HAMLET — A deep lineup of Democratic candidates came out to the Cole Auditorium Monday night to make their case before local party members, elected officials and members of the public.
The event allowed a chance for the attendees to meet the individual candidates and submit questions for them to answer before the audience. The candidates for county commissioner, school board, NC State House and Senate, and a representative for the Elizabeth Warren campaign, were able to briefly make their case before making way for the main event: a few rounds of questions for the three candidates for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District who are competing to face Republican Dan Bishop in November.
The Richmond County Republican Party held a similar meet and greet with their candidates at a party meeting in January which media was not invited to. They will hold a County Convention on March 21.
The Democratic District 9 candidates present were Clayton Brooks III, Cynthia Wallace, and Marcus Williams. Harry Southerland was not present Monday.
The first question for them, posed by Paula Shelton of the Moore County Democratic Women, was, “What life experience or skills do you possess that will help you perform your job in the U.S. Congress?”
Marcus Williams
Williams, an attorney from Lumberton, said that his experience serving as student body president for Lumberton High School, UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Minnesota School of Law taught him how to “build bridges” and communicate with people to build teams that provide legal services across a variety of different regions, from multi-county programs to state-wide programs.
“I have been responsible, I’ve proven that things can be done if we attack them together, that we can do community economic development together,” Williams said. “I am going to inveigle, cajole, and pressure all of the people who are elected to be accountable to help build Richmond County.”
Brooks, a Baptist preacher from Laurinburg and former political director for the Dan McCready campaign, answering the same question, said that being a member of the clergy has given him “calling to fight for the vulnerable.” The experience he said that would prepare him to be the district’s “voice” was his time as the director of government relations for a nonprofit in New York City that he said provided housing for 360 young people between the ages of 16 and 21 every night. He pointed to the nonprofit’s work to triple state funding for homeless youth as one of his defining accomplishments.
“I have seen legislatures work at the local level, the state level and the federal level and I have experience greasing the wheels of legislatures and pushing for real, tangible change,” Brooks said. “I will be a fighter for you in Washington.”
Brooks also took time out of his two minutes to answer this question to call out Rep. Dan Bishop who, he said, “hasn’t done a thing” for those in eastern North Carolina still waiting for FEMA relief following the recent devastation caused by hurricanes.
Cynthia Wallace
Wallace, a daughter of political activists originally from rural Springfield, Georgia, but who now lives in Charlotte, said her experience working in a factory, where her mother worked, multiple summers in college formed her platform that is “not poll tested, it’s based on my life experiences.” Wallace pointed to her time as the Democratic chairwoman for the 9th Congressional District from Jan. 2017 to the present (she’s on hiatus from her position while running for office) where she said she focused on getting the party out of Charlotte and addressing the needs of rural communities.
“When I was elected to become the 9th Congressional District chair, we immediately set upon a vision of an eight-county strategy — not a Charlotte strategy, not a Union County strategy, but an eight-county strategy,” Wallace said. “As I’ve done in that position I will continue to do when you send me to Washington. I won’t stay in Washington, I will be back here talking to you and listening to you.”
Shelton’s second question to the candidates was: “Are you for the Affordable Care Act, Medicare for All, or do you have an alternate plan for the healthcare plans for Americans?”
Clayton Brooks III
Brooks called this question a “false binary,” and saying instead that he is in favor of “any plan that works.” He added that he hasn’t been insured for over a year, and that while he’s in support of a “very robust public option” he will entertain any option to get the most people insured if elected.
“What we currently have does not work. It doesn’t work for anybody. I think a lot of us are happy with our doctors, happy with our healthcare professionals, but I don’t think there’s a single one of us in this room, insured or not, who’s happy with our insurance provider,” Brooks said. “What I think is this: right now what we have is a bunch of larger than life insurance companies that sit down at the table with the large healthcare providers and hospitals and negotiate over prices and have this astronomical cost in healthcare without any real competition. I am in support of a very robust public option that will force competition within that cabal of healthcare providers so that we have real affordable healthcare and realistic costs for healthcare.”
Cynthia Wallace
Wallace said that the Affordable Care Act was “not perfect” but that it did insure 20 million more people, and now since 2017, the uninsured population has increased. She said that, with a Democrat winning the presidency, maintaining the House majority and flipping the Senate, the legislature will have to “repair the damage that’s been done” to the county’s healthcare system.
“We need to do a public option. I’m in favor of taking that Affordable Care Act — it wasn’t perfect, we all knew it — but they worked hard, President Obama and that Democrat-controlled Congress and Senate, and so how do we make it better?” Wallace said. “If we add a public option that will help states like ours where they have refused to expand Medicaid.”
Wallace told a story of when she was volunteering with a food bank in Anson County and she offered to give a ride to a young woman who they had given groceries. Wallace said the woman told her that she had recently spent a month in the hospital but didn’t buy her needed medication for the month of December because Anson County only provided support to older residents in need.
“This country is too rich, this country has given us so much that we should not have situations like that happen,” Wallace said. “So when you elect me to go to Congress I’m going to fight for you and fight so that people like that young lady don’t have to make a choice between medication and food.”
Marcus Williams
Williams, in his answer, said he has first-hand experience seeing people struggle to afford healthcare from his time as the volunteer chairman of the Coastal Carolina HIV Care Consortium in the mid-1990s. He said he saw people come in asking for five and six hundred dollars to pay for electrical bills, but the consortium could only pay for or five hundred because they had to save funds and resources to help others.
“For some of them, I had to — the next week (after they came in asking for help) — authorize the money for their cremation. I say that to you to say this: people die when they don’t have healthcare,” Williams said. “It’s not just bankruptcies (from lack of healthcare) and I don’t believe that our congressman from this particular state have allowed it to dawn on their minds” because they serve the rich, he said.
Williams’ plan on healthcare would be to, first, leave Medicare alone to “let it keep growing and thriving.” Then, “maintain” private insurance to the extent possible, and then “innovate” on the Affordable Care Act, which he said he has experience to do as director of a legal services program in Pennsylvania where he negotiated rates for more than 500 people.
The Daily Journal will update this article with more answers from the Democratic “Meet Your Candidates” forum.
