When asked what sets him apart from the other Republican candidates running for the 23rd District Congressional seat, Tom Watson said: “I live in the district, for one. I think that’s going to be problematic for [rival Republican] John Davidson.”
Davidson, for the record, lives in Thousand Oaks.
“I think that’s something [incumbent Democrat Lois] Capps’s campaign is going to make an issue of. It’s probably the only thing we’d hear over and over again,” Watson recently told the Sun.
Watson will match political wits with Davidson and fellow Republican candidates Dave Stockdale and Clark Vandeventer at a public debate on April 25 at the Solvang Veterans Memorial, 1745 Mission Drive, in Solvang.
Some other attributes the native Californian said make him the strongest candidate to go up against Capps:
“I have the most well-rounded background and education. I had a career in the Navy; I’ve traveled around the world,” said Watson, who holds two masters degrees and flew F-14 Tomcats during Operation Desert Shield.
Watson also said he’s had extensive experience working on legislation and regulations with government officials, and he’s also spent years in the private sector jumpstarting high-tech companies.
“I mean, there’s nothing wrong with selling insurance,” Watson said of opponents Davidson and Dave Stockdale, who both own insurance firms. “But it’s not going to help us [fix this economy].”
For his own part, Watson said he’s working on starting his own wireless technology manufacturing company “right here in Santa Barbara.”
It’s ventures like his, he said, that will help create more well-paying jobs and thus pump more cash into the stagnant economy.
If elected, Watson said, he would use his experience as a businessman to decrease the number of regulations restricting small businesses in California.
“If they made it any harder, I don’t think anyone would operate here,” he said.
Another big item on Watson’s post-election agenda: reversing the new healthcare legislation.
“Lois Capps, this Administration, and the current Congress—in their view, every problem in the world needs to be solved by the federal government, which isn’t true,” he said.
According to the research he’s done, Watson said the majority of people in America are happy with the health care they’re getting.
“They’d like it to cost less, of course,” he added, but having everyone buy “uniformed, mandated coverage” is not the answer.
“This bill is like a rotting fish,” he said. “I think the longer it sits out there, the more and more things people are going to find wrong with it.”
Another problem Watson said he plans to help rectify, if elected, is government spending.
“The spending is out of control,” he said. “We’ve grown government spending so much in the last few years that we’re going to ruin this country financially if we keep going on this path.”
A father of a 2-year-old son, Watson said, “This so-called social justice spending that [the Democrats] are doing is bankrupting my son … They’re making future generations pay for a debt they had no hand in creating.”
For more information about Watson and his campaign, visit watson4congress.com.
This article appears in Apr 15-22, 2010.