August 7 2014 Election: US House TN-5 Candidate Impressions

Ah, TN-5. The office I ran for back in the day. I learned a lot from that experience, but that's for another post.

The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7 primary elections for US House of Representatives, Tennessee fifth district. These impressions are not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field. Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.

Our incumbent Jim Cooper is running unopposed in the Democratic primary this year. There are four Republican candidates, a much smaller field than 2010. I'm sure there will be several "independent" (including third-party) candidates in the general election come November, but those don't show up on the August 7 ballot.

Chris Carter
Great quote: "Never before in my lifetime have I witnessed such a frightening distortion of Americanism and assault on personal liberty as I have witnessed in the creation and implementation of ObamaCare." Apparently the last two Presidents shredding the fourth amendment, and holding and executing Americans without trial, are absolutely nothing compared to the ACA.

Carter blames the ACA for all the evils of the healthcare world, but doesn't propose any workable solutions. Blames the deficit on Obama's "socialist programs" and waste. (For the record, the deficit reached its current absurd proportions under Bush, and has gone down every year under Obama. Don't believe me? Look up the raw numbers.) He favors a flat tax, even though that would make the deficit vastly worse and hurt the poor tremendously. And worst of all, he uses quotes to indicate emphasis!

Unfortunately this is the typical Republican candidate these days: utterly uninformed, and just repeating the Fox line whether it makes sense or not. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Ronnie Holden
I have zero information about this candidate. All he seems to have is a Facebook page, and on that page all he does is share the latest Fox meme. From that I think we could reasonably expect that he'd be another generic Republican candidate, possibly minus the communication skills.

"Big John" Smith
An interesting candidate. He's clearly very religious, but unlike much of the religious right, I don't get the usual overwhelming impression of self-righteousness from this man. My impression from his words is that he is truly humble. I don't see any specific indication that he wants to consciously impose his religious beliefs on others by declaring Christianity to have special legal status, though he clearly can't separate his policy statements from his religion.

He's also the only Republican candidate I've seen so far for any office that specifically opposes the influence of money in politics, and he seems to understand that the only way out of our deficit mess is to grow the economy. And hey, he references The Twilight Zone, which is big points in my book.

Now, it's still all Obama's fault, even though the economy collapsed two years before he became President. He totally misrepresents the Occupy movement's goals, and doesn't display much compassion for those on welfare. (No outright contempt, though, which is better than most Republican candidates.) He thinks God gave Israel all the relevant land, and opposes the existence of a Palestinian state on those grounds. And at one point he equates all of liberalism, socialism, communism, and the antichrist.

But you can't ask too much, I suppose.

Bob Ries
I'm not analyzing Bob Ries's website this time. See, I met Bob Ries in 2010, when we were both running for US House TN-5. (He lost the primary to David Hall, so we weren't directly opposed.) We spoke for some time about one thing and another, and I came to the definite conclusion that he was not someone I would want in Congress. I won't go into more details; it was four years ago, and there's just no need to pick on the man. But I can't recommend voting for Bob Ries.

Jim Cooper
If you're voting in the Democratic primary, it really doesn't matter what I say here, because you've only got one candidate! But for completeness, his website is above.

He's got a good list of issue statements, including intellectual property, wonder of wonders. (I'm not 100% convinced he's got a good policy, but at least he's aware of the issue, and claims to strive for balance.) And I appreciate the fact that he has links scattered throughout his text; a familiar style! Cooper has a 65% match rating with me on POPVOX, which is twice what either of our Senators get. If Cooper wins, I won't be terribly disappointed.