SALLY MORRIS: IN CONVERSATION WITH PAUL SORUM
In a recent conversation, Candidate Paul Sorum speculated on this remarkable concept: “I strongly feel that I have an excellent chance of winning the election. It is a fact that 40% of North Dakota voters are truly independent. Recent polls and recent elections indicate that independent voters overwhelmingly vote for the most conservative candidate. Now, should Jon Hoeven be the Republican nominee, North Dakota Democrats will run the most conservative candidate they can field – one distinctly to the right of Hoeven, which won’t be that hard to find, given his liberal views. They understand that voters will go with the more conservative candidate. However, if I am the Republican nominee this won’t work for the simple reason that I am a true Conservative!”
We were on the phone with Senate candidate Paul Sorum on February 23; he covered a wide range of issues.
“I was born in Fargo, ND, and I grew up in the Fargo-Moorhead area. My father ran an engineering firm in Fargo for a number of years and my mother taught math and computer science at Fargo South High School.” After graduating from Moorhead High, Sorum went to NDSU, where he attended for five years, earning Bachelor’s degrees in Science and Architecture. He also earned a Master’s degree in Architecture at Ohio State, where he also studied computer science.
He and his wife Heather, whom he met at NDSU, have four children. “The oldest and youngest are girls and the middle two are boys.”
Of his political mentors, Sorum cites “first and foremost”, Ronald Reagan. Difficulty in finding employment at home following graduation led Paul and his new bride to Los Angeles, where he taught at the University of Southern California. The day after leaving office, Reagan turned up in church – right behind the Sorums. Most Sundays after services, Paul had the opportunity to visit with the former president, an experience which led him later in life to read more about Reagan, his articles, speeches and biographies.
“I really feel that I’m a ‘Reagan Conservative’, that what motivated him is similar to life experiences I’ve had, to pursue my dream, on a modes scale. I see that opportunity for other people diminishing significantly, as he did. I really relate to that. And I feel that his faith as a Christian was very strong. I know that from first hand knowledge of him and I feel that those Christian principles were really important in forming great policy for Ronald Reagan. And I feel those are the same principles our Founders used to create great founding documents that created the freest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. We’ve turned our backs on our Judeo-Christian heritage in this country, actually making God illegal in our public buildings. I feel there needs to be moral discourse in Washington that isn’t happening – at least not with those in power today.”
He also respects our Founding Fathers: “I look at John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as very different people but complementary personalities and brilliant people. Jefferson was an architect and I think, as an architect he was a great visionary and John Adams was a man of great intelligence and great courage, with a background in law.
“I really love my work – it’s been good to us. It’s a small business, but it’s just been a dream come true, and I feel very strongly that people should be able to pursue their dreams in North Dakota. It’s very difficult now because the American dream is under attack in Washington. But we can restore that by simply sending Conservatives to bring North Dakota values back to Washington and Conservative solutions that we know have worked every time they’re tried.”
On the issues:
The most important issues before the Senate today: “The economy and the very destructive results of the astronomic spending that’s going on. Only 17% of recent college graduates today can find jobs . . . and these are the very people that the legislators on the Far Left expect to pay back this massive debt. I just don’t see how that’s going to work. What we’re finding is that this amount of debt is dealing a crushing blow to our economy, and it’s affecting us right here in North Dakota. It’s estimated that we’ve lost 5,000 to 8,000 jobs in North Dakota in the last 12 months. That’s not the fault of our state’s administration, it’s the fault of the White House and the radicals who are pushing this extreme liberal ideology on us. I call it the “economics of debt, deficit and despair” and it doesn’t have to be this way! We need to live within our means.”
Property Rights: “Without strong property rights in this country, we will never again return to prosperity. Property rights have a very fundamental role in free market economics. We need to restore a vibrant free market economy – that’s the only way we’ll get out of this recession and begin to repay our nation’s debt.
“Property rights have been under assault in the last few years and I feel very strongly that we need to pursue tax reform at all levels – at the state level, too. Basically, if you’re paying very high real estate tax (an extraordinarily high one is imposed on us here in North Dakota) it really puts into question whether you really own that house. We have people in Fargo who’ve paid off their house years ago, living on a fixed income, but the astronomical increases in their property taxes threaten whether or not they can actually keep their home as elderly citizens. It makes no sense to tax people out of their homes. It doesn’t make any financial sense; it doesn’t make any social sense.
“And that goes right back to the federal government taking over private businesses. Those businesses are owned by people and it’s wrong and, frankly, immoral, for the government to claim ownership of private property. That’s now how our government was intended to operate and it shouldn’t be allowed to operate that way.”
The “General Welfare” clause: “The ‘general welfare’ clause was intended to be used in relation to the enumerated powers. They can’t take that alone as permission to invade and dictate any portion of our life. It only was intended to allow the ability to implement the enumerated powers. It’s simple and very clean. Our Framers intended the Constitution to withstand the test of time. Therefore they allowed two ways for it to be changed. It can’t be changed by activist judges changing the meaning of words in the Constitution. There is too much documentation as to what the original intent was.”
The other half of the equation is to control spending. Otherwise we’re going to go more rapidly into a state where we’re unable to pay our debt. I call it ‘the fiery cauldron of endless insolvency’. If we send the wrong person to Congress this year we could end up in this state of endless insolvency, where we become, in effect, a banana republic with a much lower standard of living. None of us want that. It’s not necessary. But if we send a big spending career politician to Congress, we’re guaranteeing that state.”
Immigration: “First of all we should implement the laws we have on the books. We can control immigration at the border. I think also if there is a real need for workers in a certain area we should have a program where we can track people coming into the country to fill those needs. Why don’t we have a legal process where people who do come to our country to work on a temporary basis pay taxes and contribute to our society and our government as they should? We should have whatever we need enforcement-wise between Mexico and the United States so that we continue to be a sovereign country. If we don’t have those borders, we don’t track those people coming in and out, not only do we not have sovereignty, but we also expose our country to dangers such as terrorists crossing the border with illegal weapons – possibly weapons of mass destruction, or letting criminals flow back and forth across the border, doing damage to law-abiding citizens and damaging or stealing property. We can simply enforce the laws we have.”
Terrorism: “one of the things people forget very quickly is that after 9-11 every pundit, every ‘expert’ that was on TV said it was inevitable we’d have another major terrorist attack – and it didn’t happen. I think a lot of things were done correctly to protect our country after 9-11. Now we’ve changed the course on that. It really hasn’t been a priority. We can’t use the term ‘war on terror’. In fact, we’ve had two or three very distinct terrorist attacks, recently and they haven’t been called ‘terrorist’ although they clearly were radicalized terrorists – they were Islamic Jihadists. There’s no question about it, based on their actions, what they said during their terrorist acts, and I think they should be called that and they should be tried in a military tribunal, and we should take action to recommit ourselves to the war on terror. It’s the biggest mistake made by the Obama administration and it’s put us all at risk.”
Bipartisanship: “We understand that fiscally conservative solutions have worked every time they’re tried. I don’t think these are bipartisan issues. They’re ‘up or down’ issues. When I talk to Democrats – especially those who identify themselves as ‘Blue Dog Democrats’ – they agree with me on these issues. I don’t think the answers are partisan. I’m willing to work with anybody who wants to work on programs which put the individual first, their economic well being first. And that hasn’t been done for a long time.”
Climate Change: “We can’t pursue things like ‘Cap and Trade’ that really have no benefit but to slow our economy and destroy the potential people have to create new wealth and new jobs in small business.
“The last few years the biggest downfall of ‘global warming’ is the science itself – it’s proven it doesn’t exist. The climate has been changing since the beginning of time. No question about that – but the last 10 – 15 years the temperature, the one thing you can measure, has been slightly decreasing. I feel the idea that we’re going to creating a huge bureaucracy and pass a massive tax, for the purposes of expanding government isn’t a solution to anything – it’s a problem. The overall theory of the ‘global warming’ people is, if we can only slow our economy we can save the environment. I say we don’t need a scientific study to understand that’s wrong – it’s the exact opposite of reality. You go to any third world country where they don’t have much wealth, you’ll find they have the dirtiest environment. Wealthier countries always have cleaner environments. Only through prosperity will we be able to better address our environment and how to keep it clean and make it better for individuals.
“The ‘global warming’ discussion is all about collectivism – what we can do to centralize power and money in the hands of a few and control things. There’s no hope of that to improve our environment –no intent of that to improve our environment. Nor do I feel Co2 is a poison that needs to be controlled. It’s an essential nutrient in the food chain.”
Healthcare: “You can’t have a health care bill that’s 3,000 pages of gibberish that no one understands. That’s not going to put more money in people’s pockets and make their lives better.”
Although we covered several other topics of great interest, we will have to continue our dialogue another time – but in closing, Paul Sorum reflected: “I put it this way: the real question of this next election is whether or not we feel that big government spending programs are going to create new wealth. And I want to remind you that new wealth is the definition of a recovery. I think there are a lot of things they’re doing that are not in the interest of individuals and they should be stopped. We should start looking at legislation that only helps the individual and restores freedom and puts our Constitution back as the Supreme Law of the Land, and if we do that we will once again turn this country around and be pursuing freedom and prosperity.”
DakotaBeacon