Gainesville Teacher to Campaign Against Ninth District Congressman Doug Collins

GAINESVILLE, Ga. – Qualifying is still a year away and there is the matter of paying the $5,000 qualifying fee, but Democrat Josh McCall says he will campaign for U.S. Congress in Georgia’s Ninth District during the 2018 election.

The 36-year-old McCall, a teacher at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, has never run for public office. His opponent will be veteran Congressman Doug Collins (R-Ga.) who will be seeking his fourth term.

McCall does possess the wide-eyed optimism of a newcomer in the political arena.

“I actually do think I have a chance to win because the (political) winds are shifting faster than they ever have before,” McCall said during a sit-down interview with Fetch Your News.

“It has to do with the inequality in our financial structures. The way they are set up, certain of our financial institutions are international in scope. They hold a lot of the world’s capital and they’re hoarding it. Change is going to happen because the people at the bottom are going to keep getting fed up and may actually do something about it.”

McCall acknowledged that he is starting at a huge fundraising deficit.

“Mr. Collins has about $1.8 million in his coffers waiting to be spent but I don’t think money is having as big an influence anymore. There is social media, Twitter and Facebook,” McCall said. “We saw that Donald Trump didn’t spend nearly as much as Hillary Clinton did and her spending turned out to be a weakness for her.”

McCall admits the Democrat Party is in disarray “A lot of people have looked at the election of Donald Trump as a great disaster, and in a lot of ways it was for a lot of people,” he said. “But, in a different way, maybe it’s good that the Democratic Party was laid waste. Now, people who have real democratic principles, who actually believe in the equality of every single person can actually come up from the bottom. I believe that this is a really golden moment in history if the Democratic Party wants to become a party again.”

The following represents Mr. McCall’s views on a wide variety of issues, including Obamacare which he called a “complete disaster.”

On Obamacare, he said:

“I believe there was a ticking time bomb embedded in Obamacare from the beginning. Kaiser Permanente, one of the biggest donors to the Obama campaign wanted a return on their investment. Forcing Americans to pay into a for-profit system was always going to be a disaster. Government should not be telling you that you have to pay for insurance.”

On Government-Funded Universal Healthcare, he said:

“If we had a National American Health Service, and got rid of some of the middle men like the pharmaceutical companies who get to set their own rates that would be better. Healthcare companies that put a price tag on peoples’ lives are not only economically wrong, but morally wrong. I would work toward getting guaranteed universal access to life-saving healthcare for every single American man, woman and child without exception.”

On immigration, he said:                                                                       

“There has to be reform, but it has to be humane and economical. We need to offer people who have worked here for five years in an honorable trade, have no criminal record, and have been good citizens, a path to citizenship. It is wrong to break up families who have been here for decades and committed no crimes. I believe the current system is unjust. You know they’re not going to stop people like you and I. They’re going to stop people with a different skin color or different accent.”

On sanctuary cities, he said:

“Nobody knows better the risks involved in those cities than those who run the cities. I do believe it is federal government overreach to threaten to withhold federal funding. So I would not support that.”

On jobs, he said:

“Government not only saves jobs, it creates jobs. One thing I would do is get rid of standardized testing. A lot of good technical programs are being cut because they don’t prepare students for the tests. I would offer students expanded technical and vocational programs based on the economy’s needs and we would need a federally-mandated program to do that. I would also increase infrastructure spending.”

On corporate taxes, he said:

“The 35 percent corporate tax rate is fiction. Most of the biggest companies don’t pay it.  I would be fine with the 35 percent but they aren’t paying it like I do. They are hoarding the money overseas. I would work to write laws that keep people from hoarding it overseas.”

On Planned Parenthood, he said:

“I don’t believe in taxpayer funded abortion. The Hyde Amendment prohibits that. But only about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood services are abortions. I haven’t seen any evidence that federal tax money goes to pay for abortions. The part of Planned Parenthood we are funding is breast cancer screens, pregnancy testing and things like that. If we cut funding for Planned Parenthood, a lot of women will suffer.”

Georgia’s 9^th Congressional District is located in the northeastern portion of the state and includes Banks, Dawson, Elbert, Fannin, Franklin, Gilmer, Habersham, Hall, Hart, Jackson, Lumpkin, Madison, Rabun, Stephens, Towns, Union, and White counties. Parts of Clarke, Forsyth, and Pickens counties also lie within the district.