Candidate profile: Lon Cecil

Long a libertarian in philosophy, Lon Cecil ditched the Republican Party around the time of the 2008 election. The GOP has been adrift from its small-government ideals since the Reagan era, he said, and he has little faith that the party’s successive defeats in the past two cycles will force it to change its ways.

“My dissatisfaction with them is that they were doing nothing but raising taxes, passing more Democrat legislation and creating bigger government,” he said.

Libertarian Michael Munger’s candidacy for governor in 2008 and his showing of more than 2 percent in that contest ensures that the party will have a place on the North Carolina ballot at least through 2012, and Cecil hopes to be part of a handful of congressional hopefuls led by US Senate candidate Michael Beitler to break through this year.

Ironically, the election of Democrat Barack Obama to the White House begat a libertarian resurgence within the Republican Party, with the emergence of the Tea Party movement in early 2009.

“The Tea Party is an expression of the dissatisfaction of people that are mostly registered Republicans and some unaffiliated voters,” Cecil said. “They will merge them back in. They’ll say, ‘Come on back in, we’ve got to come together to beat those bad Democrats.’”

The 63-year-old Cecil, a High Point resident, is currently working on contract as an equipment tester for RM Micro Devices through the end of July, after which time he will be able to devote himself full time to his quest to win election to North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District seat. He was employed by RF Micro Devices for 12 years until March 2009, when he was part of a mass layoff.

That transition to free agency in the workforce somewhat parallels the brave new world of Cecil’s politics.

The 12th Congressional District, which has been represented by Democrat Mel Watt since 1993, is one of the most Democratic leaning in the state, having been drawn to give African Americans increased representation. That means not only the Libertarian candidate but also the Republican nominee face a high hurdle in persuading voters to cross party lines.

Cecil thinks the time is right.

“This economic downturn has affected a lot of people,” he said. “If you’re working full-time and supporting a family or not working at all, you feel it. Even if you’re standing out on a corner with a ‘will work for food’ sign, those donations are down.”

With most of his campaigning limited to the weekend, Cecil said he has met with voters at Tea Party events and attended a meeting of the Black Political Caucus in Charlotte, where he was met with a friendly reception and detected a modest degree of curiosity about his platform.

“Until a few years ago, most of them thought they could withstand the tax burden,” he said. “It didn’t seem to be that bad. The explosion in the last two years of new taxes and warnings of ‘we’re going to have new taxes’ have set off alarm bells. People recognize the adage that nothing is free. You have to pay for it some way.”

One of the three focal points of Cecil’s campaign is “bring our troops home.” That message has resonated well with military families that have loved ones deployed abroad, the candidate said.

“Veterans of Iraq and World War II are against our current policies,” Cecil said. “They smell too much like Vietnam. It’s not productive for our nation, and it’s detrimental to our youth.”

That sentiment somewhat dovetails with the position taken by Democratic Senate nominee Elaine Marshall, who has been critical of President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Cecil said there’s a difference between the two camps.

“The liberal Democrat position is bring home our army and reduce it to 15 people with shotguns,” he said. “I feel we do need a reasonable sized army. We have to be able to respond. We should not have to be calling out our National Guard to defend the Mexican border, the Canadian border or from a boatload coming into Florida.”

Sizing up his two opponents, Cecil holds a more favorable view of Democrat Mel Watt than Republican nominee Greg Dority.

“The Republican that is running is a long-term resident of Washington, NC, which is a three-hour road trip from the eastern part of the state,” Cecil said. “He made the statement that if he won he would move here. I already live here. He’s going to vote straight Republican.”

In contrast, Cecil said, “Mel does represent many of [his constituents'] interests. Mel had done a good job. He’s had that seat since 1992. He’s been on the finance committee, which is very significant. He’s very effective at bringing money to the colleges in the area and bringing in money for public works.”

Watt should consider running against US Sen. Kay Hagan in 2014 or making a bid for the governor’s mansion, Cecil said. In the meantime, this year there are three candidates and only one seat available for the 12th Congressional District.

“We need in Congress someone who is not willing to rubber stamp every expenditure, someone who would ask questions about how is this going to affect everybody in North Carolina, someone who is going to consider what the unintended consequences might be," he said. "I am an engineer. An engineer wants to look at everything together and consider the unintended consequences. A good example is that Mel Watt voted for the healthcare reform bill. I am extremely interested in voting all of that out.”

As a Libertarian, Cecil is by definition interested in reducing the size of government.

“I’m painfully constitutionalist,” he said. “I believe we need an itty bitty federal government that only gets its funding from the states.”

In other words, the federal government would operate on fees contributed by the states.

“I would like to see the US Department of Education close down,” Cecil said. “The US Department of Education provides 7 percent of the funding to North Carolina schools. If you go through the numbers, it looks like they have a little overhead. [The] Cato [Institute] says 10 percent. We pay 17 percent to the federal government, and we get back 7 percent. Along with the 7 percent, we get no prayer in schools, no invocations before football games and all these regulations that they pass down. And we get do No Child Left Behind. Once we get the federal government out of education, we can look at voucher programs and choice in education.”

Like most libertarians, Cecil said he believes some limited areas of activity — the military, most notably — make sense in the public sector. In other realms, he favors moving gradually but deliberately to reduce the size and scope of government.

“All areas of the government need to minimize growth,” he said. “The Army’s big enough. The Coast Guard is big enough. The IRS is too big. The Fed — which is not a public agency — we need to get rid of that.”

The Postal Service is an example of an agency that Cecil said doesn’t need to be eliminated entirely, but could be significantly downsized to adjust to changing times.

“I get five or six pieces of mail that are directly related to bills,” Cecil said. “When I send in my payments, I put a stamp on one piece of mail because it’s a government agency that won’t take electronic payment. They all send me a paper form. I send them an electronic payment and throw away the paper. The other 30 or 40 pieces of mail are nothing but junk mail.

“I look at the Post Office, and honestly can’t see why we need to have service more than two or three times a week," he continued. "Spending all that money on gas — I can’t see it. We should be spending that money on getting the internet to be more ubiquitous and accessible. North Carolina trees make perfectly good power poles. We don’t need to be cutting them down to make more paper. If the Postal Service eliminated bulk mail, they’d have to employ far fewer people and we could easily go to delivery twice a week.”