Politics

Tom Hill launches another run for Congress

By Bill Moss, Published: March 6, 2014

Tom Hill says he will base his campaign for Congress on appealing to voters face to face.

"I want to change the way things are being done in Washington," he said. "People (who run for Congress) say that but they don't really mean it in most cases. They go up there like Mark Meadows has done and fit right into the old system and they align with special interest groups and we can't get any meaningful reform."
Among his priorities is immigration reform.
"Mark keeps talking about what he is going to do for immigration and to help the farmers and really it's just all talk," he said. "John Boehner came out and said he believed he could get a compromise immigration bill passed and then he met with Mark and the other tea partiers and he came back and said 'I can't do it.' ... I want to get a meaningful immigration reform policy passed and we can't do that if we continue to elect people like Mark and the other tea partiers. I want to emphasize I'm not attacking Mark personally. He just has that tea party mentality that government is bad until I need it."
A Zirconia resident and retired physicist who worked in the aerospace industry, Hill would also target U.S. laws that permit large corporations to avoid income taxes.
"The nation bailed out Bank of America and they paid us back by moving offshore so they don't have to pay any taxes," he said. "There are 15 large corporations that don't pay an income tax and that's costing us 300 billion to a half trillion dollars. People don't understand that. That's the reason we have this budget shortfall.... That's a major issue with me — is to close these offshore tax loopholes."
"The second thing is to stop these wars," he added. The Obama administration says "we'll be out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. We don't know that that's true. If we close down Afghanistan I have complete faith we'll find another one to jump into. It's the military forces in Washington that push for these foreign conflicts."
A retired physicist who worked in the aerospace industry, Hill ran for the Democratic nomination for the 11th Congressional District in 2012, receiving 14 percent of the vote in a three-way primary that also included then incumbent Rep. Heath Shuler's former chief of staff and Asheville City Council member Cecil Bothwell. Hill faces Keith Ruehl of Barnardsville in the May 6 primary. The winner will face Meadows, who drew no Republican opponent.
Wouldn't Hill have a huge campaign finance gap against Meadows?
"Yes, I will have a problem there," he said. "But I am trying to run a different kind of campaign. I'm not trying to run a money campaign. I believe if you get out as the saying goes flesh to flesh and meet people where they stand you can overcome that. It's just as important to me to win the election without resorting to selling out to these moneyed interest as it is to win period."

Hill said the key to defeating Meadows is holding all the Democrats and capturing the independent voters.

Asheville Tea Party leader “Jane Bilello called him the poster boy of the tea party and I don’t think that’s what people of our district deserve,” he said. “I think Mark Meadows has made some very serious mistakes and I expect him to continue to make because he lives in what appears to me an echo chamber of the Tea Party.”Hill acknowledges that he is out of the Democratic mainstream on several issues, including his support for nuclear energy and his opposition to gay marriage.

"I have no hatred toward the homosexuals," he said. "I believe that they have the right to live as they see fit and form the unions that they choose to form. I just draw the line at calling that a marriage. ... If I'm the nominee and I'm facing Mark Meadows he is not going to be able to point the finger at me and say I'm pro-gay marriage."
Hill just finishing writing a physics book, "A Velocity Dependent Form of Gravitational Force," that he wants to publish on line.
"I'm 76," he said, "but in the prime of life. People say, 'Tom, you're too old to do this.' No I'm not. As long as God grants me good health I understand things better than I did when I was a young man."