Chris Carney vying for Sherwood’s seat

PA veteran is among 50 Democratic vets who aim to win back the House

By TOM KANE

DUNMORE, PA — Democratic candidate Chris Carney of Dimock is a recent veteran who aims to unseat entrenched Republican Congressman Don Sherwood of the 10th Congression-al District—a district that is strongly Republican.

Not only is Carney a veteran, he was an intelligence officer for the U.S. Navy, which took him to Saudi Arabia before 9/11 and to the Pentagon after-9/11 as a senior advisor on intelligence and counter-terrorism issues.

Carney, who is no longer on active duty now, remains a Lt. Commander in the Naval Reserves.

Because the 10th Congressional District has been traditionally Republican, Carney’s task will be daunting. Nevertheless, he remains confident that Sherwood’s time has passed.

“Over 95 percent of the time, Sherwood supported Bush’s political agenda,” Carney said. Carney said that siding with Bush in the November election would be a liability since the president’s popularity has plummeted.

Carney is among a cadre of 50 Democratic veterans running for Congress. Eight of the 50 are Iraq-combat veterans. It would take 15 seats in the next election for them to control the house, Carney said.

Recently, a column by national political commentator, Joe Klein, appeared in Time Magazine that highlighted Carney as Karl Rove’s worst nightmare: a youthful, attractive veteran of the current war who considers the president’s actions in Iraq misguided and even deceitful.

“I think the president is lying to us,” Carney said.

Carney, 33, who has a PhD and teaches political science at Penn State in Dunmore, spoke at a meeting of AFL-CIO members on March 22. The union, which represents state and municipal workers and teachers, is considering endorsing him. The meeting was the kick-off of a national campaign by the union to take over the House of Representatives and the state house in Pennsylvania.

“When I’m on the stump, I find that the primary issue on people’s minds is health care,” Carney said. “Over 48 million Americans have no health care and 25 percent of American children are not covered. This is an enormous issue.”

Carney told the members that he is in favor of a national minimum wage of around $7.25 an hour.

During the Iraq War, Carney spent his service time at the Pentagon. He did not serve in Iraq, although he has strong feelings about the war and the administration’s handling of it.

“The war is a mess, and I resent the president’s recent remark that the troops won’t come home until after his presidency. My plan is that for every wholly trained Iraqi battalion that exists, there should be an American battalion sent home,” he said.

Carney admitted that he does not trust the president’s advisors.

“The intelligence community has been sporadic for many years,” he said. “They have gotten so bureaucratic-oriented instead of intelligence-oriented that they started to miss lots of clues. The FBI and the CIA never talk to each other.”

Carney criticized Sherwood for voting for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

“CAFTA causes American manufacturing jobs to be shipped to Latin America,” he said. “One silver lining in this is that the dairy industry would be able to sell their products in Latin America.”

Carney wants to take away tax incentives from American companies who ship their jobs overseas.

Carney, a Roman Catholic and father of five children, is a pro-life candidate who would not actively work to reverse Roe vs. Wade. “We have to focus on promoting adoptions and the preventing of pregnancy among youths by means of a better sex education… I don’t have the right to tell a woman what she must do.”

The 10th Congressional District includes all of Pike, Wayne, Susquehanna, Bradford, Sullivan, Wyoming, Montour, Union, Snyder, Northumberland, and parts of Lackawanna, Lycoming and Luzerne counties.