Biography



INTRODUCING DEBORAH A. VOLLMER:

Deborah A. Vollmer is a resident of the Town of Chevy Chase in Montgomery County, Maryland. She was born on January 15, 1948, to Aline Fruhauf Vollmer and Erwin P. Vollmer. Her late mother was a local artist and her late father, who passed away in May of 2004 at the age of 98, was a retired scientist for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Deborah (whose friends call her Deb or Debbie) grew up in what is now the Town of Chevy Chase, attending local public schools and graduating from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in 1966. She attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and graduated with a B.A. in Government in 1970. She received her law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1973.

Deborah moved to California and started practicing law as a staff attorney for Cesar Chavez and The United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO. After that, she worked for the Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance as a staff attorney. Still later, when she opened her own law practice, she concentrated on court-appointed criminal defense for low income people. She also handled civil litigation cases, including civil rights and environmental protection issues.

While in California, Deborah was a politically active Democrat. She was the Democratic nominee for the 21st Congressional District in both 1992 and 1996 against Republican incumbent Bill Thomas. These races gave Deborah valuable experience in campaigning under adverse conditions.

Deborah returned to Maryland in the fall of 1997 to care for her father. Shortly after her return, she decided to run in the Democratic primary for the 8th Congressional District seat in 1998 and finished 2nd in a field of seven candidates after campaigning for only four months and spending a modest $2,500 of her own funds.  In the spring of 2000 she was once again a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 8th Congressional District. This time, there were five Democratic candidates. Deborah again came in second, after spending a mere $5,000 on her campaign. She ran again for this seat in 2002, in the hotly contested Democratic primary won by Chris Van Hollen. As with her previous Congressional campaigns, she spoke out in support of universal health care and the public financing of campaigns. She also took a strong position in this campaign against the U.S. mobilization to go to war against Iraq.  The war in Iraq remained an issue in the next two Democratic Primary campaigns: 2004, and 2006.  In these campaigns, Deborah challenged Chris Van Hollen to take a more active leadership role in ending the Iraq War.  She received approximately 7000 votes in the 2006 Democratic Primary, which was about 8.7 % of the vote—and about 1000 more votes than the Republican nominee received in the Republican Primary on the same day.  Deborah plans another run for the seat in the 2008 election cycle, noting that Van Hollen still has a mixed recording on Iraq War funding.  She considers Van Hollen to be an enabler to President Bush, and his flawed foreign policy.  She is also concerned that the U.S. may be drifting toward a wider war with Iran and other nations, a trend she strongly opposes.

In addition to working on the Congressional campaigns, Deborah is politically active on other fronts, working with organizations such as the Gray Panthers.  In recent years, she has worked with the Coalition for Universal Health Care, and the Health Care for All Coalition (Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative). She favors the implementation of a national system of universal, single-payer health care. Most recently, she has focused her organizing efforts on protesting the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and on opposing wider war involving Iran and other nations. She has had letters-to-the-editor published in local newspapers (including the Gazette, the Journal, the Examiner, the Sentinel, and the Washington Post) on such topics as the war in Iraq, campaign finance reform and universal health care. She is currently a member of several Democratic clubs including the Woman’s Suburban Democratic Club, the Montgomery County Green Democrats, and the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Democratic Breakfast Club (of which she is currently Vice President).  She is also a member of the Board of the Greater Bethesda-Chevy Chase Coalition which works to protect the tree-lined Capital Crescent (Georgetown Branch) hiker—biker trail from destructive real estate development.  She is actively involved in several peace organizations, including Montgomery County Peace Action and the Montgomery County Coalition for Alternatives to War (McCAW).  She is also active in social justice activities at Cedar Lane, Unitarian Universalist Church, in Bethesda, Maryland, and recently served on the Social Justice Council at Cedar Lane.

In the Democratic Primary for the 8th Congressional District seat which was held on February 12 of this year, Deborah received just over 11,000 votes, or 9.3 % of the votes, without doing fundraising. (Her total surpassed the total of Steve Hudson, winner of the Republican primary held that same day, by a few thousand votes.)  Deborah is now running as a Write-In candidate for the 8th Congressional District seat in the General Election.

In her current campaign for the 8th Congressional District seat, Deborah plans to continue a public focus on the issues of 1) Ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and addressing the flawed foreign policy that led to this disaster, 2) Health Care Reform, and 3) the Public Financing of Congressional Campaigns. And she will continue to speak out on many other topics, including environmental matters, education, and civil rights and civil liberties issues.

If you would like more information about these issues, or about the Vollmer for Congress campaign, here are the ways to contact her:
1) Phone her at (301) 652-5762
2) Write her at 7202 44th St., Chevy Chase, MD 20815
3) E-mail her at: dvollmer@verizon.net

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