"The Revolution started here......" (email from Senator-elect Webb)

Thank you.

When we started this general election campaign, we were facing an opponent with tens of millions of dollars. He had won two statewide races already. He had the power of incumbency on his side, and also the awesome power that comes with the backing of an incumbent President. We had, at the moment, not a lot of money, a candidate who had never run for office, and 2,500 rag-tag rebels who had volunteered for what many thought was a hopeless, quixotic journey.

At that time, I said:


I like those odds, actually. It'll make us all work a little harder. It fits with one of my favorite films, Cool Hand Luke -- one of the great lines in that movie: "Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand!"

On Tuesday, against huge odds, you carried our campaign to victory, and I cannot express how grateful I am to you for helping us make history in this election.

As you know, I made two promises to myself when I started this campaign. The first was that I was not going to trade anything I believed in order to get a vote or a dollar, and I did that. I’m walking into the U.S. Senate with the independence to represent the people who have no voice in the corridors of power, and I intend to do that.

The second promise that I made was that as much as humanly possible, we were not going to run a negative campaign. And I thank all of you for helping me to make sure that we did that.

We have a situation in Virginia where Mark Warner began a journey. Tim Kaine has added on to it. We are going to add onto it even more. We’re going to work hard to bring a sense of responsibility to our foreign policy that will, in my view, result soon in a diplomatic solution in Iraq. We’re going to work very hard on issues of economic fairness in a country that has become divided too much by class in an age of the internationalization of corporate America, where corporate profits are at an all time high while wages and salaries are at an all time low. I look forward to joining my fellow Senators in voting very soon to increase the minimum wage.

And finally, we’ve had a situation where, as a result of this Administration’s policies post-9/11, we’ve had far too much power gravitate to the Presidency at the expense of the power of the Legislature.

With your help, we now have the opportunity to put this country back on the track where it needs to be. Thank you for everything you have done for our campaign and our country.

Remember, folks: the Revolution started here...

Sincerely,

Jim Webb