Wes Clark and Mike Weaver

View All Your Campaigns
Go to: Mike Weaver for Congress!
Help WesPAC Help Democrats Win!
Contribute to Mike Weaver today!

General Wesley Clark and Colonel Mike Weaver Reunite

General Wesley Clark told Mike Weaver that he will make the trip to Kentucky to meet with Weaver and supporters.

The two soldiers were recently reunited in Washinton D.C. during a Band of Brothers convention in early February. They had previously met when both were Captains while attending Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Clark’s commitment to come to the Commonwealth is a welcome endorsement for Rep. Mike Weaver in becoming our Congressman for the Kentucky Second Congressional District, United States House of Representatives.

04/04/06 - Wes Clark endorses Mike Weaver

General Wesley Clark Endorses Mike Weaver Elizabethtown, KY. April 4, 2006 Transcript by Reg NYC A special thanks to Jim Pence at the Hillbilly Report for the photos and multimedia!

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You know, I love this country, and I know you do too. And we're very proud of it, and we're very proud to be Americans. And this flag, this is our flag. A lot of us here fought for this flag.

(enthusiastic applause)

We've seen a lot of people we love buried under this flag, and that's why it hurts so much when you see the country going the wrong way. And we've been going the wrong way for a few years now. And this is the year we got to set it right.

Look, this country lost its way in the world. We lost our vision when we won the Cold War. We defeated our adversary, but we never actually created a new vision of where to go and how to deal in the world.

And we took advantage of a tremendous global opening of trade and technology and communications in the 1990s, and under President Bill Clinton we created 22 million jobs in America. It was unprecedented prosperity, but, but we didn't understand the risks that came with that global opening, and that those risks came crashing down on us at 9/11. And since then, I think we've, we went after Osama Bin Laden. We had to. I love our men and women in uniform, and I'll honor them. And they've done a great job in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(applause)

But we got to get the country going in the right direction. We've got important challenges in education and healthcare and taking care of our veterans and creating jobs and dealing with getting ourselves off imported energy and protecting our environment. And if we're going to win the War on Terrorism, honestly, as good as the United States military is - and we're the best in the world - we still can't win that war unless we make more friends than enemies in the world.

(applause)

After I left Fort Knox, and I went to serve in Vietnam, and then I later served in Germany and Belgium and Panama, and I stayed in the military and got to help with Richard Holbrook. I got to help work the peace agreement that stopped the fighting in former Yugoslavia. I got to go and stop ethnic cleansing in the Balkans when I was NATO Commander.

But I'll tell you, what I learned about the world is that if you want to make friends and you want to protect your country, the first place you start is, when you've got a disagreement with someone, if you can find them, you talk to them. You talk to them first before you threaten them or before you bomb them or anything of the sort.

Because once you send our men and women to war, it's permanent. There's things that happen in wars you can't, you can't undo, you can't fix it. And so, war should only be a last, last, last resort.

I think that we need leadership that looks to the future in the twenty-first century to fix education and healthcare to take care of the people of America and to get us ready to compete in a global business environment, that honors and respects men and women in uniform, that takes care of our veterans and understands the rules of the road - talk first, fight last, but when you fight, you fight to win all the way.

(applause)

And that's why I'm so proud to be here with Mike Weaver, because he's a guy who's lived it. He's done it. He's not only been 34 years in uniform, he's spent ten years as a legislator. He's your legislator. You know him, and I know you're proud of him too. And let's give a very, very warm round of applause and say, 'We're going to get, Mike, we're going to get you in Congress. We want you up there.'

(very, very warm round of applause)

MIKE WEAVER: D. Huddleson, I believe you're out there someplace, aren't you? Where's D. Huddleson?

D. HUDDLESON: Way back here.

MIKE WEAVER: D., thank you very much for- (drowned out by applause) And thank all of you for coming.

General Clark said we have to get the country back on track. We most certainly do have to get the country back on the track, and the way we do that is we take back the US House of Representatives. It takes 15 seats to do that. We have four candidates running in Kentucky. If at least two of us win, and we end up taking the Congress, the United States House of Representative back, that will be the huge, huge impact of the Commonwealth of Kentucky that we played a part in doing that and played a part in putting this country back on track.

Now there's another great General that I like to quote from time to time, and his name is George S. Patton. And one of the quotes that I like from him, though the quote was not necessarily aimed at the political audience. It was aimed at his subordinates. He said, "When everyone is thinking alike, someone is not thinking." And I think if you look at all three Houses, not all three Houses -If you look at three branches of our nation's government today, you will find that all three are controlled by one political party, if you include both Houses of Congress. And when that happens, you do not have balance, and when you do not have balance, you do not have people in the Congress - Congressmen and women - who can ask the hard questions and demand the hard answers with authority, and if we had had that in 2003, General Clark, we probably would not be where we are today.

(applause)

We had one of the biggest intelligence failures in our nation's history, and no one has been fired as a result of that. It was probably a failure in intelligence and the manipulation of intelligence, and we are at war because of that, and it effects everything that we do. It effects education. It effects healthcare. It effects jobs. It effects a deficit of 8.2 trillion dollars, and it effects deficit spending, and it effects an unbalanced budget. The way to turn this around is to start it in 2006 and let Kentucky play a significant role in turning this around by electing at least two of us - I hope I'm one of them - electing at least two of us to go to the US House of Representatives, where we can bring balance back to that institution, where we can ask those hard questions, demand those answers, and put this country back on track or start putting it back on track in 2006.

(applause)

So that two years later with the election of 2008, after all of our primaries are over, and we have selected someone like General Wesley Clark ...

(applause)

...as President of the United States then, and he has said he doesn't, he's not sure he's going to do that, but I'm sure with enough support like you can generate in Kentucky, and you can generate in Arkansas, and you can get generated across the South, and this folks is the best year to start that.

If you look at the conditions of 1994, when Bill Clinton did not have the good popularity rating and there was not a lot of trust in the Congress of the United States, and people thought that the country was going in the wrong direction, that was a Democratic President. You look at the Republican President today and do a complete reversal of that, this is the time to make this change.

This is the time to start it, in 2006, and in my opinion, I think that it's essential, essential that we do this for the good of this nation. Thank all of you for coming. Help us get it done. It's very important.

(applause)

About Mike Weaver: "From Farm to Public Service"

View All Your Campaigns
Go to: Mike Weaver for Congress!
Help WesPAC Help Democrats Win!
Contribute to Mike Weaver today!

From Farm to Public Service

Mike Weaver was born and raised on a farm in southern Daviess County, Kentucky. He is the oldest of four boys, and has two older, and two younger sisters. Mike's formative years revolved around Family, Faith, and Farm Work.

Catholic Mass at Saint Anthony's on Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. was the norm; on rare occasions the family went to the late Mass at 8:00 a.m. Mike attended Saint Anthony's, a three-room schoolhouse, from grades 1 through 8, where each school day started off with Catholic Mass. He attended high school in Owensboro, twenty miles from the farm.

At the age of 17, Mike joined the U.S. Navy, where he served on a Destroyer Escort for three and a half years, as an electronics technician.

After the Navy, Mike attended Brescia College in Owensboro, where he met, courted, and married Lois, his wife of 43 years. In the summer of the second year, after returning to his home town, Mike enlisted in the U.S. Army. When the Weaver's first daughter was one month old, Private Weaver was sent to Korea for an unaccompanied tour with an Armor Battalion in the First Cavalry Division.

After four years in the Army, while at Fort Riley, Kansas, Staff Sergeant Weaver applied for and was accepted to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Weaver's second daughter was born shortly after Mike was commissioned; six months later Second Lieutenant Weaver was assigned as a Cavalry Platoon Leader with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam. When the Weaver's third daughter was three days old, Captain Weaver was assigned as a Cavalry Troop Commander with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam.

During their 30 year military journey together, Mike rose in rank from a Private to a Staff Sergeant and from a Second Lieutenant to a Colonel. Along the way, Mike received a military scholarship for under-graduate school and another for graduate school. Lois went back to school at the same time and earned her Bachelors and Masters degrees.

As Mike moved from place to place over the last 15 years, Lois was based at their new family home in Radcliff, and taught at North Hardin High School. This part of their journey impressed on the family the importance of education. By the end their military career, Mike and Lois had four daughters, and had built a life focused around Family, Faith, and Freedom.

In 1996, four and a half years after retiring from the Army, Mike was elected to fill a vacant seat as State Representative for the 26th District. For eight years,

Mike has sponsored, co-sponsored, and voted for legislation that had to meet a simple test: "is it good for family, faith, and freedom, and will it be good for our community?"

Wesley Clark stumps for Weaver in 2nd

Wesley Clark stumps for Weaver in 2nd Democrat visits E'town, Owensboro Courier-Journal Wednesday, April 5, 2006 By Dylan T. Lovan | Associated Press
Elizabethtown, KY — Kentucky voters should help return Democrats to power in Congress to get the country "back on track," former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark said yesterday.
Clark visited Elizabethtown and Owensboro to campaign for state Rep. Mike Weaver, a retired Army colonel who is running for Congress in the 2nd District. Weaver faces James Rice, a factory worker from Campbellsville, in the May Democratic primary.
The winner will challenge U.S. Rep. Ron Lewis, a Republican who is unopposed in the primary, in the fall. He has held the seat since 1994.
"I just don't think you can have a guy with better values, who better represents the kind of public-spirited service that our country needs today," Clark said of Weaver. The retired Army general and NATO military commander has been campaigning for several Democrats around the country. He ran for president in 2004 but has not said if he plans to run in 2008.
Clark criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq.
"We've been going the wrong way for a few years now," Clark said. "We still can't win that war unless we make more friends than enemies."
Clark and Weaver said the country would be in better shape if the Democrats controlled the House.
"We most certainly do need to get the country back on track, and the way we do that is to take back the U.S. House of Representatives," Weaver said. Democrats need to win 15 additional seats in the fall to have a majority in the House.
Weaver said Congress needs members "who can ask the hard questions, and demand the hard answers with authority."
Mike Dodge, Lewis' press secretary, said Lewis wouldn't comment on the race until after the Democratic primary.
Rice, Weaver's opponent in the primary, said his top priority would be to balance the federal budget.
"It's like the 800-pound gorilla in the room," said Rice, who works at the Amazon.com warehouse in Campbellsville. "The theme of my campaign is focused on the next generation."
Rice said the military needs to focus on training Iraqi soldiers so the United States "can exit in the right way."
"We don't want to leave in the wrong way like we did in Vietnam," said Rice, who also ran for the seat in 2004.
Rice and Weaver are scheduled to participate in a debate April 24 on Kentucky Education Television.

6/19/06: Dinner to Benefit Colonel Mike Weaver

Mike Weaver Wins Democratic Primary!

View All Your Campaigns Go to: Mike Weaver for Congress! Help WesPAC Help Democrats Win! Contribute to Mike Weaver today!

Veteran Weaver wins primary to face Lewis for Congress By BRUCE SCHREINER The Associated Press via the Kentucky Daily News Wednesday, May 17, 2006

LOUISVILLE - Kentucky Democrats touting their military pedigrees during a time of war went one-for-two in congressional primaries.

Mike Weaver, a retired Army colonel and Vietnam veteran, won his primary Tuesday in the 2nd District and will challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Lewis in November. The district, home to the Fort Knox Army post, runs from Owensboro in the west to the Louisville suburbs and takes in much of southcentral Kentucky.

Weaver, a state representative from Radcliff, said he understands “the death and destruction of war” and critiqued President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

The Democratic challenger said the Republican president needs to come up with a plan in which Iraqi soldiers shoulder the responsibility for the fighting. Weaver said any pullback of U.S. troops should be gradual.

"I think that us continuing to lose soldiers ... in fighting the war for the Iraqi soldiers is the wrong way to go,” Weaver said.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Weaver had 48,910, or 72 percent of the vote, to Rice's 18,793 votes, or 28 percent.