U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has been a tireless advocate on several fronts, including the fight for LGBT rights. She spent a few moments with Windy City Times after meeting several top LGBT leaders at the law firm of McGuire Woods Jan. 18.
Windy City Times: What brings you to Chicago?
Maria Cantwell: I'm here meeting with a variety of people to talk about some of the issues and challenges that the country faces the next four years. I also want to talk about my main priorities, which involve education and job training issues.
WCT: What do you think about the passage of the gay-rights bill in Illinois?
MC: It's absolutely great! Now, we definitely need to get a national hate-crimes bill and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed; I've worked hard on both of those bills and we need to get those through the House and Senate and have the President sign them. But the Illinois legislature should be congratulated for making sure that this type of discrimination is prohibited by statute. My hat's off to Illinois for playing a leadership role.
WCT: How realistic do you think the chances are of [ the hate-crimes bill and ENDA ] passing?
MC: Well, we've passed a hate-crimes bill a couple of times out of the Senate. With ENDA, I think we've passed it out of the Senate. However, we have House members who keep killing it. We want to say to those few who want to hold up the bill that they should let the other House members vote on the issue, because I believe that it would pass.
WCT: On the flip side, what are the chances of the Federal Marriage Amendment passing?
MC: There are so many critical problems that we need to face today and I feel that the Constitution is not something that should be [ tampered ] with lightly. The Amendment is not something that I would support. I also feel that there are some Republicans who would prefer to not discuss the issue and who feel that it's not something worth opening the Constitution over.
WCT: I was reading a biographical sketch about you that said that you dropped out of politics in 1995 ...
MC: I lost my re-election bid in 1994. I was in the House of Representatives in 1992. However, I lost my seat along with four other colleagues; it was a pretty tumultuous year. Then, I spent five years working in the software industry and decided in 2000 to come back into politics.
WCT: You recently went to the Middle East with a delegation. What was that like?
MC: It's been over a year now, actually. It's very important for us to appreciate the men and women who are over there, and we have a very large deployment of people from Washington State there—both on active duty and in the reserves. When you see things first-hand, you get a sense of things. You get to meet the leaders of tomorrow. In Iraq, you see intelligent people and the resources and you feel that they can make it. Then you go to Afghanistan and see a very different situation, including few economic resources and a drug problem.
What I think is that we need more communication. We live in this digital age where we can get reality TV. Well, how about [ seeing ] the reality of what's happening on a day-to-day basis over there by getting broadcast access? There's no reason why I couldn't watch Al-Jazeera every day.
I also want to make sure that we tackle the terrorism problem by making an impact on global poverty. There's a bipartisan group in Washington called the Seattle Initiative that's made up of political and business leaders. They conducted a study about the best thing to do about terrorism—and the best long-term solution was to deal with global poverty in order to build stronger countries.
WCT: When you ask most people about the state of Washington, it seems that they only know that it has rain, Starbucks, and Mount St. Helens. Here's your chance to work for the state's department of tourism and tell what else it has to offer.
MC: I can't believe no one knows that we're the home of Jimi Hendrix! One of our great patrons, Paul Allen, had a great love for Jimi Hendrix and his music. He created what is called the Experience Music Project and it's located in downtown Seattle. It's a Frank Gehry creation so it has very interesting architecture.
Also, we also have a unique aviation partnership. Boeing, which still is a major employer in our state, moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago a few years ago. I think that there's an interesting relationship between our two regions now.