When voters from the fourth congressional district go to the polls this November, they will choose between Republican Christopher Shays, who has represented the district for twenty-one years, and Democrat Jim Himes, a former businessman and current nonprofit executive who is making his first run for national public office. Two years ago, Shays narrowly defeated former Westport First Selectman Diane Farrell. This year the race has drawn national attention, since Connecticut is the only one of the six states in New England still represented by a Republican congressman. It has been targeted again by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as a potential “red to blue” win and called a toss-up. In mid-July, both candidates were interviewed separately about their views on key issues and why they think voters should pick them instead of their opponent. Their responses have been edited to meet space requirements.
Christopher Shays is a graduate of Principia College, a Christian Science college in Elsah, Illinois, and has a master’s in public administration and a master’s in business administration from New York University. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in the Fiji Islands and served in the state House of Representatives for six terms. In 1987, Shays was elected to Congress, where he’s on the House Oversight and Government Reform, Financial Services, and Homeland Security committees. He has made twenty trips to Iraq since 2003 to check on our military and reconstruction efforts there. He and his wife, Betsi, director of the National Security Language Initiative of the U.S. Department of Education, live in Bridgeport and have a grown daughter Jeramy.
Q: What three issues do you find voters in the district are most concerned about?
A: The economy, the threat of terrorism and how it’s impacted their lives, and the future of our country in general. Are we going to be able to compete with the rest of the world? Will we have the resources necessary to do it? Will our kids be educated in a way that enables them to compete with the rest of the world? I think they are very much concerned about the economy as it is today and what the world is going to be like in the years to come. I think they are also concerned that they don’t see a government that is responsive to these challenges, whether it is the environment, whether it is energy, whether it is helping their kids compete.
Q: What do you think are the main differences between you and your opponent?
A: First off, I have a lot of respect for my opponent, as I have had for previous opponents. The differences clearly are that I’ve had experience, not just that I’ve been an elected official for twenty-one years in Congress but that I’ve been trained by my constituents. Every day I learn something new from my constituents, and that helps me be a better congressman. And I’m not a partisan politician. I don’t know what my opponent is, but I know what I am. I work with Republicans and Democrats. So whether John McCain [or] Barack Obama is elected president, I will be working with him, I think, effectively.
Q: What do you propose for our Iraq policy?
A: That we win, not lose. That as things continue to improve we don’t leave prematurely, but we don’t stay indefinitely. I see us continuing to reduce our troops by 5,000 a month until we get to 50,000 to 70,000 troops and that our troops are not then patrolling the streets, but they are providing logistics, emergency ambulatory care, training and doing special forces operations. Finally, that we are a presence, much like we are in Korea, so that Iraq’s neighbors don’t think that this is a country that they should violate. You have critics that say we shouldn’t have gone in, and that’s an argument that can be made. But once we disbanded their army, their police and their border patrol, we owned the place. And I was in good company: Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, we all voted to go in. That’s not really the issue. The issue is, once we are there, what are we doing?
Q: What kind of priority do you give to reducing our $9 trillion national debt and balancing the federal budget?
A: I led the charge in the late nineties – when I was on the Budget Committee – to get our financial house in order and balance the federal budget, and we did it. We did it by voting to slow the growth of what we call our discretionary spending, what runs government, and we did it by slowing the growth of entitlements. And we did it with tax cuts. When you cut taxes, you can sometimes generate more revenue than when you raise taxes. So we need to do all three.
Q: What’s your position on the 2002 Bush tax cuts and on the Alternative Minimum Tax?
A: I think that [the cuts] are essential and they need to be made permanent. Why should married couples pay more than two people living together? How can we justify raising the taxes on individual families? In other words, we gave a tax credit for having children. How can we say that it makes sense to bring the dividends tax and the capital gains tax up to thirty percent? They help generate economic activity. Anyone in this district who thinks that we should raise taxes, and then complains that the federal government doesn’t bring enough back into the district, doesn’t understand it. We rank number eight in dollars per capita coming to the state. There are thirty-two states that get less per capita than we do. (But we give so much in taxes to the federal government that we rank last in terms of the amount of money we get versus the amount of money we give.) So anyone who says that the dividends tax and the capital gains tax should be brought back up simply wants to take more from the 4th Congressional District and get less back. The Alternative Minimum Tax should have been indexed years ago so that it didn’t keep capturing more and more people. We need a permanent solution to this.
Q: How would you address the problem of 50 million people without health insurance and the rising cost of healthcare in the country?
A: What I’ve done is I’ve – with Representative Langevin, a Democrat from Rhode Island – introduced the universal healthcare bill that enables Americans to have the same healthcare choices at the same cost that federal employees have. So the individual would pay 28 percent and the employer would pay 72 percent.
Q: What impact do you think the presidential campaign will have on your race?
A: I think the race will be – I could be wrong because you are asking me these questions in July – my suspicion is that it will be a fairly close race. Whether it’s close or not, you are going to have a lot of voters come out who may not have in the past. We’ve got a poll in July [showing] seventy-four percent of my voters are McCain-Shays voters and 24 percent are Obama-Shays supporters. So I think it will be a large turnout, and I think that it’s important that I have the support of people who are supporting either candidate. I think I do.
Q: What do you say to someone who asks you: Why should I vote for you instead of your opponent?
A: The question is why would I ask – suggest – that people renew my contract? I would ask them to look at my twenty-one years of effectiveness. I’d ask them to look at the fact, unlike most elected officials, I work with both sides of the aisle. I would want them to appreciate the time and effort they’ve invested in me because I am their product in the sense that they trained me, and that I am on the cutting edge of most of the important issues. I am a leader in the whole issue of energy; I was arguing for better Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, better mileage standards for minivans, SUVs and trucks, and voting that way before it was popular. I have been at the center of trying to make sure that what we do in Iraq is effective. I have experience and effectiveness that I think rival the best in Congress. And it’s interesting to me that my Democratic colleagues would be working so hard to defeat the only Republican left in New England. What Republican are they going to work with in New England if I’m defeated?
Q: Who are your political heroes?
A: George Washington, I loved his courage. Abraham Lincoln put his country first, even if it meant he was going to lose the next election. Teddy Roosevelt was a change agent and I think of myself as that, through and through. More recently? You could say he wasn’t a politician but in a way he was, and that was Martin Luther King. He didn’t just speak to African-Americans but to all Americans, and he was really trying to save our country. I respect in a politician straight talk and courage, and we don’t have enough of it. I think my greatest strength is that I’m willing to lose the next election; you have to be willing to lose it in order to deserve winning.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: We have a great country. We are not living up to our greatness right now, and I think it’s because we haven’t sorted out the new media and how it impacts our lives – the talk shows, cable, the twenty four-hour news service, the unbelievable number of talking heads who just tear apart the country and people who work in the government. I think we’ve got a lot of heavy lifting to do, and elected officials need to be very clear about what’s required. And I’d like to think that’s what I do. You have two very good presidential candidates running for office. I’m hopeful, speaking in July, that we will have found that these candidates talk issues and that they will have a clear mandate on what the public expects them to do when they are elected. I think we need to be Americans first and Republicans and Democrats second. The view is that you should bring up your favorables and your opponent’s negatives. It’s just something I’ve never done and I never will do.
A Harvard graduate and former Rhodes scholar, Jim Himes worked as an investment banker focusing on mergers and acquisitions and Latin America at Goldman Sachs for twelve years and is currently vice president of a nonprofit organization that focuses on urban poverty and affordable housing. He has served on the Greenwich Board of Estimate and Taxation and as chairman of the Greenwich Housing Authority and Democratic Town Committee. He is on the board of the Fairfield County Community Foundation. Himes lives in Cos Cob with his wife Mary, an editor with atHome magazine (a Moffly Publication), and two daughters, Linley, six, and Emma, eight.
Q: What three issues do you find voters in the district are most concerned about?
A: Getting our economy back on an even keel, national security and finding a responsible way to withdraw from Iraq, and developing an energy policy that is forward-looking but doesn’t put Americans in the position of paying $4.50 per gallon at the pump. We find ourselves in the economic situation we are in due to years of unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility on the part of our leadership. As a consequence, we’ve seen huge fiscal deficits and a ballooning of the federal debt, which has caused the world to lose faith in our currency and has created economic instability. We’ve seen gross negligence with respect to oversight of our mortgage business; and the utter absence of an energy policy and activities in the Middle East that have raised the price of gas have combined to really crush the middle class underneath an economic hammer.
Q: What do you think are the main differences between you and your opponent?
A:The first difference is that Chris Shays has been an ardent supporter of [the Iraq] war all along and continues to be a supporter of keeping our troops there. There’s an important difference between what he says and what he does. He said in August 2006 that he supported timelines for withdrawal of our troops. Then he went to Congress and voted against timelines time and time again. It’s important to differentiate between what he says and what he does. The other key difference is in the area of the economy. He supports the privatization of Social Security, and having watched a twenty percent decline in the American stock market, I would say that is a catastrophic idea. Secondly, he has been out in front advocating for Bush economic policies, and we sit amongst their ruins. He was one of the leading advocates for making the tax cuts of 2002 permanent. I support tax cuts, but tax cuts at a time we were going into two major wars was just the height of economic irresponsibility. And we are paying the price.
Q: What do you propose for our Iraq policy?
A: Success in Iraq comes when the Sunni and the Shia and the Kurds have made the tough decisions around oil-revenue sharing and governance. While it’s wonderful that violence has declined — we should all celebrate that — we haven’t seen adequate progress on that reconciliation. The only thing that is going to bring about the making of those hard choices is when the three parties in Iraq no longer believe that we are going to babysit their country, when we begin withdrawing our troops. I would begin a withdrawal of our troops tomorrow, and the day after go to the Iraqis and say: Sit around the table and make the hard choices because we can no longer lock down the nation of Iraq. We can’t afford it in terms of lives, and we can’t afford it in terms of dollars. I would like to see our troops out as soon as possible, but there are both logistical and tactical considerations that will govern how fast we can withdraw them. And we need to do it in a way that prevents chaos in the region.
Q: What kind of priority do you give to reducing our $9 trillion national debt and balancing the federal budget?
A: It’s a huge priority. I worked for Bob Rubin [former cochairman of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Treasury secretary] whose mantra was “deficits matter.” Deficits do matter. A growing national debt reduces confidence in our economy and reduces the value of our currency, so it’s of critical importance that we get the government back on track to responsible spending. I think we can achieve a lot of that through better priorities. When all is said and done, we will have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 trillion in Iraq. We need to stop spending that money. We have a catastrophic agricultural plan that is immensely expensive, providing price supports to our farmers at a time when our commodity prices are high.
Q:What is your position on the 2002 Bush tax cuts and on the Alternative Minimum Tax?
A: I think that we’re going to have a very interesting political discussion in 2009 on our priorities. When do we want to fix our infrastructure, which has a $1.5 trillion price tag? How fast do we want to pay down our national debt, which is huge? How fast do we want to implement universal healthcare? And the answers to those questions are going to give us the answer of how much tax revenue we need. I don’t support raising taxes at all; in fact, I support lowering taxes on the middle class. If we are going to raise taxes, if we are going to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, it’s going to be for a reason. The Alternative Minimum Tax is a key point of difference between Chris Shays and myself. It was designed to keep wealthy families from taking too many deductions but is now capturing a lot of middle class families. It absolutely needs to be overhauled, and Chris Shays voted against its reform. I’d love to see it eliminated, but that begs the question, how do you replace the revenue?
Q: How would you address the problem of 50 million people without health insurance and the rising cost of healthcare in the country?
A:We need to develop a system of universal healthcare that is available and affordable to all Americans; and those that cannot afford it would receive a subsidy from the government. As a businessman, I then say that we have to find ways to take substantial costs out of the system. Lots of money is spent to fix people; little money is spent to prevent people from getting sick. The technology in the industry is awful. We need to find ways to keep doctors from practicing the immense amount of defensive medicine that they currently practice. I think we should try to develop a hybrid system that starts from where we are today and creates government pools that potentially can be more competitive than private providers of health insurance. But I don’t think where you are talking about a $2 trillion industry that you just snap your fingers and say everything changes overnight. I think you evolve to a system that is more efficient and more equitable.
Q:What impact do you think the presidential campaign will have on your race?
A:I think the level of general amorphous hunger for change is going to help me and having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket is going to be very helpful. It also provides me with some interesting questions to ask Chris Shays. Chris Shays says he fully supports reproductive rights, and yet he is the Connecticut cochair of a presidential candidate who explicitly says he will appoint people to the Supreme Court who will reverse Roe v. Wade. How do you square that?
Q: What do you say to someone who asks: Why should I vote for you instead of your opponent?
A: That person needs to look around and answer: How are we doing traffic-wise? How are we doing economically? How are we doing on affordable housing? How are we doing abroad? Consider whether a guy who spent twelve years in business and six years doing nonprofit community development, affordable housing, whether that guy doesn’t bring to the table a more practical mindset than someone who has had twenty-one years to deliver the world that we live in today. That person should also ask: Who’s going to do better by the district? Who’s going to be able to walk into [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s office and say,
“I need A, B, C and D for Bridgeport or for highways and trains in my district?” With a Democratic majority, we are talking about a world of difference in terms of being able to deliver to the district.
Q: Who are your political heroes?
A: Teddy Roosevelt and Bobby Kennedy. These were deeply thoughtful, pragmatic individuals, hugely proud of their country and deeply aware of the inequities in their respective societies, who had a huge impact on our history.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: Why I jumped into this. I’m a huge patriot; running is not a partisan thing for me. What we are talking about doing in 2009 isn’t achieving Democratic objectives, it’s about restoring core American values to Washington. I’m talking about values like the rule of law, like being thoughtful and prudent in how we engage internationally, about having a competent government that puts a man on the moon rather than failing catastrophically in New Orleans. These are things that, regardless of party, we should be proud of, yet we have drifted.