To the editor:
I want to thank the Greater Greenwood Chamber of Commerce for hosting the candidates forum for the 9th Congressional District between Shelli Yoder and Trey Hollingsworth Sept. 19.
At a time when Congress has a lower approval rating than botulism, helping citizens make an informed choice for our congressional representative is a great public service.
The most important thing said in the debate may have been when Mr. Hollingsworth introduced himself, “I’m Trey Hollingsworth and I’m the Republican candidate for Congress from the 9th District.”
This district was drawn by the state legislature to make it easy for Republicans to be elected. Just having the “R” on the ballot beside his name is an enormous advantage, but if people examine Hollingsworth and Yoder with any care they may decide it’s time for a change.
Hollingsworth is the son of a wealthy, well-connected businessman from Tennessee and did not take up residence in Indiana until fall of 2015.
During the primary, his Republican opponents accused Hollingsworth of “shopping for a district” to run for Congress. With his own money and money from the Super PAC financed by his dad, he overpowered his Republican rivals to get on the November ballot. The well-financed Hollingsworth campaign presents him as an ideologically-pure Republican, indistinguishable from dozens of others being sold to voters around the country.
If voters can go beyond party labels, they will find in Shelli Yoder a candidate with Hoosier values and positive ideas to move the economy forward. She has experience working in education, business and government and knows how they can work together to improve communities.
Yoder supports the Second Amendment while favoring universal background checks for firearms purchases. Hollingsworth opposes universal background checks. If the informal vote at the chamber is any indication, a large majority of Hoosiers agree with Yoder’s position. Many Hoosiers also recognize that Obamacare needs to be fixed, as Yoder advocates, but relatively few favor Hollingsworth’s position of completely dismantling Obamacare and taking away health insurance from 20 million Americans.
Hoosiers recognize that government is not the answer to all of our problems, but we also know government is part of the answer to many problems. We’re not going to build roads by pure free enterprise.
We aren’t going to educate our children by pure free market economics. And if we want the economy to improve, it is far more important that working people earn decent wages, and therefore have money to spend and stimulate the economy, than giving rich people yet another tax cut.
We need less ideology and more practicality in our representatives. We need representatives who will work together to solve problems, not carpetbaggers just interested in a political prize.
Before you automatically vote for Congress by party, please take a look at Shelli Yoder. As a genuine political outsider, and someone willing to look at issues without ideological biases and political partisanship, she can work for Hoosiers and get things done.
Neil Schwarzwalder
Greenwood
