Whit Hughes isn’t out on the campaign trail just to promote his own candidacy for the 3rd District’s seat in Congress.
“Part of what we’re doing is just making sure that people know there’s an election coming up,” Hughes told the Enterprise-Journal on Friday.
That election is Tuesday, and features primary elections for both the Democratic and Republican parties for the state’s four U.S. House seats as well as Roger Wicker’s U.S. Senate seat.
The general election will be held on the first Tuesday in November and feature those races as well as a special election for the state’s other U.S. Senate seat plus circuit, chancery, appeals and Supreme Court judges.
Hughes said more people need to participate in the political process and be more informed about the candidates and issues.
He said as he was leaving one campaign event and heading to another, someone from across the street shouted out, “Hey, Whit! I’m behind you! You’re going to be our next senator!”
“I waved and said thank you,” Hughes said. “I just didn’t have time right then to educate him.”
He said he has tried to promote participation and voting in all 24 counties in the 3rd District. He has visited and received contributions in all of those counties, he added, and has a full schedule of events around the district into Election Day.
It’s important to be in all those places, he said.
“A lot has changed in politics in the last 20 years, in terms of technology and social media,” Hughes said. “But folks still want to meet you. If you’re going to represent 24 counties, you need to see the folks that are there.”
Hughes, one of six candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the 3rd District seat, said his conversations with voters have led him to believe they want “a strong leader with sharp elbows and a backbone” who isn’t in place to “win the 24-hour news cycle.”
He stands out in the race, he said, because he is not a career politician who has to win the race “to get my payoff by stepping up to the next level.”
“I entered this race because I care,” he said. “I believe if you don’t have different, better people, nothing will change. We need to change the direction in Washington.”
Hughes espouses traditional Republican positions, including cutting spending.
“I believe if we go agency by agency, we can find efficiencies,” Hughes said. “We have a $4.4 trillion budget: $2.7 trillion of that is mandatory ... $1.3 trillion is discretionary.”
He pointed specifically to foreign aid as an area that could be examined, with support for Israel retained but aid to Iran, under the nuclear deal recently canceled by President Donald Trump, on the chopping block.
He said programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security should be amended as well, to preserve them for those who need them.
People “have been paying into these programs for a lifetime, and they need these programs to be there for them,” he said. “We need to stop kicking the can down the road on Capitol Hill.”
He said more transparency in Washington would be helpful, especially on budget matters, where Congress produced a 2,600-page budget bill and pushed to pass it in 36 hours.
“As a freshman (Congressman), I couldn’t move the needle overnight,” Hughes said. “But we have to start somewhere. Anyone can look at our spending and see that it’s not sustainable.”
He also espouses sending money from Washington to the states as block grants with few strings and allowing the states to experiment and develop their own programs for using those dollars.
He said he broadly supports Trump and his policies, though he has doubts about the wisdom and effectiveness of deploying tariffs against trading partners and allies.
“I’m not sure there’s ever a winner in a trade war,” he said.
