Tea Party Backed Rocket Scientist Poised to End 98 Year Democratic Hold on House Seat

Saturday October 16, 2010

Like other political conservatives, I have been eagerly following the national news about next month’s anticipated Republican mid-term election upset.

However, while focusing on the national scene I missed an exciting development in the Congressional District next to the one I live in.

I was truly surprised three days ago when I checked into HubPages, as I usually do, before leaving for work in the morning, and clicked on a Hub titled Ruth McClung Vs. Raul Grijalva : Monsoon Chiggers .

Upon clicking the link I discovered that an entrenched Congressman, Democratic Representative Raul Grijalva, in the district next to the one where I reside, appears to be on the verge of being beaten by a 28 year old political novice named Ruth McClung, who also happens to be a rocket scientist.

Since the emergence of the Tea Party Movement in the spring of 2009 conservatives have been hoping for a 1994 style victory.

It was in 1994 when Congressman Newt Gingrich and the party’s Contract with America resulted Republicans gaining 54 seats and acquiring majority control in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1952.

However, voter disgust with the heavy handed rule of President Obama and the Democratic controlled Congress under Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid appears to be giving the Republicans a shot at repeating their 1894 mid-term election victory.

The 1894 was an election in which the Republican Party gained 130 seats and the Democrats lost 125 (the remaining seats were won from third party and independent candidates).

This was the largest victory by a single party in U.S. history.

Arizona Congressional District 7, the site of the McClung-Grijalva race, is one of two new districts created following the 2000 Census which increased from six to eight the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives assigned to Arizona.

Raul Grijalva, then a Pima County supervisor, won a seven way race in the 2002 Democratic Primary for the new seat.

Given that Southern Arizona, where Congressional District 7 is located, had elected Democrats to Congress ever since Arizona gained statehood in 1912, it was no surprise that Congressman Grijalva won in the 2002 general election and has been re-elected, with little or no serious opposition ever since.

However, this year Representative Grijalva has found himself in the battle of his political career as support for Ms McClung has surged to the point where a recent poll put her two percentage points ahead of him.

A sign of support for Candidate McClung came on October 14th when I checked my email and found a request from the Tucson Tea Party on Facebook asking for donations to a fund raising effort by the McClung Campaign which was seeking to raise $100,000 on that day.

As of 6:30 a.m. (the time I checked the site that morning) they had raised a little over $5,000. I made a contribution and left for work. When I checked the site again at noon the fundraiser had passed the $50,000 mark and before going to bed that night they had raised over $77,000. By mid-day the next day they were over the $100,000 mark.

In politics most contributors tend to contribute in an effort to help their candidate win.
However, most don’t like to throw money away on a lost cause so contributions tend to increase as the candidate’s chances of winning increase. Similarly, as a candidate’s prospects of winning decline so do the contributions.

McClung’s ability to raise $100,000 within a 36 hour period is a good sign of the wide support she enjoys.

By the same token, Representative Grijalva’s campaign appears to be struggling financially. The email from the Tea Party noted that ...ActBlue, an organization that raises money for "progressive" candidates, is trying to raise $30,000 for Grijalva this week...

A check of the ActBlue website this morning showed that, at the end of a week long fundraiser, the ActBlue effort was still about $2,100 short of their $30,000 goal.

According to her campaign website, Ruth was born and raised in the West and is a 2004 graduate of the University of Arizona with a Bachelors Degree in Physics.  She financed her college education initially with a tennis scholarship and part time job at Del Taco fast food restaurant.  

During her last two years of college she had a paid internship with an engineering firm.  Following graduation, she was hired by the same company where she interned and where she currently works designing navigation systems for missiles.

In 2005 she married Michael  McClung whom she met in college.  Michael has a Masters degree in Physics as well as a Masters in Business Administration and currently works for the same company as Ruth. He is also working on plans to start his own business.

On the first page of her campaign website Ruth McClung lists the following issues upon which she is campaigning:

• Creating jobs
• Protecting small businesses
• Balancing the federal budget
• Lowering taxes
• Limiting government
• Protecting Social Security
• Improving education
• Protecting our national security
• Securing our borders
• Defending our freedoms
• Supporting our military and veterans
• Protecting life and family
• Repealing Obamacare then reforming healthcare

The platform stands listed above for Ruth McClung are similar to those of most candidates in this year’s mid-term elections. In fact, many are the same as those listed on Congressman Grijalva’s page.

Of course the approaches of Republican and Democratic candidates are different with Republicans favoring small government, free market solutions that favor individual freedom while Democrats favor a big government collectivist approach.

However, what appears to be driving this year’s election is voter anger. President Obama tapped into this successfully in the 2008 election by promising change and he won in large part by attracting the votes of Democrats and Independents looking for change - but not necessarily the change he ended up delivering.

His win was also helped indirectly, by Republicans who were angry with the explosive growth of government under the Bush Administration as well as disgusted with the irresponsible spending by the Republican Congress.

This anger led some to show their anger by voting for President Obama and/or Democratic candidates. Others voted for third party candidates which was, in effect, a vote for Democrats since the Republican candidates ended up receiving fewer votes and the third party candidate had no chance of winning which left the President and Democratic candidates the victors.

Then there were many who simply sat out the election thereby denying the Republicans additional votes.

Even those of us conservatives who did vote and voted for Republicans tended to do it with a feeling of casting a ballot for the lesser of two evils.

And when President Obama and the Democrats won, most of us weren't too disappointed with the results figuring that government by real Democrats were just a little worse than government by Republicans who governed much like Democrats.

Immediately after winning the election, then President elect Obama stated his intention to emulate former President Ronald Reagan’s shifting of the political center to the right by doing the opposite and shifting it to the left.

However, where former President Reagan took the lead in a nation that was already moving right politically, President Obama and the Democratic Congress set about trying to forcefully push the nation to the left.

This was not what the majority of the American people wanted. Despite this, the President and Congress proceeded to use the power that resulted from their major victory in the 2008 election to proceed as they pleased by forcing through huge stimulus bills that didn’t work, a health care bill that they didn’t even bother to read before enacting and other legislation and regulations that hurt an already ailing economy as well as vastly increasing Federal control over people’s lives.

This arrogance, coupled with the attitude that the Administration and Congress could do as they pleased, angered many.

But the arrogance and elitist contempt for the views of the voters didn’t stop there. Having finally achieved the power they had sought for over a half a century, the new left of center administration and Congress proceeded enact legislation taking over the health care industry. Despite the failure of socialized medicine everywhere it has been enacted, government run health care has been the holy grail of the left in the United States for almost a century.

While a government run health care system has long been the dream of left of center politicians and journalists, the average American has never shown much enthusiasm for it. This despite the fact that people are upset with the costs of the present system which is mostly a government backed medical cartel.

With so little support for a European style health care system, even among many Democrats in the House and Senate, the Administration and Congressional leadership employed their usual tactic of loading the bill with all kinds of extras needed to buy sufficient member votes to pass it.

This has been common practice for years as has the habit of voting on a final bill without reading it and leaving members of Congress waiting for newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times to report the contents of what they passed.

However, this time voters were not only angry but also had more information sources - such as the Internet, talk radio, cable news, etc. - to inform them as to what was going on.

The voters were also better educated thanks to a renewed interest in American historyand the Constitution both of which had been watered down and even dropped from many public school curriculum in recent decades.

As pressure from this newly self-educated and more politically sophisticated electorate increased on individual Democratic members of Congress (Republicans lacked power to influence the process and were thus shut out) the cost of buying their votes rose exponentially.

For Senator Mary Landrieu (Democrat - Louisiana) the cost was three hundred million ($300,000,000) dollars - one hundred times the three million ($3,000,000) that President Jefferson paid for the entire Louisiana Purchase which included 828,200 square miles (2,147,000 km) of territory stretching from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico.

The result was an ever growing bill with an ever growing price tag which, for probably the first time in history, the American people got to view as the enactment process progressed.

Still oblivious to the change going on around them, the Administration and Democratic members of Congress persisted with a business as usual attitude and even candidly admitting that not only didn’t they know what was in the bill but they had no intention of reading it before voting on it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went so far as to state that the bill had to be passed so we could see what was in it - in other words enact the legislation into law and read it later to discover what it said.

Watch the video at the right as Democratic Senator Thomas Carper of Delaware calmly explains why he, and he presumes most other members of Congress, won’t bother to read the health care bill.

According to Senator Carper the legislative language is incomprehensible (this is true).

However, I have always been told that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking a law which means that we, the American people, are supposed to understand and obey the laws passed by Congress.

But now we are told that the laws we have to obey are too complex for the members of Congress, who enact the laws, to understand when they pass them.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that this Senator receives at least $174,000 per year in salary plus a very generous retirement and health plan (a plan that most Congressmen said they would stick with rather than taking advantage of the plan they voted on for the rest of us) and other benefits all courtesy of the American taxpayer.

According to the Constitution, Congress is supposed make the nation’s laws. However, the task of drafting laws has been outsourced to Congressional staffers.

According to Legistrom.com, the combined salaries for Senator Carper’s staff for the 2010 Fiscal Year were $1,193,550 and for Fiscal Year 2009, which was probably when he spoke on the video above, it was $2,437,602.

This is just the compensation cost for the staff of a single United States Senator - there are 99 other Senators and 435 Congressmen as well as additional staff for committees.

One has ask, exactly what does a member of Congress do to justify such a salary given that the work of drafting and writing legislation is outsourced to unelected staffers. The work of these staffers is then voted upon by members of Congress who don’t bother to read what they are voting on.

And the reason the laws being enacted are not being read is because the Senator and his collegues, who we the people are paying $174,000 each per year plus benefits and salary, admits they don’t understand what the staffers wrote.

If  all that is required of a member of Congress is to vote without knowing what they are voting for my dog Chika could easily be trained to sit in Congress and when a vote is called hit a Yes or No button with her paw.  And she would be satisfied with a couple of dog biscuits for compensation.

It is this type of arrogance and disregard for the American citizens that will likely cost many Democratic members of Congress in next month’s election.

And, if nothing else, a rocket scientist, like Ruth McClung who is used to designing rocket navigation systems that guide a rocket to a precise target hundreds or thousands of miles away, can be expected to at least demand precision in the writing produced by her staff.