Hedrick supporters,

Thank you all for the opportunity to represent you as a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. It has been an honor to serve as your voice in this race.

The results are in and I would like to congratulate Jaime Herrera, her family and her staff on their victory in this primary. Over the many months of this campaign, I have gained a great deal of respect for Jaime and the people she surrounds herself with. She won a hard fought race with the honor and grace we should expect of a candidate for U.S. Representative. The respect and integrity the members of her campaign staff displayed during this contested primary should serve as an example for Republican campaigns around the nation.

I agree with Jaime’s desire to cut the wasteful spending in Washington DC that is crippling our nation’s economy and placing unprecedented levels of debt on future generations of Americans. In the coming months of this election season, I offer her my support and ask my supporters to do the same.

I want every one of my supporters to know that I do not look at Tuesday’s result as a defeat. Instead, I view it as a remarkable victory. We took a completely under-funded campaign, with a novice tea party candidate who had never run for any office, with a 100% grassroots volunteer staff, and achieved a result that is turning heads around the nation. We were written off by the mainstream media and many in the establishment as a mere footnote in the race whenever they took the air time or ink to mention us at all. Without a dollar of special interest funding or a single endorsement from a state or national politician, special interest group or mainstream media outlet, we accomplished something remarkable. We finished very well compared to others who benefited greatly from all of the above. In doing so, we shook the foundation of established election wisdom and re-wrote the rule book for future elections.

All of my supporters have been absolutely amazing. We had single mothers, retirees, family men, children, successful business owners and even foreign exchange students from nations that are less than free, standing side-by-side together in the wind, sun and rain. Despite our different backgrounds, we stood shoulder to shoulder to fight for the values we all share. This campaign was funded by both individuals who could afford to donate and some who could not, like the single mother from California and her children who donated their recycling money to support a candidate they are unlikely to ever meet. I feel truly honored to have stood beside you these months and I look forward to standing with you in the days ahead.

We shared many memorable moments on the campaign trail that I will never forget. One of these moments seems extremely poignant at this time. After a particularly grueling sign waving session on a hot August day, I thanked one of my volunteers for sticking with us through the entire event in the oppressive heat. Still holding her Hedrick sign overhead, she looked down at her baby sleeping in a stroller beside her and said, “Don’t thank me. I’m not doing this for you.” This was a brilliant statement that summed up the movement we are all part of. It was my name on those banners, flyers, cards and signs, but it could have just as easily been any one of our names. This battle was not about glorifying an individual personality, but instead about fighting for the freedom promised by the constitutional republic we all hold dear. This has been about handing that republic on to our children who will then take our place as the standard bearers of liberty. Future generations of Americans will look back on our place in history and judge us by our actions. Will we be remembered as the generation of Americans who preserved freedom on this earth, or the generation that watched liberty slip right through our fingers? Like the Founding Fathers before us, God has laid both paths before us and given us the freedom to choose which one we will follow.

In 1781, General Nathanael Greene led a ragtag group of Continental patriots across the Carolinas with the British Lord Cornwallis in hot pursuit. Greene and his men had been playing cat and mouse with Cornwallis for months, preventing the redcoat general from uniting his forces with the British Army in the north facing the depleted forces of General George Washington. Greene’s men were cold, hungry and exhausted on that brutal march across the south. I can only imagine how many wanted to retire at the first signs of defeat and how easy it would have been for any one of them to melt anonymously back into the countryside and simply return home. Every one of those men had done so much more than the overwhelming majority of their fellow countrymen. They had earned the right to just sit down and rest, far from the battles and skirmishes that plagued their daily existence.

I thank God that those patriots did not shrink from the fight when they were needed most. We inherited a country won on the sore backs, parched throats, and tired legs of those men. These men stood on that line in the face of impossible odds and had the audacity to dream of a nation that others around them could not even see.

The United States of America exists as the legacy of those brave warriors who fought their last battle so long ago. If we intend to preserve this nation, we must be just as committed to this struggle, because while the battlefield has changed, the war between liberty and tyranny continues to this day.

Perhaps there will come a time when we can all sit down in our rocking chairs and look back on battles once fought, but today is not that day. It is up to us to care more than others think is wise, give more than others think is prudent, and sacrifice more than others think is possible. We must be willing to stand on that line, protecting the liberty of those who are too apathetic, misguided or weak to stand for themselves. When all others claim we are pursuing the impossible, we must wipe the sweat from our brows and continue the march.

While I can’t be certain what the future has in store for me, I can promise you one thing: in future elections and struggles for liberty wherever they may be, whether the sign has my name or the name of another, if that person supports a return to the constitutional principles this nation was founded on, I will be out there beside him or her, in the sun and the rain, holding that sign high overhead for the world to see.

And should that sign have your name on it, please don’t thank me.

After all, I won’t be holding it for you.

David William Hedrick