So his family lost all the money they made from ABM? That would be a hell of a story.
Not owning or running the company does not mean they don't have billions in a family fortune that has metastasized over the decades. In America, super wealthy families tend to get even wealthier as the years roll on.

Of course McDermott's happy to give Hughes more talking points. "Here, have another clumsy lettter to hype your response to, Andrew." It's been a long time since McDermott had an opponent he could pretend was enough of a threat to justify some fundraising. The longer he helps keep Hughes in the picture the more he can use him as a pretext for base-rousing. That child is doing Jim a big favor.

Running unopposed is the atrophy of democracy. Show me a challenger to McDermott, and I will show you an incumbent who cannot even begin to relate to anyone in the public sphere that isn't a lobbyist, donor, or party functionary.

I don't know if Hughes is the answer, but at some point, as much as I'm ideologically aligned with him in many area, McDermott needs to step down and make room for someone else, committee appointments be damned. While have had some great long-serving politicians over the years (and some real scumbags), congressional service was never designed to be a lifelong occupation.

Challengers are awesome, and we need a lot of them to try and fix this mess of a congress.

But I have to say, of the 435 representatives, I'm aware of just a couple that I'm glad are in there. McDermott is one of them.

Dumb move by a sitting Congressman who takes big bucks from lobbyists to accuse an opponent of trying to buy an election.

@6: Oh for pity's sake. Jim will raise $200,000 off this letter to pay for volunteer parties and Andrew will be back to his (pretend) legal career in mid-November.

@ 6, how do you figure? This is a fundraising letter, not a campaign ad.

What's dumb is Hughes using the old "he won't debate me" line, which is simply code for "I have no chance of winning." Incumbents and serious candidates don't waste time on the also-rans because that gives them free publicity. (And if you think McDermott's doing that just by mentioning him here, I'll repeat - it's a fundraising letter, not a campaign ad, press conference, or anything else that would reach a wide audience. And blogs don't constitute a wide audience.)

I predict Jim will break 80 percent this year.

@ 7 What pretend about his legal career? This is a shady move by Jim.

If Hughes were taking on a DLC party-machine hack, I'd have some sympathy. Instead, he's attacking one of Congress's few progressives, a guy who actually reflects his district's values.

Tell you what, Hughes: if your challenge to McDermott doesn't pan out, why not take on Bernie Sanders or John Conyers? They're "old and tired," too, and what legislation have they sponsored and passed recently? Sure, the Congressional Progressive Caucus accounts for less than 80 of 535 members of Congress, but if they were savvy and effective like you, I'm sure they could have gotten a whole bunch of their own bills passed, no sweat. You could represent their constituents much more effectively by being "young and energetic" and more "willing to compromise." You know, like Obama has on tax cuts for the super-rich, Medicare cuts, Social Security cuts, civil liberties, and war.

Pragmatists get stuff done ideologues don't @ 11 The dems have always been a centrist party deal with it

Hughes might not make it out of the primary.

The only reason I'm equivocating on that is that there are two Some Dude Republicans running (one says he prefers "G.O.P. Party"). Even in WA-07 there are enough Republicans to put their candidate ahead of any Democrat other than McDermott ... but two unknown Republicans might split up that non-D vote.

G.O.P. Party, is that like HIV Virus?

As someone with a legal career (real or pretend) and a Congressional election campaign (real or pretend), Hughes should be well aware that the corporations he names are strictly prohibited from contributing to any Congressional candidate's campaign.

@12 (Seattle14): I wish the Democratic Party machine would show more of the kind of "centrism" that gave us Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid. As for the Congressional Progressive Caucus being a bunch of uncompromising ideologues, they (including McDermott) voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 even though it's the antithesis of the Caucus's own HR676 (Expanded and Improved Medicare For All). If that's not pragmatically eating a plateful of shit for the sake of "getting things done," I don't know what is.