Northern Virginians expressed their feelings and thoughts on the war to a national audience.
3) Darfur Protest at the Sudanese Embassy: The atrocities in Darfur reached a fever pitch in April 2006. The Sudanese government has been unresponsive to the needs of their people and in fact, has been complicit in much of the violence through the Janjaweed militias. In order to put pressure on the Sudanese government to end the genocide, four of my colleagues and I protested in front of the Sudanese Embassy with activists from the Save Darfur Coalition. We were arrested for our actions, but I believe our efforts played a role in the Sudanese government's decision a few days later to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement, a major step towards the goal of bringing stability to the region and an end to genocide.
4) Re-opening of Woodrow Wilson Bridge: In July, Governors Kaine, Ehrlich, Mayor Williams and members of the regional congressional delegation cut the ribbon on the first span of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge. The project will cost $2.4 billion, over half of which has been secured by our regional congressional delegation. A major North-South thorough-fare, the 40 year-old bridge has trucked $58 billion in GDP since 1993. With a current traffic volume of 195,000 a day, traffic is expected to grow to 295,000 by 2020. When fully completed, the new bridge will be double in size, from six lanes to twelve.
5) George Mason making the NCAA Final Four: Northern Virginians watched with pride last March as the Cinderella George Mason Patriots trooped through the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, beating such storied programs as UNC-Chapel Hill and top-seeded Connecticut. The mighty Patriots eventually fell to the Florida Gators in the semifinals, but not before becoming the darling of sports fans across the country.
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