It is not about an issue. It is about “The Issue.”

Congress is a millionaires’ club that neither cares nor knows anything about us.

The seething dissatisfaction of voters in the 2nd District crosses party lines, racial, geographic and class distinctions.

The 2nd District is looking for a representative who can be trusted; with shared values and experience. Greg Walden has routinely posed as that representative, but 20 years of life in D.C. has changed him.

To earn the trust of the voters in Oregon’s 2nd District, one must have a basic set of experiences that define us and this place.

In no particular order: own a pickup truck; can field-dress a deer, can catch a steelhead, can set up camp; have coached Little League; have less than $1,000 in savings; have a nephew or niece, son or daughter in the military; your spouse has worked a dead-end job so your kids would have health insurance; have looked up at the mountains and knew you wouldn’t live anywhere else; have driven 200 miles in the middle of the night because there was a bed available in a drug treatment center; have volunteered in your kids public school; have lived on a dirt road; taken your family to the coast, because you could; attend high school football games; grow vegetables; barbecue; have some college; went to school with Native Americans; attend church irregularly; know that a cord is 128 cubic feet; change your own oil; visit a loved one in a nursing home; catch and saddle your own horse.

It is too late to acquire this particular set of experiences, just as it too late for me to graduate from college at the top of my class.

Each candidate in the May election has a particular strength in policy or advocacy to challenge the incumbent. If all keep their word and support the primary winner; command of these “issues” should be portable.

I am who Greg Walden pretends to be while he enriches himself at the public’s expense. One of us. With five generations buried in the Catholic cemetery in The Dalles, a small business owner and employer. Grown up working on farms, ranches and up on the mountain teaching skiing. As a master stonemason, I have spent the past several years restoring the beautiful work of the Italian masons in the Columbia River Gorge.

Authenticity. Audacity. Passion. Purpose.

My team and I have knocked on thousands of doors and my platform is reinforced at every encounter. The millionaires’ club has no idea about our daily lives, and could care less. We desperately need a champion of the working class.

Everyone feels strongly about the environment, immigration, climate change, health care, wages, affordable housing, public schools, war and peace. The world we leave our grandkids.

Delivering at the polls is an entirely different thing altogether. Who can present as “one of us” while remaining true to the progressive message?

At many of our forums it has been suggested that insanity is the act of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Well, OK. Let’s nominate someone who can win in the general election.

A candidate from the 2nd District who will take the incumbent to task on his own turf, his own message, his own record.

I would welcome the opportunity to stand up to the millionaires’ club and bring representation to the working families of the 2nd District and return sanity to Washington D.C.

It’s time.

— Michael Byrne is a candidate for Oregon Congressional 2nd District and lives in Mt. Hood-Parkdale.