Sean Barney, a former Democratic candidate for state treasurer who served with the Marines in Iraq, announced today that he is running for Congress.
Barney is currently President of InfoVest, a Delaware venture capital firm. He previously served as policy director to Governor Jack Markell, helping Markell pass legislation raising the minimum wage, ending mandatory consecutive sentencing, creating universal background checks for gun sales, passing marriage equality, and establishing civil rights protections for transgendered Delawareans.
“Marines have a code of honor. We leave no one behind. Yet in this country and this state that I love, we are leaving people behind in droves. We are better than that. It is time that we start acting like our better selves and building a Delaware and an America again that embraces opportunity.”
Responding to calls that the country turn away Syrian refugees after the attacks in Paris, Barney immediately called for the United States to instead step up its refugee resettlement program, accepting 200,000 refugees, 100,000 from Syria.
“Times like this define the character of who we are as a nation” said Barney. “We must choose whether we respond to a threat or let a threat undermine who we are. We must choose whether we succumb to cheap politics or hold true to our core values. For the sake of our security, we should embrace these families and children fleeing violence and tyranny, rather than force them to languish in refugee camps that will destabilize our allies and become recruitment grounds for ISIS.”
Barney enlisted in the Marine Corps after September 11, 2001 and fought in Fallujah, Iraq, where he was wounded in action and received the Purple Heart. He served as a military and foreign affairs advisor in the U.S. Senate. He called on Congress to debate the country’s military strategy against ISIS and pass a Use of Force Authorization.
“If you tell the Marines, take Raqqa, the Marines will take Raqqa, just as the Marines took Fallujah,” he said. “But ISIS controls Fallujah today, despite the sacrifice Marines made taking that city during the Iraq war, because we never had a long-term strategy in Iraq. Our political leadership in Washington owes our fighting men and women a long-term strategy before they send young Americans to fight and die in Syria.”
Barney is a graduate of Swarthmore College, Columbia University, Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware with his wife, Nikki, and their daughter, Sophie.
