When I entered the race for the 5th Congressional district on November 7, 2009, it was because I felt that we needed a strong conservative in Washington in order to undo the damage career politicians have done to our country. I could not in good faith sit idly by and watch the country I love so much being torn apart piece by piece. Two weeks later, my wife and I found out we were expecting our first child and the campaign suddenly became more personal for me. Our campaign theme of ‘Common Sense for Connecticut’ seemed not only timely but simple and the large group of volunteers who stepped up to help us was nothing short of incredible.

Over the past seven months I have spent a tremendous amount of time speaking with the citizens of the 5th district. These people have made it very clear that they want a real change this November. They have told me they do not want another politician or party insider who will simply go to Washington and become part of the system. I have spent time with all of the candidates in this race at various forums and have found that Mark Greenberg is far and away the most in line with my values and principles. We often joke about who the bigger ‘outsider’ in the race is!

Both Mark and I believe that it will take a true outsider to fix the problems we face in the district, state, and country. We both have been advocates for an open primary process where the voices of all the voters could be heard and would ultimately decide our nominee. To that end, I want to share a story about Mark Greenberg and the quality of people he surrounds himself with. Several weeks ago, I got a call from Mark’s campaign manager that there was going to be a forum in Simsbury and I was not included in the original release of attendees. Of the other four candidates in the race, only Mark’s staff called about the omission and gave me the contact information to make sure that I called and was included.

One of the interesting things that I found during the past several months is that supporters of both Mark and myself seem to be of like minds….essentially we have been dividing the grassroots support in the district. Volunteers have been collecting signatures for us to get on the primary ballot and many have told me they wish they could vote for both of us! This was very apparent during the recent vote in the Independence Caucus which was taken last month. In the initial round of voting which included four candidates, Mark and I received a total of 68% of the vote, compared to just 32% of the combined vote of the other two candidates in the race. A runoff was held between Mark and I, and we came out tied! This campaign has never been about me or any type of political agenda. It has been about bringing real change to Washington DC before it is too late.

Last Sunday, the grassroots got together for an event in Shelton and it was there that I got to meet Mark’s wife Linda and their children for the first time. My wife and I got to spend the afternoon with his family and we got to see Mark, the husband and father, for the first time. My wife played with his son Roarke, while his 3 year old daughter Sky explained to me how ‘Daddy takes the dogs out for a walk at night’ and then she taught me the song, ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ until she decided I was doing it correctly!

My wife and I realized that the best way for us to effect real change this year, for not only all the citizens of the 5th district, but also our soon to arrive child, was to work together with Mark in order to defeat Chris Murphy, the entrenched special interests, and party insiders. To that end, I am announcing today that I will be dropping my bid for Congress and effective immediately begin working to elect Mark Greenberg as the next Congressman of the 5th district. While many of my supporters may at first be disappointed by the news, I am sure they will come to see the same things as I do in Mark, and realize that by electing him, we will be getting all of the things that we have been fighting to achieve over these past several months. I look forward to integrating our two campaigns as seamlessly as possible and ultimately retaking this seat for the citizens of the 5th district.

I want to thank you for coming and look forward to working with all of you in our common mission. I will never be able to thank all the volunteers enough for all they have done, so I will simply say I am always here for you, as you were here for me.

Bill Evans

Insulting voters

Rep. Murphy claims his conversion “has nothing to do with politics.” Actually, Congressman, it has everything to do with political self-preservation and believing voters are stupid enough to buy your snake oil.

THE EMAIL:

Hello Fellow Patriots

Sincerely,
–The CT Independence Caucus Team–
Bill Heering, 5th District Coordinator
Kim Welch and Linda Garamella-Fusco
Region 10 & CT State Representatives

Since I officially entered the race last November 7th, I have worked on walking the streets of the 5th District and talking to everybody I meet. That includes Republicans, Democrats, and Independents…all of which will be needed by our party to beat a well funded incumbent like Chris Murphy. I have said repeatedly at forums across the district that all of the delegates to the GOP convention will most likely be voting for whichever candidate wins the primary in August, so it is more important that people outside of this circle know why I am running for Congress and what I will do differently than the others in the race. I have talked with hundreds of small business owners, their employees, and their customers over the past several months and like me, they are sick of politics as usual from BOTH parties.

I have to say that I am disappointed with one candidate and his attempt to silence the voice of the GOP voters in the 5th District with his letter to another. While I have disagreed with both candidates on occasion during this race, I believe that they are both men of principle despite the fact I believe that I am the best candidate in the race for Congress in the 5th District. Because of my true outsider status, I will be able to really change how Washington, DC operates because I will owe my victory to the citizens of the 5th District and nobody else!

A campaign is hard work and requires a lot of time and energy which is why I have great respect for the other four men in this race. Anybody who knows me will attest that I have never walked away from hard work or doing what I believe needs to be done. To that end, we will be gathering the required number of signatures to be on the August ballot in the GOP primary. Because of the rules of the GOP, this will have to be done in a short time, but with the help of so many volunteers, we will be able to get it done. It is not the easiest way to go, but my parents always told me the most rewarding things in life were sometimes the hardest!

At the end of the primary vote in August, if the majority of voters in the 5th district choose another candidate to run in November against Chris Murphy, I will work just as hard for him as I have for myself. HOWEVER, please let your voices be heard over the party bosses, special interests, and insiders, so that all of us are heard and the best candidate emerges after August. You can do this by making sure all of the candidates get on the August ballot and not just the one the insiders choose. Competition is not only good for consumers in our society, but also in politics so we need to make sure that the best candidate emerges to face Chris Murphy.

I have left the names out of this article because it is not my intention to make any candidate look bad in our race. However, I feel that it is a disservice to not only our party, but also the voters in our district, for the first candidate to request the second candidate to step aside from something they have worked so hard to accomplish over the past year. Worse than that, I feel that if the second candidate actually does give in to the party bosses, it will send a strong signal to the voters just how little he trusts the voters in our district!

Bill Evans

Many people have told me they think that an endorsement from a town committee binds those delegates to support THEIR candidate at the convention. The truth is that these delegates can vote for anybody they decide to, which I feel further leads average people to question the system. If your town committee endorses candidate A, yet the delegate votes for candidate B at the convention, doesn’t it beg the question of why? I realize that many people like the convention system because it reminds us of the ‘old days’ and the fun that these smoke-filled, horse trading, and back slapping events provided.

However, in our current political climate where 50% of the population always seems to be for or against everything and questions every move of both parties, I believe we need to make our endorsement of candidates more than just a collection of connected party insiders endorsing their friends and colleagues. We should open up the process, and dare I say it, let the ‘common folks’ tell us who they prefer. This ‘new’ process may go a long way in gaining their trust and ultimately choosing the candidate most in line with their beliefs and not the well connected. I believe that the current system is the same one that gave us Presidents Bob Dole and John McCain!

Bill Evans
BillEvansForCongress.com

The first myth of being allowed to keep your coverage if you want, will fall victim to the reality that all levels of government find themselves in currently. With the terrible shape our cities and states find themselves in financially, does anyone think for a second that the every increasing costs of health care coverage isn’t going to be target number one in their efforts to reduce budgets as soon as possible? What elected official isn’t going to use the promise of the democrats that ‘everyone is going to receive the same level of coverage that a sitting member of Congress has,’ as they look at dumping their municipal employees into whatever the ‘new’ program consists of. Now, if there is any possibility that the employees may decide to fight this move, imagine for a second the ‘compromise’ that by unloading the burden of providing insurance to these employees, each employee would receive an immediate raise of 10%. With current estimates of health care benefits costing employers 20% of an employees pay, it looks like a win-win for both sides! How many people would turn down a ten percent raise effective immediately, while not having to give up anything in the form of health care coverage? After all, the President of the United States has told them that the evil insurance companies will not be allowed to refuse anybody for any reason! When they need coverage for an illness, they simply walk in and tell the insurance company they are there to get it. Until that day, they will simply have to pay some small fine for not carrying the coverage mandated by the Federal Government, but the large increase in their pay resulting from their employer dropping their coverage will more than offset this fine. Common Sense tells us that with the amount being paid INTO the insurance pool from this sort of a deal being greatly reduced, the added money needs to come from somewhere and that will ultimately be the Federal Government…the same government that gets it’s money through taxes!

Another problem that I see coming down the road when applying simple Common Sense is the quality of care, and more importantly the amount of time the average person will receive with their doctor, once thirty million more people are added to our current system. The simple math of adding ten percent more patients to the workload of the existing number of doctors, tells me that it is going to add at least ten percent more in the area of wait times…if the number of doctors remains the same. However I do not believe that the number of doctors available to the average person will remain constant, but will be reduced! I believe that many of the best doctors will be ‘hired’ by the wealthiest among us to serve as their personal health care specialists. Does anybody think that for a moment in our capitalist system the wealthy are not going to figure out a way to insure that they and their families will continue to receive the best care in the land? And what doctor is going to decide to stay in a system that will be further complicated by a government worker who didn’t get hired at the Department of Motor Vehicles, but went to work at the ‘Department of Health Care Administration’ instead? Rather than dealing with these workers, begging for their reimbursements, the best doctors will simply get a check from their elite group of patients…..sounds like an easy decision to me. Common Sense tells me that the rest of us will be left with the remaining doctors who are not among the best in their fields. Now at some point the Federal Government may outlaw the practice I have described, but until then many of us who are currently getting very good medical treatment will see the real world results of this plan and that is a lower quality of service.

A third problem that the current health care fiasco will have to deal with is a lower number of intelligent young people deciding to go into the profession of medicine. If you are one of the brightest individuals entering college, will you risk the possibility of going into the medical field not knowing the end results of this drastic change in our health care system, or will you decide to go into potentially more lucrative professions such as business or law? Why would you dedicate all of the years to get through medical school, not to mention the costs of it, if you were not sure what the long term prospects of your profession were financially? With the government at some point having to, as the President says, ‘bend the cost curve,’ is there any doubt that some of this bending will be at the expense of the very care givers who we will be asking more from over time? Common Sense tells me that this will result in even less time doctors can spend with patients, longer waits, and ultimately a lower quality of service as we lower the bar for people to become doctors. Medical schools will be forced to lower their standards in order to insure that there are enough people with medical degrees, in order to avoid the public outrage that will follow if people are told they have to wait much, much longer just to see a doctor! Some may call this rationing, but our President has told us this will not happen, so it couldn’t be!

While virtually everyone including myself has said that our current health care system needed to be fixed, we differed on many of the solutions. Rather than dealing with the issues all sides could agree on, and building a better system from there, our current leadership in Washington, DC has decided to ram their own ideas down our throats and has left our country more divided that at any time in my memory. The President who promised he would be a ‘Uniter’ does not seem to care what more than 50% of our country has said regarding his ideas on health care reform. What I fear is even worse, is that by the time our country comes together and realizes that this health care reform fiasco is not what it was promised, it may be too late to even get back to where we are today…..however imperfect it is.

I also pledged on that day to forego many of the perks given to members of Congress and asked others to do the same. While many people have told me that they have been frustrated at times with the lack of coverage our campaign has received considering our popular message, I have assured them that behind the scenes, things are happening and our voices are being heard. I know that many candidates are taking up our fight in other races as well and today I was alerted to a post on the website of Bo ItsHaky mentioning our efforts directly. He correctly points out that all of the five candidates have pledged to not accept a Congressional Pension in our primary race, which I think is a first for any district in our country! I also believe that the five candidates pledging to abide by specific term limits they will live by if elected, resulted in what I believe is the first case of ‘Self term limits’ in the country. His website post can be found at this link: http://www.boforcongress.com/?p=3003

I congratulate Mr. ItsHaky on ‘The buck stops here!’ approach to government and hope others in his race will follow despite the tough race the GOP will find themselves in against career politician Rosa DeLauro. I also thank Rick Torres and Will Gregory for their bold promises on how they personally can change the way business is done in DC, without a single vote being cast on the floor!

While many doubters have told me that one person can’t make a difference in a chamber of 435 members, I disagree. Our race in the 5th district of CT has shown that by having competing candidates, we are able to put our pledges out there, and then ask the others to agree or disagree and let the voters decide. Even if one of the candidates in our primary had believed that he should be allowed to serve in Congress for life, it would be difficult to make the case to primary voters, considering all of the other candidates were committing to term limits! Thus, he would be forced to live by his promise or be called upon for breaking his pledge at a later date.

This is how change happens and I encourage all candidates to make bold, and more importantly, specific promises to their voters. I also encourage voters to ask…no…demand that the people asking for their votes make specific pledges on term limits, pensions, perks, etc.

I thank everybody who has believed and helped in what we are trying to accomplish in order to get our country back on track. I believe that we can bring our message of ‘Common Sense For Connecticut’ to Washington, DC come November and I will continue to be your voice at every event I attend until then. I could not do this alone and will always remember that this was a team effort of average people, and not insiders, once I am elected!

Bill

While I respect the service of the politicians who are truly interested in moving our country forward, the majority of Americans believe our current political system is broken. For far too long, the political class has told the average American what is right and what they should think. Now, after sitting out the process for far too long, average Americans have stepped up and become engaged at a level politicians have feared they may for a very long time. They have told the political class that after trusting them to do the right thing in the past, and being disappointed time and again, this top down political structure will no longer be accepted. These average people, plain spoken and unpolished, have begun to force politicians to do what they were elected to do and address real issues facing our country. They have told the career politicians ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

To this point, I feel that no longer should a select group of ‘politicians’ be the only votes that decide on who our nominees will be going forward at a closed convention this May. This has been the way things have been done in the past and look at where we are in 2010. We can’t allow a handful of people to decide who our nominee will be any longer. We need the voters to tell the elected officials who they should support and not the other way around. The game of endorsements only makes people more skeptical that there are back room deals and insider promises and many question what is promised in return. Especially troubling to me are any endorsements given prior to all the candidates being allowed to address an RTC, or speaking to the person doing the endorsement. How can any endorsement that is made under these circumstances, or before all of the candidates have even entered the race be taken as a serious deliberation by the person or group giving it?

What I propose for future elections is that we go directly to a primary that will pick our nominee, based on the votes of average people, and not connected insiders. This will allow all the candidates to make their case directly to the voters and will force the candidate to answer the questions of the people they want to represent in Washington, DC. Rather than spending hours and hours on the phone trying to persuade one local mayor, councilman, state central member, etc, that they should come out with an endorsement, candidates can instead walk a street in Bethel, or Watertown as I did last week. They can talk to the same people I did who will be directly affected by their policies and these citizens and business owners can tell them what is happening on Main Street instead of K Street.

At the end of the day, I believe every person who has a vote at our convention in May will vote for any of the Republican candidates over their Democrat opponents in November. In order to grow our party and win in November, we need to get the votes of the average citizen and I feel this is best served by walking the streets of our district, and not the halls of the Capitol.

The link to the story is at : http://www.dailyructions.com/that-was-a-conversation-not-an-endorsement

The reason for this post is a story in the Hartford Advocate by Chandra Niles Folsom from February 16th in which she continually used the sexually charged term to refer to the Tea Party attendees. It included a quote from GOP chairman Chris Healy who I am sure will post a comment to the article defending the group of people he is trying to ‘court’ and believes that “We have to work to earn their trust” from.

I have met many of the people who make up the Tea Party movement and they are far from wingnuts or crazies. They are grandmothers and grandfathers who will stand in Southbury, in below freezing weather, to let people know that our country is on the wrong track. They are from all walks of life and income levels and many have never done anything like this before. They dislike Republicans who have sold them out just as much as Democrats and have shrugged off all of the attacks calling them names or questioning their motives. These people do not get bused in by any special interest group, or get a check for their ‘participation’, they simply do it because they feel they have to.
It is time for people to realize that we can have political discussions without the name calling and that in the end, the best way to expose crazies or wingnuts is to let them keep talking! The problem for some of my friends on the left is that they are afraid of where the American people will discover the real ‘wing nuts’ reside!

I often tell people that a leader is one of the first people to join a cause, while a politician is one of the last to join. The politician waits for the polling data, while the leader does what is right regardless of the outcome. I will take a leader who is right 80% of the time over a politician who is right 100% of the time!

Bill Evans