Wilkins, McFeeters challenge Palmer in Congressional District 6 forum
The two Republicans challenging U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Hoover, for his seat in Congress on Saturday took him to task for reneging on his promise not to stay in the House of Representatives for more than 10 years and for voting in favor of bills that added to the national debt.
The three men running to represent Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District met with the Mid-Alabama Republican Club at the Vestavia Hills Library in the Forest to tell people why they are running and answer questions about their positions on various issues.
Candidate Gerrick Wilkins of Vestavia Hills in particular took issue with Palmer’s decision to run for a sixth two-year term after promising he would serve no more than five terms, and two audience members questioned the change in position as well.
Palmer admitted he made such a promise and said he really struggled with the decision to go against what he had said previously.
But many people he admires asked him to run again, and he prayed about it and felt God was calling him to run again, he said.
“I feel like the job’s not done,” Palmer said.
If Donald Trump gets elected again as president, there’s probably about a two-year window where some real change can be made, he said. “I really believe God wants me to do this.”
Wilkins, who said he favors term limits and said he would serve no more than three two-year terms, said the Bible teaches people not to break vows. “We don’t need career politicians. We need citizen legislators,” he said.
Candidate Ken McFeeters of north Shelby County said he would commit to serving no more than 10 years but said term limits don’t need to just be for people from Alabama, particularly in the Senate, because the only thing that matters in the Senate in getting things done is seniority.
NATIONAL DEBT, UKRAINE & BORDER SECURITY
McFeeters criticized Palmer and other Republicans for voting with Democrats on the Cares Act, which essentially paid people not to work and added $2 trillion to the U.S. debt. Between the COVID-19 virus and wars, Congress has voted to borrow $10 trillion in the last three to four years, pushing the national debt to $34 trillion, McFeeters said.
“We have to pay it back with real dollars, with real money and real assets,” he said. That amounts to payments of $16 billion a month, McFeeters said.
Wilkins said the national debt has risen from $18 trillion to $34 trillion in 10 years, and that’s the reason for the inflation the country has experienced.
Palmer said he voted against the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which suspended the debt ceiling until 2025, and he spoke against it in leadership meetings.
Wilkins took aim at Palmer’s support of financial aid to Ukraine and noted that Palmer voted to kill the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act in 2018.
“Clearly, border security is the greatest threat we have right now as Americans. There’s an invasion going on at the border,” Wilkins said. “Congress has done nothing to fix it. We continue to prioritize Ukrainian security over American security.”
McFeeters said America’s Ukranian policies are the biggest policy mistake the United States has ever made. Ukraine has zero strategic or geopolitical meaning for the United States, and “we’re going to need Russia to help in dealing with China,” he said.
Palmer said he voted against the two most recent bills to provide financial support to Ukraine and said he voted against the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act in 2018 because it was a bad bill that would have increased the number of illegal immigrants coming into the country and given amnesty to too many already here.
“I’m not going to be there to cast a political vote,” Palmer said. “I’m going to be there to do what’s right.”
Wilkins said the United States needs to secure its border, activate the National Guard and send the military down to eradicate the Mexican cartels.
“It’s horrible to see what’s going on,” Wilkins said. “Congress is not holding the administration accountable.”
Palmer said he, too, favors allowing the states to use the National Guard to secure the border, but killing the cartels won’t solve the problem. “Killing the cartels is like whack a mole,” he said. “You kill 10, 20 more show up. … The way to deal with Mexico is economically.”
The United States does more than $680 billion in trade with Mexico, and “if we put the screws to Mexico on that end, they’ll close the border,” Palmer said.
The border crisis is a national emergency, he said. The Biden administration is not enforcing the laws that Congress has passed, so the country needs to get Biden out of office so those laws can be enforced, he said.
Palmer said he believes the biggest foreign policy threat to the United States is China, followed by state-sponsored terrorist groups. More than 20% of the young people ages 16 to 25 in China are unemployed, and when a country gets in trouble economically and people are unemployed, it goes to war, Palmer said. He’s trying to promote policies that would guard against war with China, he said.
6TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
Forum moderator Justin Barkley asked the candidates about their vision for the future for the Sixth Congressional District.
Palmer said he worked with Sen. Richard Shelby to secure $90 million for the Northern Beltline, which has the potential to help develop a technology corridor from Huntsville to Birmingham, and then he was able to get $369 million more for the Northern Beltline, but it must be used within five years. He also wants to prioritize the widening of Interstate 65, he said.
Wilkins said widening I-65 is more important than the Northern Beltline, and he would work to prioritize business development by doing things such as reclassifying graphite as a strategic resource. Alabama has one of the largest supplies of graphite, and it would be great to advance business in Alabama instead of buying graphite from China, he said.
McFeeters said what he would do for the Sixth Congressional District is give it conservative representation.
“We are the sixth most conservative district in the nation, and we need to act like it, and we need representation in D.C. that is conservative,” McFeeters said. “There’s a trillion dollars a year we pay in interest that Congress created. Only Congress can fix that. We can use that trillion dollars. We can replenish Social Security and for economic development.”
AGRICULTURE, EDUCATION & MORE
All three candidates talked about the need for deregulation to help private businesses and farmers, and all three agreed that the U.S. Department of Education needs to be abolished.
McFeeters said that the federal government should have no role in education and that the U.S. Department of Education was designed to develop compliant workers, not critical thinkers. Wilkins said power over education should be returned to the states and parents. “Parental rights is what we need to be focusing our efforts on,” he said. “All they’re focused on right now is indoctrination. We need less government involvement and more parental involvement in our education system.”
Palmer said government might have a minor role in workforce education, but that work should be done at the state level, not in the federal government.
Former Hoover Councilman David Bradley asked the candidates what they would do to keep the intelligence agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency from favoring Democrats.
Palmer said the Department of Justice and intelligence community have become surrogates of the Democratic Party and major socialistic agendas. The problem is not so much with the workforce but the people at the top appointed by the Biden administration, and those people need to go, he said.
“We need these agencies to protect the country, but not people running them working on behalf of people destroying our country,” Palmer said.
McFeeters said those “alphabet agencies” are corrupt. “Congress created this problem. Congress can fix this problem overnight — just like that.”
Wilkins said Congress needs to hold these unregulated bureaucratic agencies accountable, and that starts with their funding. Some agencies need to be eliminated, and others need to have their funding drastically reduced, he said.
Another audience member asked Palmer why he voted for the Defense Reauthorization Act instead of alternative plans that she said would have ended taxpayer funded abortion travel and taxpayer-funded transition surgeries.
Palmer said he voted in favor of that bill because of the threat of China. The U.S. military is far behind China in weapons deployment, he said. This bill provided equipment the military needs and gave a 5% raise and housing allowances to military members, he said. That same bill banned critical race theory and defunded diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, he said.
“You can’t get everything you want in one bill,” Palmer said. “My first responsibility is the defense of this country.”
Wilkins said the original Defense Authorization Bill was a good bill, but the version that eventually passed was terrible and he would not have voted for it.
Palmer, McFeeters and Wilkins will face one another in the March 5 Republican primary. The winner will face Democrat Elizabeth Anderson in the Nov. 5 general election.
The Sixth Congressional District includes the northeastern part of Jefferson County, a small part of Talladega County, as well as Shelby, Bibb, Chilton, Coosa, Autauga and Elmore counties.