By Verne Strickland, April 20, 2012
So the chips are down. What’s it going to be? Whose
story really stands up to the claims of the candidates, and the scrutiny of the
voters?
Unlike David Rouzer, Ilario Pantano has not raised
eight rows of tobacco. He hasn’t chopped cotton or combined soybeans. But war
is a job too. The toughest and most grueling there is. And Pantano has
shouldered this awesome task that few in this country have cared to take on – fewer still in Congress. And, to be sure, no
one else running for the Seventh Congressional Seat of North Carolina has gone
into mortal combat for the sake of God, family and country.
David
Rouzer may be the patriot he claims. I expect he is. But, as in everything
else, there are degrees of patriotism.
Ilario Pantano has voluntarily gone to war not once
but twice for principles he believes in – passionately, unreservedly, unselfishly.
This is a personal commitment he has made without hesitation, knowingly putting
his own life on the line for America and her citizens. In short, it cannot be
denied that Ilario Pantano’s commitment is the greatest act of valor an
individual can put forward. We need to think about that. This is a selfless
investment he has made for all of us.
And yet I find that his service in uniform is repeatedly
marginalized – by area liberals, by pacifists, as well as the media, led by the
Wilmington Star-News, which gives the appearance of hoping someone – anyone –
other than Pantano will carry the banner of the Seventh District to the U.S.
Congress in Washington.
Candidate Pantano’s military service – in not one
but two bloody foreign wars – is not marginalized by overt denigration, but by
glaring omission. It is mentioned only in passing, if at all.
This is clearly because the Star-News, while under
new ownership, has shown obvious signals that it will slavishly follow the same
hide-bound policies of the mainstream Democratic Party, which while in power
from the statehouse to the White House to the outhouse, and now the poorhouse,
has driven our economy, our individual freedoms, our business vitality, and our
national pride to a dismal new low.
State Senator David Rouzer, while not a Democrat, is
the darling of the press in the GOP primary, where his name invariably bobs to
the top as the chosen one to take on Mike McIntyre in the general election. It’s
a dubious honor.
A case in point is an “editorial” in which the Star-News
danced around a thinly disguised endorsement of Rouzer, while injecting
negative, polarizing comments about Pantano – by any measure a decent, honest,
intelligent gentleman, and a fighter in the real sense of the word. This is the
brand of journalistic integrity and courage we have come to expect from this
newspaper, whose roots in Democratic politics are deep and demanding.
No, Ilario Pantano of New York has not raised eight
acres of tobacco. That is not the opportunity or the curse of every red-blooded
American patriot. But, as much as any who have migrated to our area from the
frozen north and chosen to stay and raise a family, he has invested his loyalty
and his love in the region, meeting and embracing our good citizens, and
becoming a model citizen himself. He has endeared himself to many by his open,
engaging attitude – peculiarly Southern – and is ready to represent our area
with the same genuine enthusiasm, spirit and effectiveness as one raised here.
Just as important, he has familiarized himself with
the key issues, concerns and opportunities which are the underpinnings and
legacy of our area – specifically the coastal region, which is contained within
the newly-minted Seventh District, except for one oddly gerrymandered appendage
of land which somehow managed to reach deep into agricultural Johnston County,
whose most enduring link to the coast may be the week-end and vacation trips by
inland boaters and recreational fishermen. It is worthy of note that this
convenient happenstance in the district boundaries drew beachfront McGee’s
Crossroads officially into the Seventh District.
In this case, it is David Rouzer who is the
outsider, immersed as he has been in business and culture west of Interstate
95, where the traditional economic base has been the rich farmland and rowcrop agriculture
of the Coastal Plains , and where the influences – political and economic –
have been tied irreversibly to Raleigh and the N.C. General Assembly.
David Rouzer, it may be noted, has said
he has connections to the coastal area from a home in Kure Beach his family has
shared with another family – a statement made as he opened his Wilmington
campaign office quite recently.
Rouzer, 40, is not married and lives in the rural community of McGees
Crossroads in Johnston County, several miles from where he grew up working on
the family farm. First elected in 2008, he is serving his second term in the
state Senate, where he represents Johnston and Wayne counties. He lost a bid
for state agriculture commissioner in 2000.
Rouzer owns a business consulting firm, with tobacco companies as clients.
On the side, he owns a distributorship, marketing a degreaser called Cobra
Clean.
His past experience includes stints as a senior staffer for former U.S.
senators Jesse Helms and Elizabeth Dole, where he cites work on farm bills, the
tobacco quota buyout and the 1999 Hurricane Floyd disaster recovery legislation
among the highlights.
He also was appointed by President George W. Bush to a post in the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, where he helped manage a $1.2 billion budget and a
rural loan portfolio of $5 billion.
Rouzer also worked as a lobbyist for tobacco companies in Washington, but
said he deregistered in 2008. In the heat of campaign debates, Senator Rouzer
has been coy about his service as a lobbyist, a point not missed by those
keeping score. At times outright evasive, Rouzer seemed aware that his work in
support of amnesty for illegal, undocumented workers could generate a
particularly cruel backlash. And it has.
Whereas Rouzer worked closely with Jesse Helms at various points in his
career, Ilario Pantano never met the iconic five-term Republican U.S. Senator who
passed away in 2008 at the age of 86.
But Pantano is an ardent admirer of the late
statesman, and an avid student of Jesse’s implacable conservatism, which is
legend. More importantly, Pantano has proven by his beliefs and platform that
he subscribes wholeheartedly to the Helms Doctrine of fiscal solvency, limited
government, law and order, Christian values, Constitutional precepts, American
pride and exceptionalism, and freedom, freedom, freedom.
While Rouzer has had every opportunity to absorb
Jesse’s philosophy, he may have fallen short of duplicating the beloved
Senator’s unrelenting personal code of honor, for which Senator Helms was respected
by friend and foe alike in Washington and around the world.
Jesse said he never won a public opinion poll, and
never lost an election. And he never waffled on a vote, no matter how
unpopular. And he never tried to revise his record.
Only on two of these scores will I find fault with
Senator Rouzer, who, while habitually vilifying the “ethics” of lobbyists as a
whole, was a lobbyist himself, racing back to Washington to cash in his
services and inside knowledge of economic powerhouse industries like tobacco
production, processing, manufacturing and exports.
Perhaps more troubling, he obscured his support for granting
amnesty to illegal immigrants, and, only under intense questioning from
Pantano, finally admitted what he had done. He said that he did this because
workers were needed for tobacco and produce harvests in Southeastern North
Carolina. But Pantano, a stickler for accuracy, pointed out that only fourteen
percent of the illegal workers are employed in commercial agriculture.
“The rest,” Pantano said in an interview, “are
draining the economic lifeblood of our people.
A full 86 per cent of these illegals are taking jobs away from young
veterans in food services, construction, hospitality, landscape design – all
these things that are good, entry-level jobs, not glamorous, but that are
starting points for young men and women to get on their feet – these jobs are
being taken by illegals. This is also a tax on the battered incomes of our
taxpayers in our classroom, our courtroom, our schoolroom, and our emergency
room.
“It would be one thing if the Senator (Rouzer) had
an ubiased view of amnesty and hung his hat on that. But he has tried to dodge
and bob and weave until he was finally pinned down the other day. And only then
did he confess his role as a paid lobbyist working for something that every
poll and statistic shows will create two Obama voters for every GOP voter. So
who was he really working for when he got that lobbying check?"
The
halting Rouzer admission of his work to secure amnesty for illegal immigrants
created a firestorm of derision from conservative leaders like William Gheen,
president of ALIPAC.
"David Rouzer's support for Amnesty for illegal
aliens may endear him to some of the unscrupulous big business interests that
do not want to obey our existing guest worker and immigration laws," said
ALIPAC leader Gheen. "However, his
support for Amnesty puts him at odds with over 80 percent of the voters in
North Carolina's 7th Congressional District who are paying the price of illegal
immigration through lost jobs, depreciated wages, stolen taxpayer resources,
and preventable crimes."
Americans for Legal ImmigrationPAC has endorsed David Rouzer's opponent Ilario Pantano due to Pantano's support for adequate
enforcement of America's existing border and immigration laws.
Ilario Pantano has made fighting illegal
immigration a top issue in his campaign. He has vowed he will oppose any
form of Amnesty for illegal immigrants that would allow them to stay in the
United States.
Pantano has attended recent immigration hearings conducted by the NC General
Assembly. His opponent David Rouzer has not attended these meetings even though
he serves as a state legislator.
"The voters of North Carolina have a clear choice between Ilario Pantano,
who will work to deter illegal immigration, and David Rouzer, who is now on the
record supporting Amnesty which will only encourage more illegal immigration to
our nation and communities," said William
Gheen. "Now that David Rouzer has abandoned his earlier denials and
admitted his support for Amnesty our job is to make sure every voter knows
about his unpopular stance."
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC plans to raise funds to conduct an
automated call to GOP voter households in District 7 warning voters that David
Rouzer supported Agjobs Amnesty for illegal aliens in the past and has
reaffirmed his support for Amnesty during the recent debate on WECT.
For more information about Americans for Legal Immigration PAC or to view
ALIPAC's 125 currently endorsed federal candidates, please visit www.alipac.us
Pantano, a Wilmington resident who now works as an author,
referred to Rouzer as a career politician and said government needs
"principled leadership" and term limits for members of Congress.
Rouzer opposes term limits.
"Who's going to go
to Washington and reform it, and who's going to go to Washington and conform to
it?" Pantano asked.
Since contrasts are the stuff of which campaigns are
made, it should be instructive to note which candidate contrasts most
dramatically with Democrat incumbent Seventh District Congressman Mike McIntyre
– Rouzer, who has shown some inclination to shade the facts about his service
and his stands on the issues – or Pantano, who as proven himself to be honest,
honorable and straightforward at all times. Which of these candidates, when it
comes to candor and truth, or lack of it, is more like Mike McIntyre?
Raise the issue of term limits, and decide for
yourself which candidate – Pantano or Rouzer – fits more into the McIntyre mold.
McIntyre ignored his own promise several times to limit his terms in office,
but is going for a ninth term as he gears up his 2012 campaign. Rouzer has
declined to commit to term limits, whereas Ilario Pantano has signed a pledge
to seek no more than three Congressional terms if elected to this office.
"Term limits would be a tremendous step at reforming our
culture of corruption in Washington," Ilario Pantano said.
U.S. Term Limits (USTL), the leader in the national
movement to limit terms for elected officials, praised NC-7 candidate Ilario
Pantano for promising to support and co-sponsor an amendment to the U.S.
Constitution limiting congressional terms. USTL’s Philip Blumel commented on
Pantano’s pledge saying, “Ilario Pantano is leading the way for the other
candidates for Congress by being an early signer of the term limits
pledge.
Pantano’s commitment to returning to
citizen government in Washington, D.C. “is a beacon that should be followed by
candidates across the nation,” Blumel concluded.
There is more – so much more – that can and should
be said about the dramatic differences between Ilario Pantano and David Rouzer –
important contrasts that have been obscured or ignored by shabby news reporting
or outright subterfuge.
Those facts will be reported in this column before the May 8 Primary, when the man appointed to take down excessively
incumbent Democrat Congressman Mike McIntyre of the Seventh District of North
Carolina will be selected.
Maybe the best yardstick comes down to where voters
can comfortably put their trust when selecting the man that might be our next
Congessman.
Bottom line — for the Seventh District to be
burdened with another professional politician, which Rouzer could well become,
would be a bitter pill indeed. Pantano or Rouzer? It’s down to this. You make
the call.
