Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: David DeRuwe
When I was a little kid, I loved to ask questions, I loved puzzles.
I would begin sentence after sentence with "I have a question."
It aggravated my parents to no end as you might imagine.
But I had this curiosity:
I wanted to know things; I wanted to know everything.
And I always knew I wanted to be a CIA officer.
I used to write my diary in code,
I would spy on -
(Laughter)
spy on on my sisters,
and I dreamed of one day being a CIA officer.
As a kid, I had a dear friend named Dusty, who lived just around the corner,
and we used to play together all the time.
And Dusty had a grandmother named Yolanda.
And when we were playing together, Yolanda would come out and would say,
"Dusty, ten cuidado.
Dusty, tienes hambre?
Dusty, te quiero mi hijo."
And I would say,
"What does that mean? What is she saying?"
And I would ask question after question,
trying to understand what it is that she was saying.
Because I understood there was a conversation happening around me,
but there were holes in the conversation I didn't understand
because I didn't know the words.
But as I became closer friends with Dusty and spent more time with Yolanda,
I began to understand more about them and their dynamic.
So even when I didn't understand the words "ten cuidado,"
I knew Yolanda's face, I knew what that meant.
I knew we were probably doing something we shouldn't be doing.
(Laughter)
But what it taught me
was that accompanying all of the questions I was asking,
you had to build relationships to be able to understand the context.
And so years later, I did become a CIA officer,
and I was very excited to realize
you could build an entire career just asking questions.
(Laughter)
So it was really the perfect career path for me.
(Laughter)
And as a CIA case officer,
I worked undercover my entire time with the agency,
I worked overseas,
I worked everything
from nuclear proliferation cases to counterterrorism cases.
It was exciting, and it was amazing.
And people always ask me,
"Do you have any good CIA stories?"
and my answer is, "Yes, I do.
But I can't tell you any of them."
(Laughter)
But I do have this one story that was coming to mind,
which is I used to meet this man.
He was from another country,
and he was committing espionage on behalf of the United States government.
He was risking his life to provide us with really valuable information
about a particular topic.
Because when we, the United States, were looking at this landscape,
the relationship between our country and his country,
there were all these holes, there were missing puzzle pieces,
and we needed people to fill them in.
And this man decided it was so important
for the sake of furthering better relationships between our countries
and, frankly, avoiding further challenging relationships,
that if he could help fill in some of those puzzle pieces,
that could be really beneficial.
So I used to meet him,
and when I would conduct a debriefing like this,
he would ask a lot of questions.
So again, the professional question-asker,
I would spend time in advance of one of these meetings
planning a laundry list of questions.
I would talk with our analysts.
I would talk with our reports officers to make sure I understood the landscape,
I knew what holes existed, and I knew what questions to go and ask.
Then I would get ready for my surveillance detection route,
which is when you spend time on the street
making sure that no one is surveilling you,
so that when you go into a meeting, it's a secure location -
you're not putting that person in danger.
And usually the last thing I would do before I left for one of these meetings
would be look up online what had happened
in the most recent episode of the USA Network show "Covert Affairs."
(Laughter)
Because this gentleman,
who was a foreign national
providing information to the United States government,
to a real CIA officer,
loved the show "Covert Affairs," starring Piper Perabo.
(Laughter)
I have no idea how he managed to watch it in his home country,
but that was the commonality on which we built our relationship.
That was the foundation of trust and friendship -
I kid you not -
that predicated my ability to ask this man so many important questions.
For every person like him, there's another story:
Sometimes it was asking about friends and family,
sometimes it was asking about kids,
sometimes it was connecting over a sports team or a particular hobby.
But for him,
the irony that he loved "Covert Affairs" was one that always made me laugh.
And in 2014, my husband and I decided we wanted to move back to Virginia,
where we're both from,
so we could raise kids closer to our families,
get back home.
I was working in the private sector for a couple years,
and then I decided, you know,
what's harder than being a CIA officer working undercover overseas?
I know: running for Congress.
(Laughter)
That seems like a really great idea.
Not only am I going to run for Congress,
but I'm going to do it
in a district that hasn't elected a Democrat in 50 years,
a district that's never elected a woman,
a district where Trump won in 2016,
and a district where there is so much division,
like in so many places across the country.
This strikes me as an excellent idea; I'm definitely going to do this.
(Laughter)
Spoiler alert: I won, so -
(Laughter)
(Applause)
But I ran because when I was looking at what was happening in Washington
and what was happening in my district,
I felt that there were not enough members of Congress doing two things:
One - asking questions, asking a lot of questions.
What is it that our community needs?
What is it that our country needs?
What is this problem that is impacting this community or that community
or our educational system or our climate
or our job opportunities in a particular region?
They weren't asking questions of the experts:
How is it that we can address this?
How is it that we can build good policy?
And for somebody who had spent her prior career
working to answer all of these questions
so that policymakers could make good decisions for me,
I needed to see more questions being asked.
And probably most importantly,
I needed to see members of Congress
who are asking questions to their constituents back home,
working hard to understand what real issues impact their lives.
The second thing I didn't see happening
was I didn't see people building those relationships,
getting out in the community and talking to people.
So across our campaign, we met people everywhere -
in barns, Aikido dojos, basements,
fire houses, living rooms, dining rooms,
everywhere -
so that I could see people's lives
and I could be present in people's communities
and I would be able to ask the questions:
What's going on in your life?
What concerns you most?
What opportunities do you want for your children that might be missing?
What else do you think Congress should be doing and focused on?
And it was an incredible experience traveling across the 7th District.
For those of you
who did not spend as much time driving across all 10 counties as I did,
we stretch from Culpepper Virginia to the suburbs of Richmond Virginia
to Nottoway County.
We are a long, skinny district,
and we have a diverse and vibrant population.
And so after I won,
(Exhales)
I thought, OK, this is it.
Now I'm going to Congress; we get to solve all these problems.
And guess what happens when you arrive in Congress?
It's a crazy place.
(Laughter)
It's a wonderfully vibrant but so crazy place.
Because you have all these people from all these districts
working for all these different things.
And in this particular year, we have 63 new Democratic members.
And you get to Congress, and you realize -
yeah, you can clap for that.
(Applause)
And the new freshman class,
we are from all over the country, different ages, different backgrounds,
different professional experiences, personal experiences, everything.
And everybody's got this urgency to deliver something back home
to help the people back home in their districts.
And when you look at -
oh my goodness, what is the landscape of what's happening in Congress,
and what is the landscape of what it is that we should be doing,
you see there's all these holes.
And you've got Republicans arguing with Democrats,
you've got Republicans arguing with Republicans,
you've got Democrats arguing with Democrats.
How do you come together to build relationships
where you can fill in these holes that exist across our country?
How in this time where we are so divided
can we strengthen the relationships
that will allow us to deliver for our constituents
and work to make this country better and stronger into the future?
And it starts with -
bear with me -
asking questions and building relationships.
Because how is it that we can move forward and create policy
without talking to each other and say,
OK, what are your priorities?
Who can I work with? How can I work with someone?
How is it that we can, in a divided government,
pass a great bill in the House of Representatives,
then get it passed in the Senate, and then signed into law?
These are the questions we have to be asking.
We have to be talking to experts
to make sure that as we're formulating ideas,
they're built on facts and data and evidence,
and they're addressing real problems.
Without evidence and data -
yes.
(Applause)
And they're focused on solving real problems.
We're looking 10 years down the road:
What could come from this?
What could be some unintended consequences or intended consequences,
and how can we address them?
But in a time where we do have so much division,
and we hear people back home say things like,
"It's so nice to be in such a group of like-minded people,"
I would challenge you:
When you're in a group of like-minded people,
you can't solve problems, right?
Because the problems exist because of these holes,
because of these broken pieces in our community that we have to fill in,
the differences in the gaps that we have to start to close.
And so how do you do this in Congress?
Well, I have come up with a plan -
it's very simple.
On the floor of the House,
you have your Democratic side and your Republican side.
And so I like to enter on the Republican side.
People are lingering in the hallways or in the aisles;
nobody's actually sitting - not any critical mass at least.
So you scooch by people:
"Hi, how are you?
Where are you from? What's that district like?
Do you have kids? What's going on?"
When they're from a rural community, my first question is
"How is your broadband internet infrastructure?"
(Laughter)
Because let me tell you:
If there is a bipartisan issue, that should be it.
(Laughter)
And if I can find common ground around broadband internet infrastructure,
that is the first piece in just filling one gap,
that is the first piece in bringing some people together.
And then we pivot:
"Hey, how about prescription drugs?
Hey, how about that road down the street? It looks like it needs some repair."
And it's that way that we start finding common ground.
And it's by building relationships
that we can start to repair
so much of what's been broken down in our communities.
And so in ending today, I would ask all of you a question -
thematically, you should have seen this coming.
(Laughter)
My question to you is this:
When you look at your community
and you look at the landscape in your community,
can you identify holes and missing pieces that might need to get filled in?
And what questions do you need to ask yourself and those around you
to further understand what could address those holes,
what could fill those gaps,
what could make them just a little bit less?
And then what people do you need to meet,
what relationships do you need to strengthen
in order to be able to fill in those gaps,
make those holes just a bit smaller,
and make our communities just a bit more complete?
Thank you very much.
(Applause)