Candidate profile: Dan Huffman

Many conservative politicians look back to the Constitution for guidance. Dan Huffman goes back further — to Roman emperor Cicero in the 1st century.

“The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become corrupt, the people should learn to work instead of living on public subsistence,” the quote reads.

Huffman acknowledges that the quote may not be exactly accurate, and indeed several online sources, including snopes.com, truthorfiction.com and quotationsbook.com, suggest that it’s loosely based on a real statement by the emperor and embellished to fit contemporary US economic circumstances.

Huffman is running in four-man pack of conservatives in the Republican primary for North Carolina’s Congressional District 13, which is currently represented by Democrat Brad Miller.

“The main concern is our national debt,” Huffman said. “If we look at compounding interest on $12.3 trillion of debt, we have to cut spending, and we have to bring the federal government back to the bounds of the Constitution. We should hold [government programs] to the same standards as charitable organizations. When I donate to a charitable organization, I look to see how much is going to the recipients as opposed to administration. When I see anything over 20 percent, that gives me concern.”

As a conservative aligned with the Tea Party movement, Huffman takes it as an article of faith that reducing the tax rate and scaling back regulations will allow businesses room to grow and create jobs, and help the economy grow.

A Wake County small business owner who founded a Christian-inspired communications company after getting laid off from Alcoa during the last recession, Huffman has carved a niche for himself with a folksy style that emphasizes his North Carolina roots. While all four candidates are running on platforms of limited government, Bill Randall presents himself as an ideological warrior for the Tea Party cause, Frank Hurley boasts a resume that includes a stint with NASA during the Reagan administration, and publisher Bernie Reeves is an urbane socialite.

Sacrificing to start a small business is part of Huffman’s political biography.

“The first year was a struggle,” he says in a campaign video. “We started out modestly with two employees and a couple contractors. For nine months I paid our people without receiving a dime. I made less that first year in business than I did my first year out of college. But back then I did not have a mortgage and four kids to support. But we made it. And we did it with little to no debt. Today, our company has 38 employees and 16 contractors and zero long-term debt. I know what it takes to turn this country around. I believe in the idea that we need to unshackle American enterprise so that they can create jobs and grow the economy."

Like his four primary opponents, Huffman holds no elective experience.

As a Christian and a proponent of limited government, Huffman told me he supports the notion that local communities, freed from onerous tax burdens, should address social problems rather than the government.

“Take teen pregnancy,” he said. “No matter what the federal government does to counsel a young lady who is having a baby out of wedlock, it’s not half as good as someone within a community taking the time to talk to that young lady.”

The federal government needs to cut the corporate tax rate, and allow American innovation to flourish, Huffman said. Healthcare reform, pro-labor appointments to the National Labor Review Board and cap-and-trade legislation to reduce carbon output are all developments that “throw the business world into uncertainty, which hinders growth,” Huffman said.

Huffman’s crusade against big government has a familiar ring to it in this election season.

“Somebody said that a government that is big enough to give all that you want is also big enough to take away all that you have,” he said. (Words to that effect attributed to Thomas Jefferson are inscribed on a sign held by a Tea Party protester on the cover of our newspaper this week.)

To illustrate that dictum, he described a phenomena outlined to me yesterday by Billy Yow, a Republican running in another congressional district. A local government might receive $250,000 from the federal government for a greenway without realizing that accepting the funds obligated it to hire additional employees. In the long run, the project would cost more than the value of the grant.

I noted to Huffman that the district was drawn to favor a Democratic candidate, and considering that more than half of registered voters are signed up as Democrats, any successful Republican candidate will need to draw voters from across party lines and grab all the independent voters at the same time. How would he make his pitch?

“I think the way we talk to conservative Democrats, is we lay out for them what the federal government is doing for them,” Huffman said. “It’s a district with a lot of rural voters. I’ll be talking to farmers about RFID. RFID is a program that the USDA is bring out under the guise of tracking disease. It is a program in which they’re trying to get buy-in to place radio frequency ID tags in all cattle and eventually take it down to the poultry level. Which would be a hindrance to any small farmer that has less than 10 cows and less than 10 hogs, that sells locally and serves local farmers markets.”

Like most Republicans on the ballot, Huffman is adamantly opposed to the healthcare reform bill signed into law by President Obama.

“My goal is to repeal it, and if we can’t do that we’re going to have to evaluate our other options,” he said.

The candidate declined to elaborate on what he meant by “other options.”

He favors a handful of reforms in healthcare, including allowing health insurance plans to be sold across state lines, private health savings accounts that follow workers and tort reform.

He also opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“Why are we working on healthcare?” he asked. “We should be working on the economy and getting jobs. Why are we working on immigration when we should be unshackling American enterprise? Why are we working on cap and trade when it will impose more costs on manufacturing?"

Triad Elections ’10