Being an outsider has been a recipe for success my entire life.
To build my family, I didn’t just have to push cultural norms. I had to challenge - and help change - the law just to adopt my daughter twenty-one years ago. I had to ignore the political rhetoric on all sides, breakthrough barriers, and get it done.
Building success in business has been the same, even with a few failures along the way. It hasn’t been complicated. It’s been a simple matter of approaching problems and challenges with “I can”, instead of accepting all the reasons why I couldn’t. Life isn’t about what the politicians, the media or, especially, extremists make it out to be. It’s about taking responsibility, believing in oneself and the opportunities offered by a great nation, and not being afraid to succeed…or fail.
When I decided to run for Congress, it was about the disillusionment in America that our politicians have masterfully created to tear at the very fabric of America’s promise. The promise that allowed this gay man to have the greatest gift of family. The promise that allowed me to achieve success. The promise that I am determined to preserve and protect for my children and yours. I can’t sit by and do nothing while the politicians don’t just allow, but promote, the division and dysfunction we see today in our great nation.
I asked no political party for permission to run. Nor have I aligned myself with any of the tribes, including in my own Republican party or those of any elected official. Why? Because they’ve failed to demonstrate unity and any real belief in America, instead setting out toward cultural divides that undermine our basic American values of inclusion and opportunity.
We must build back the American dream, starting with strong families, regardless of their makeup, and teaching our children that, despite the struggles America has faced, we succeeded and continue to learn something other nations around the world haven’t achieved in thousands of years.
There are reasons people from around the world want to come to America. It’s not because of our mistakes, but because we rose above as a nation.
I understand struggles, hatred, and intolerance. However, I never look at ignorance as a weapon to harm me, but as an opportunity to prove the intolerant and doubters wrong and demonstrate to my children that America allows you to win despite the ignorance and obstacles, we see all around us – many of which are compliments of our elected officials from both political parties.
I am a center-right Republican who believes in some simple documents that bind us all together as one nation: The Constitution. The Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. These are the foundations about which we instruct our children and immigrants seeking citizenship.
If all that makes me a political outsider, then it is a label I will proudly wear. However, I am an insider among parents who want society and teachers to let us raise our children according to OUR values – not those of bureaucrats. I’m an insider among those who believe we cannot steal one more dollar from our children or our grandchildren. We talk about history without looking at just the past few decades when millennials and Gen Z became the first generations to do worse financially than their parents.
I will fight to get government out of the way so that the next generation can once again see and touch the American Dream, rather than being held down by a government that does too much and spends too much.
I’ve learned in my brief time in politics that I just don’t fit in any of the corners to which partisans are today assigned. If that’s a problem, then so be it. But I’ve also learned that the vast majority of the good people in this great state don’t fit in those corners either. They just want to make things better, and I just want to help. Politics and parties be damned.
Original source can be found here
