for Congress California's 2nd Congressional District · Show Your Work
I wrote 38 bills.
Read them
before you vote.
Third-generation Californian. Son of a Korean War veteran and a lifelong environmental activist. No PAC money. No donations. No social media. Just published federal legislation, accountability actions filed before the campaign began, and complete transparency about who I am and what I will do.
The satirists tapped out. Someone had to do the work.
I watched Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert stand on the National Mall and tell their audience, in so many words, “this is as far as we can take you.” Two of the sharpest political voices of their generation had reached the edge of what satire can do.
I didn't want to sit in the balcony, like a muppet, laughing along with Statler and Waldorf, heckling Kermit while the show went on. So I started by drafting it. During COVID, I wrote 38 complete federal bills in full congressional format — with constitutional authority statements, spending caps, and sunset provisions. Not talking points. Bills. That was before any campaign.
Show Your Work means I had already done the work before I asked for the job.
I am a third-generation Californian raised in Mill Valley. I have been a CDC Quarantine Public Health Officer, a Special Education teacher, a clinical engineer, a postal carrier, a school bus driver, a paratransit driver, a behavioral health counselor, and the primary caregiver for my 95-year-old Korean War veteran father until his death this April.
I am running for Congress because the people of CA-2 deserve a representative who has done the work before asking for the job. So I did. Thirty-eight federal bills. A 25-category FOIA request. A formal Inspector General complaint. A 35-page food security brief delivered to 89 congressional aides in both parties. Five direct-mail letters to nine-hundred-and-eighty-eight West Marin households. Seven counties driven, listened to, and learned from.
One promise: Show Your Work. If I cannot defend a position with published legislation, public records, and primary sources, I have no business asking for your vote.
— Gregory Burgess, Candidate
This site is dense. On purpose.
I will be honest with you: there are no rotating banners here, no donation buttons, no carousel of soft-focus campaign photos. There is a great deal to read.
That is the point. The first work of a member of Congress is to legislate — to draft, debate, and pass laws. So a candidate's website should be the first place you can read the laws they would actually bring. Not the slogan version. Not the values list. The bills themselves.
CA-2 is one of the geographically largest congressional districts in the country, stretching from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border across nine counties of farms, fisheries, forests, ranches, ports, suburbs, and small towns. If we can write legislation that works here — built bottom-up from the rural communities, not handed down from Washington — we can write legislation that works for America.
“The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Letter to All State Governors on a Uniform Soil Conservation Law, February 26, 1937
So read. Disagree. Tell me which bill is wrong and why. The work is here because the work is the job.
Four issues. Real legislation.
Close-to-Home Care for Nine Counties
Forgivable rural-clinic loans, telehealth in every county, voluntary universal Medicare eligibility, behavioral health treated as healthcare.
Read the Healthcare ActFrom Seashore to Stockyard
Restore the USDA food-security survey, halt APHIS biosurveillance cuts, connect forest slash to farm soil — 100,000 rural jobs.
Read the Food Security PlanThe CA-2 CAFE-CH Act
Mass-timber housing, broadband, workforce training, AI augmentation over displacement, a National Dividend for working families.
Read the Affordability BillHeal the Land & Sea
Tri-zonal forest management, kelp recovery, Klamath salmon follow-through, indigenous co-management as co-equal partners.
Read the Ecological PlanSix federal actions. Five filed December 26, 2025 — before this campaign began. The sixth, one day after I filed for candidacy.
Supplemental EIS Request
Formal request to the National Park Service to prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the 2025 Point Reyes settlement, which was implemented under a Revised Record of Decision issued without additional environmental analysis.
House Natural Resources Whistleblower Tip
Submitted to the House Committee on Natural Resources documenting transparency failures in the settlement process, the use of non-disclosure agreements against displaced farmworkers, and the absence of competitive bidding for management of 18,000 acres of public land.
California Coastal Commission Request
Request to the California Coastal Commission to review the settlement under the Coastal Zone Management Act, given Point Reyes National Seashore's location within the California coastal zone and the federal consistency review obligations that follow.
Appropriations Rider Request
Request to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees for an Interior Department appropriations rider conditioning settlement implementation on full NEPA compliance, public hearings, and farmworker housing protections.
DOI Inspector General Ethics Complaint
Filed to the Department of the Interior Office of Inspector General documenting the transparency failures, NDA use against displaced farmworkers, and the absence of independent appraisal in the transfer of effective management of 18,000 acres of public land.
DOI-2026-003984 · 25-Category Records Request
Filed to the National Park Service one day after candidacy — covering settlement financials, NDA provisions, tribal consultation records, and TNC communications. Administratively appealed March 10, 2026.
A public servant. Not a politician.
I am a third-generation Californian, raised in Mill Valley. My mother, Wanda Lee Ballentine, practiced regenerative stewardship before it was fashionable. I grew up drinking Strauss dairy milk, explored Point Reyes with naturalist Elizabeth Terwilliger, and birded with my uncle G. Stuart Keith, the first ornithologist to record more than six thousand bird species worldwide.
I have never had a conventional career. Thirty years in behavioral health. CDC Quarantine Officer at the U.S. border. Special Education teacher. Clinical engineer at Stryker. Postal carrier. Teamster. School bus driver. Paratransit driver for Vivalon. Each job taught me something a career spent only in politics never could.
She kept the garden growing.
She kept the bins sorted.
She kept fighting.
She was right. She still is. So can we.
Read the bills.
Then decide.
I am not asking for your money. I am asking for your attention — and your vote on June 2. If you read the legislation and disagree with it, vote for someone else. That is the bargain.
