Derek Kilmer is an American businessman and politician who has been the US representative for Washington’s 6th congressional district since 2013. The 48-year-old is running for re-election.

Kilmer, a member of the Democratic Party, served as a member of the Washington House of Representatives from 2005 to 2007 and the Washington State Senate from 2007 to 2012, representing the 26th district.

Born January 1, 1974, Kilmer was raised in Port Angeles, Washington. Both his parents were public school teachers. He earned a BA in public affairs with a certificate in American Studies from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1996.

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He completed his 184-page senior thesis, “Recovering From the Addiction: The Social and Economic Impacts of the Pacific Northwest Timber Crisis; An Analysis of the Implementation of the Clinton Forest Plan on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.” His thesis was supervised by Steven R. Brechin.

Kilmer earned a Marshall Scholarship to obtain his Ph.D. in comparative social policy from the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He is a former business consultant for McKinsey and Company.

During his terms in Congress, Kilmer has been assigned to the Committee on Armed Services; the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; and the Committee on Appropriations. For the 116th Congress (2019-2020), Kilmer was assigned to the Committee on Appropriations. He served in the Washington House of Representatives from 2005 to 2007. He served in the Washington State Senate from 2007 to 2013.

In 2017, Kilmer sponsored the Senate bill that would increase fines to pay for a new $849 million Tacoma Narrows bridge in his district. He was also a cosponsor of the United States–Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013.

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On December 16, 2021, he introduced the Tiny Homes for Veterans Act 2021, which would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement a six-year pilot program to provide grants for the creation of five villages for homeless veterans.