(Editor’s note: After completing his presentation on health care reform, Dave Roberts was asked to say a few words about his recently announced candidacy for 50th District U.S. Congress. Here are his remarks.)

In January of this year, right before the Obama administration came in, I was offered an appointment in the Obama administration to serve for two years on the advisory panel on Medicare education…. When that hit the newspapers out here people started calling me and asking me why didn’t I run for Congress.

And I asked “Why me? I’m a married, gay man, I have three young boys, I have a great job, I’m on city council, I’m vice-chair of North County Transit District, I’m chair of the San Dieguito River Valley Park, I chair the sewer board for Encinitas/Solana Beach… I have a great life, why would I want to do this?” So Tony Atkins (former San Diego City Councilmember and candidate for State Assembly) and Jess Durfee (chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party) encouraged me to apply to go to Harvard this summer to take kind of a sabbatical and I got accepted to go for the month of July up to Harvard.

While I was there a poll was run in this district and the poll basically said that the incumbent Congressman (Brian Bilbray) is very beatable and of all the known candidates that have been vetted, I’m the only one that can win and can beat Bilbray. So I took that information and I started talking to people and a week ago Thursday, I announced that I was running because we can’t find a candidate that can stand toe-to-toe with Brian Bilbray.

I know some of you have said “I thought you endorsed Brian Bilbray?” In 2004 I was a big Francine Busby supporter. In 2006 for the first election, I started out supporting Francine and they had a 14-way Republican primary. I was an elected official, and one of our jobs as political officials is working throughout the political spectrum with people, so in 2006 I endorsed both Francine and Brian Bilbray. Bilbray ended up winning and asked me if I would provide advice on health care issues. And talk about banging my head against the wall, over and over and over again and basically have said “I’ve had it with you.”

Some people think that I’m a plant for the Republicans, I don’t know how, but I hope they vote for me because it’s going to take some Republicans and decline-to-states to beat Bilbray. We cannot, as Democrats, win this district. So I have received lots of encouragement to run, in this district, from very high up and from here in San Diego. And launched a great campaign, and brought on a great campaign person, Tom and Clair McGreal, who were Obama Regional volunteer coordinators, have agreed to chair my volunteer network which we are launching tomorrow and we are putting together a campaign to beat Brian Bilbray.

Our goal all along was not to have a primary. I did sit down with one of the people who is currently running trying to share why I felt that we’ve got to come up with a new strategy if we’re going to win this district. And so we have put together what we think is a winning strategy, we’re going around now sharing that with people to get people to invest in this campaign, whether they want to give $5 or $2400 and that is going along really well.

I’m also going out and getting endorsements now and that is going well. There was an appearance that one of the candidates had all of the endorsements kind of sewn up and many people believe now that I am the bi-partisan person that has an electable track record that can stand toe-to-toe with Brilbray.

I’m really energized about doing this, I think we have a great shot at winning. I know many people have gotten disappointed in the past when we haven’t been able to win and that’s why I think a lot of people say we’ve got to try a new strategy now of picking somebody that’s already gotten elected, that has a history of working across party lines that we know is a true Democrat who has basic, core Democrat beliefs but will be willing to work across partisan lines for a solution.

Escondido is a very important part of this district. I think I’ve got the message… the economy and health  care, people are so worring about their jobs, their retirement, their health care. We’ve got to be able to connect with people whether they live on the coast or they live here. And I think I’ve got the message to appeal to people across the district, and that’s one of the other things that we’re trying to do.