Weird flashbacks to my childhood:

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Jackie Speier may be heading back to Washington, nearly 30 years after she was shot and left for dead on a Guyana airstrip while on a fact-finding trip into the Jim Jones cult.

Speier, a Democrat and former California state legislator, is the favorite to win a special election Tuesday to fill the House seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Tom Lantos, a San Mateo Democrat who was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.

It is Speier’s second try for the seat once held by her former boss, the late Rep. Leo Ryan.

In 1979, she lost a special election to succeed Ryan, who had been killed a few months earlier while investigating reports that Jones was holding followers against their will at Jonestown, a compound in Guyana.

Speier, then a member of Ryan’s staff, was seriously wounded in the same attack by Jones’ henchmen.

Rep. Leo Ryan was a great progressive lawmaker. I hope Speier will restore that tradition.

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