(tense music) - Welcome to Decision 2022, the US House of Representatives Candidate Forum.

This is an opportunity for voters to hear directly from the candidates today.

We turn our attention to the US House of Representatives race in Michigan's third congressional district.

Four candidates names will appear on the November 8th ballot.

They are Democrat, Hillary Scholten from Grand Rapids.

John Gibbs a Republican from Byron Center, Libertarian candidate Jamie Lewis and working class party candidate Louis Palus.

Today's forum was recorded Monday, October 24th from the studios of the Meyer Public Broadcast Center at Grand Valley State University.

Joining us now is Libertarian candidate, Jamie Lewis from Grand Rapids.

Thank you so much for being with us here in studio.

We really appreciate it.

- Thanks for having me on here.

I appreciate the opportunity.

- It's a great time for voters to get a sense of who the candidates are and we always like to ask this.

- [Jamie] Okay.

- And that's, tell us a little bit about yourself and why it is that serving in Congress is truly important to you.

- Well, I have lived in the West Michigan area pretty much all my life.

I raised two kids in public schools here.

I work for a printing company.

I've been involved with the Libertarian party since 2000.

And I've served in various offices for it.

I've run for different, different public offices.

And you know, it's just that as the elections go on every year, people go, 'Man, doesn't this seem like rougher than last time?'

And it just keeps snowballing.

It never seems to get any better and it's just that the parties seem to want to feed that energy and just kind of keep making it worse.

And it's like, the reason I'm running is cause people should just quit that game, not be part of it, and just, stop giving the Democrats and Republicans their votes and then they're gonna have to change the way that they do things.

So hopefully that people will vote libertarian this time and we can put an end to that.

- Being from West Michigan, having a pulse on West Michigan politics, what issue in your mind is the most pressing issue in the third Congressional district and how would you address it?

- Well, I think the most important issue, as a congressman is to remember what is the purpose of congress, that just gets completely lost.

People think Congress can pretty much do whatever it wants, and there it's very finite things that Congress is supposed to be doing.

And so the one thing that Congress should be doing is securing people's liberties.

It's all spelled out right at the beginning, what it's supposed to be doing.

And securing the blessings of liberty is what Congress is supposed to be doing.

So what, it shouldn't be something for saying that, well, we've got these problems in our community and government should fix it.

Government should be making people able to work on the problems themselves instead of just coming up with one, one size fits all answer.

So what my focus will be on is any issue that comes up is what is gonna give people the most liberty, what's gonna give them the most ability to be able to change their lives and not just have to go along with what the majority think is the best thing to do.

Everybody should be in control of their own lives.

- The US inflation rate is currently running around 8.2%.

What policies would you are encourage to get inflation under control?

- Well, the, it's mainly driven by government spending.

And so reigning in that spending is the top way of stopping inflation.

That you've got government handing money out to try to help people with inflation issues.

And that's just making it worse.

Government needs to cut back on the amount of spending it's doing and the amount of stuff it's trying to do and not just keep throwing more money that we don't have into the system.

Then you've, there's more dollars chasing fewer resources and that just costs everything to go up.

So government really needs to get under control and stop spending.

- All right.

This question gets a little wordy, so, - Okay.

- Bear with me here.

Michigan's proposal two will appear on the November ballot.

It would amend the constitution protecting the fundamental right to vote.

Some of the basics include use of photo ID or a sent affidavit to verify voter identity, placement on a permanent absentee voter list, prepaid ballot postage in a state funded ballot tracking notification system and access to ballot drop boxes.

Do you agree or disagree with this amendment?

Tell us why.

- Well, I agree that voting issues are at the state level, Congress, which I'm running for, should not be the one that's deciding how elections get run.

That is put in the constitution, that the states are in charge of that.

So that we're trying to address problems at the state level, I think is the way we're supposed to be doing it.

So anything that makes voting easier for people, that I think that's something that should be pursued.

I haven't read the whole thing through it.

I myself, I haven't decided how I'm gonna vote on yet, but once I do sit down to fill out my ballot, I'm gonna look at does this increase personal liberty, does this make things better?

And then I'll vote for it, generally my rule of thumb though, is always vote no on proposals unless there is a compelling reason to vote yes on it.

So, like I said, I haven't read through it all yet to make up my mind on it, but generally whatever makes it easier for people to participate in the system, I support it.

- And I tried to boil that down a little bit.

It is pretty long, but it will appear on the November ballot.

- Right.

- Dobbs versus Jackson was reversed.

Roe versus Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion overturned by Dobbs versus Jackson.

What is your view on reproductive rights or right to life?

- My view is that there shouldn't, that it shouldn't be made at the congressional level.

It's already gone back to the states on there, but I support people's individual rights.

So people should have the right to choose how they, you know, want to raise a family and what their choices are in life.

And that if, government stays out of the way in a lot of things, that there could be be better answers than what we currently have.

You know, that abortion doesn't need to be some sort of, you know, final birth control type thing.

You know, the FDA has restricted a lot of development in different areas and so if they weren't restricting those that we could maybe have commercial answers to solve problems before it gets to the point of pregnancy.

- Violent crime has been rising across the United States.

What solutions would you propose to curb current trends?

- The number one way of reducing violent crime in this country is to end the drug war.

That that is what is pushing everything.

You know, that if you, people talk about the gun violence and that if a lot of it is drug related and if the drug war was not front and center, if we could end that, it's gonna end a lot of the violence that is going on.

You don't have, you know, two corner pharmacies shooting each other.

You know that it's, the reason that it's illegal in the first place is what is driving crime.

You reduce the number of crimes, you're gonna reduce the number of, you know, you can reduce the, the amount of violence when you don't have a legal recourse other than violence, that's what you're gonna pursue.

And so it, the drug war is just, the number one cause of the violence in America right now.

- There are philosophical differences about how children should be taught and learn in the K through 12 classroom.

What is your suggested curriculum or best method for teaching our children?

- Well, the, I don't believe that education is a federal issue.

So as a congressman, I would not be pushing forth any educational programs that, education is something that is at the state level and ideally it should be down to the family level, but it is a state issue and so each state should come up with what they feel is best for educational policy.

But, you know, letting families drive the choices is the best, best answer for education.

- What is government's role during a public health crisis?

- The, I don't see that it really, it definitely did not handle its role well.

It should have been more of an just information, getting it out there, letting people know what's going on, but to be able to dictate the outcomes and, you know, especially because it was all so fast moving and I'm talking about covid here and that, you know, things, nobody had the answers right away, yet everybody is trying to have to come up with answers for it.

Well, if you don't have all the information, you can't come up with answers.

And so, you know, government doing their one size fits all type thing, this is the way we're gonna do it.

They should have just said, look, here's your risks, you know, this is who is most susceptible to this.

And you know that those are the people that need to take extra caution and let people, you know, figure where, what they need to do instead of mandating what people need to do.

- Foreign policy, two big marquee items.

What approach should the United States take with Russia and with China?

- For China we should stop borrowing money from China that we're so far in debt to China that because the government wants to keep spending and spending and spending that we don't have, that they're issuing all these bonds that China is, is buying up and you know, I think it's billions, that we've borrowed from them in the first place.

If they're supposed to be this, you know, our adversary, we shouldn't be borrowing money from them.

So, but I, for all, all foreign policy, I kind of agree with Jefferson's interpretation of Washington's position that, you know, free trade with all and entangling alliances with none, that I think we should be not getting involved in other countries affairs and try to keep diplomatic channels open.

- Is there a moral or personal issue you support that is an opposition to your party's ideology?

What is it and why do you strongly adhere to your belief?

- Well, my strongest philosophical opinion is personal liberty for everyone, which is the center point of the libertarian party, which is why I'm involved with the libertarian party.

So I wouldn't say that it's in opposition to it, but you know, there's, if you could ask, you know, libertarians the same questions, you're gonna get a bunch of different answers.

But everyone wants people to be free and so it may take different routes of getting to that point, but in the end that we all have the same goal, we may just have different answers how to get there.

So I don't really have any philosophical different, excuse me, differences with the party.

- What makes you better qualified than your opponents to serve as this district's representative?

- Because I am not a Democrat or a Republican.

The big problem that we've got and with Congress right now is that it's devolved into oligarchies, that all of the power has been concentrated into the leadership.

The individual members don't really have a role anymore.

They're just a number.

And that you either need to go along with the vote that you're told.

I mean the outcomes are determined ahead of time.

The votes are formalities, that the leadership decides this is what the vote is gonna be, this is how we're gonna vote on it and everybody's gotta step in line for it.

You step out of the line and you're basically done.

I don't wanna be part of that game.

I mean I think Peter Meyer is an excellent example of how that game works there, you know, and being new and naive, he thought, well I can vote however I want and went opposed to what the party wanted.

And then from that point on, he was done when he voted, you know, for impeachment.

And so did the Democrats say that, Oh here's someone we can work with.

Here's someone that kind of thinks outside of the group and we can probably work with.

No, they target him for defeat.

It's like, here is a weak, a weak candidate, we can increase our numbers so let's run hard against him in the primaries and get him out.

And so with that type of incentives, no one's gonna reach out to work with anybody else.

Everybody, they're gonna wanna just follow along with what they're told to do.

I won't be part of that game and I will be free to be able to work with anyone cause no one can say that, this is how you have to do it.

You'd spoke about the relationship with China in the United States, and essentially that was a monetary issue that you brought up.

- Sure.

- Government spending in general, where would you focus taxpayer dollars?

- And what the constitutional requirements of the government is.

We're spending way, way too much on things that, that don't need to be a federal issue.

You know, for people look to the federal government, maybe it's, you know, because news media's national that they think that Congress is where answers should be, where they should be going.

You know, the state should be making a whole lot of the decisions and providing a lot of the services that the federal government currently is.

You could cut out so much stuff by just devolving that to the states and letting them handle it.

And, you know, being able to cut out all that federal spending.

- Climate change.

Do you believe humans are significantly contributing to climate change?

- I don't know at what level would be considered significant, but I don't think that really matters whether we are or not for, I think that you've got a lot of individual initiatives that people that really want to do something about the, the environment, they're making a lot of good headway in that, by just going through, you know, private organizations and not through the federal government.

Federal government has only got two tools they, they can find and they can jail, and that's all they've got.

That's not how you fix the environment, by finding and jailing people, you need people that are actually going to do concrete things.

And as I said, the government can only, they can say this would be a good idea, but then that's one size fits all.

You gotta have different people working to come up with answers.

And so it's definitely something that should be worked on outside of the federal government.

- So private sector humans can reverse climate change.

- I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but I know there's a lot of people that feel they can and more power to 'em.

- All right.

How can the nation secure energy independence?

- Well, by providing, we've got a lot of energy here in domestically that we can produce.

I think that government control over the energy market, will not help.

But I think to be able to turn that over to the free market, to be able to, to decide what is needed and what's the best ways to provide it, instead of having, again, one size fits all directorship saying this is how our resources should be allocated, that that should be up to the marketplace on how it gets allocated.

- Last question.

- Okay.

- Here we go.

In your mind, what is this race about?

- By people being able to take control of Congress again, that we, the people have lost, lost control of the house representatives.

Then it's, top down oligarchy, you know, that the House of Representatives is like article one, section one.

This is what the founding fathers thought was the most important part of the government.

That you're gonna be bringing people from all across the country, from all different walks of life, all coming together to work on problems together, to come up with solutions.

And that's just not how it's done anymore.

The leadership decides this is how it's gonna be done, and everybody needs to fall in line.

So this is the point where I hope people start saying that, you know, we wanna have more say in how the government is being done by just being, going to the polls every two years and saying, you're gonna vote Democrat or Republican.

That's not really giving you a whole lot of say, especially when those individuals that you're voting for have no say, once they get there.

People need to break out of that game that the Democrats and Republicans are playing, that they're just pitting voters against each other and saying that, you know, if the other side wins, it's gonna be terrible for you.

And so it just kind of comes down to hate voting.

You know that, well, I can't vote for that side, so I'm gonna have to vote this way.

You know, vote for the people you want and not because you feel you have to vote a certain way.

And just people have the ability to take the control back.

And I hope that they take the opportunity to do it, this November.

- Libertarian candidate.

Jamie Lewis, thank you so much for spending time with us.

- Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it.