Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici is familiar with the University of Oregon. After earning a two-year legal assistant degree from Lane Community College in 1977, she decided to try her hand at law prompted by her volunteer legal aid work.
To achieve that goal, she decided to attend UO and earn a bachelors degree in journalism shortly before earning a degree from the School of Law in 1983. Now, after an unexpected series of events, she is campaigning to keep her position as a U.S. Representative for Oregon’s first congressional district. She is currently in the last of four elections she has been a part of in the past 12 months. Because of the special elections held in January 2012, she has had to campaign in the primaries and general elections for each election.
“There’s not as much national attention on this one, as there was on the special election,” Bonamici said of her current campaign. She first entered the race after Rep. David Wu resigned under controversial circumstances. “A lot of the national attention came after Anthony Weiner resigned in New York and the Democrats lost that seat. There was quite a lot of pressure to make sure I could win.”
Media outlets such as The Oregonian and the Willamette Week endorsed Bonamici, who is a member of the budget and science, space and technology committees, but she’s far from certain she’ll be re-elected. She really didn’t even expect to be in Congress at all.
“I was really interested in policy, and from working at legal aid, working with low income families, you can really see how certain policies impact peoples lives,” Bonamici said. “But I never dreamed I would be in the U.S. congress.”
She chalks up a lot of her success to her background at the UO, firmly believing that her joint public relations and advertising degree has made all the difference.
“That really helped with the writing skills, and knowing a target audience and knowing how to write concisely and persuasively,” she said. “All of those skills really help. Law involves a lot of writing; being a strong writer is something that helps regardless.”
Moving forward, one of her main projects is maintaining education funding in a struggling economy.
“To me, education is a great investment, and that’s a priority that we need to have and that’s one of my priorities. Of course we have a deficit, but there are other ways we can address that,” Bonamici said. “We get people into high-paying jobs and that rebuilds the economy. So cutting investments in things like research, development, infrastructure, education to me are the wrong priorities.”
Determined to make it onto the education committee to help from the federal level, Bonamici also has a few tips for students and graduates.
“I just have to say, be persistent. It’s challenging out there for graduates, for people looking for work regardless of age,” she said. “There’s a lot of opportunities out there for people who can expand their idea of what they want to do.”