T.C. Williams High School Student Peter Eckel quietly confided that when he wrote the email to his congressman’s office, it was originally as a joke. It was a spur of the moment decision when Eckel was working on a government class assignment and couldn’t figure out what committees U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-8) was serving on. He’d titled the email “Come talk to AP Gov class” and, in addition to the assignment requirements, included a brief appeal for career advice. He hadn’t expected a response, and certainly didn’t expect Beyer to show up at T.C. Williams High School on March 10 to give his class and other students a brief explanation of life in Congress and answered their questions.
Beyer spoke to the students briefly about running a campaign, which he encouraged each of them to do at least once in their lives.
“Get your slogan down to a short message, one word if you can,” said Beyer. “’Proven, Principled, and Progressive’ was our message. It’s three words, but it’s memorable.”
He also mentioned that the campaign looked at Alexandria’s voters and ranked them on a scale of 1 – 100, with 100 being more active and involved, particularly more likely to vote for Beyer in the primary, and 1 being unlikely to vote at all. The campaign focused on the voters closer to 100 on their scale and worked down towards 1. Once he’d won the primary, Beyer said he wasn’t particularly concerned about the general election.
“As long as I didn’t do something stupid, like do drugs or drive drunk, I should have been OK,” said Beyer. Because of this, Beyer said he was able to run an election without having to resort to saying anything negative about his opponents.
Beyer asked the students what they believed the most emails he’d received from people in his district were about. Some speculated it might be the Keystone Pipeline, or Iran, but Beyer said most of the emails he gets are from citizens asking that the Grey Wolf be kept on the endangered species list. It’s an issue Beyer is in support of, and one that sparked the controversial statement from U.S. Rep. Don Young from Alaska that, “If I introduced [Grey Wolves] in your district, you wouldn’t have a homeless problem anymore.”
Beyer told the students he had three priorities in office.
- Minimum wage increase,
- Climate change legislation,
- Women’s economic empowerment, meaning equal pay and maternity leave.
Answering student questions concerning Iran, Beyer said he believed that there is no military solution to stopping Iran from gaining access to nuclear weapons. Any military action, Beyer warned, would set the program back by two years at most and only reinforce Iran’s perception that the weapons are vital to their national defense. Beyer put his faith in a framework agreement with Iran, which would limit the amount of uranium Iran has access to and would force the country to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of its facilities. Answering Eckel’s original question, Beyer clarified that he serves on the Natural Resources and the Science, Space, and Technology committees.
Andrew Orzel, Eckel’s government teacher, said he was as surprised as Eckel at Beyer’s response, but also expressed pride at the detail of the questions asked by the students. Orzel said he’s never had a Congressman address one of his classes and was happy that this was a newly elected representative to give the class a fresh perspective of life on Capitol Hill.