When Andy Harris and Frank Kratovil began their quests for Congress 16 months ago, the war in Iraq and illegal immigration were at the top of voters’ minds.
“The economy is now the 900-pound gorilla,” Harris told the Examiner, with the cost of energy not far behind.
Both men said they would have opposed the financial bailout approved by Congress last week, though Kratovil initially told the Examiner on Friday that he would have supported the version that eventually passed the House. Once he learned more details of the bill, including $140 billion in pork-barrel earmarks, Kratovil said he would have voted against it, said his spokesman, Kevin Lawlor.
“It was a payout of hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fat cats on Wall Street,” Harris said in a debate last week. “The cause of our economic problems is the failed liberal policies of the past,” with “liberal Democrats forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write risky mortgages to uncredit-worthy clients.”
Business is “the driving force in the American economy,” Harris said. “We have to help protect and grow our businesses.” He has been endorsed by the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Kratovil believes that voters are “more skeptical” of Harris’s belief in smaller government and less regulation. “We haven’t had too many people who are champions of the middle class,” Kratovil said. He enjoys the support of the Maryland State Teachers Association and other unions.
In a debate last week, Kratovil accused Harris of taking “over $1 million from a Wall Street special interest group that believes we need less oversight and not more.” He was referring to the Club for Growth, which focuses on economic issues.
Club spokesperson Nachama Soloveichik said the club’s funding comes from a wide array of people from all over the country. “You don’t have to be working on Wall Street to want to pay lower taxes and not spend money on pork-barrel projects,” she said.
Harris said, “This district views the way to get out of bad economy is you actually allow the people to have more money, not the government to have more power. This is a smaller-government-philosophy district.”
“Nationally, folks say the economic issues favor the Democrats, but this district does not reflect the nation as whole,” Harris said. Voters here believe in “less intrusive, smaller government.”
