| By Vernon Robison Moapa Valley Progress Published June 2, 2010
Ask the United States Senate candidate, Bill Parson how he is doing currently in the polls and he is likely to shrug his shoulders and say, “I don’t know, I’m not in the polls.” He has been on the campaign trail longer than any of the front-running candidates but he has often complained about being overlooked by the media and the political party establishment. Parson, a Moapa resident, began his unorthodox Senate campaign back in late 2008. Since then he has scoured the state trying to get his grassroots message out to anyone who will listen. |
 U.S. Senate candidate and Moapa resident, Bill Parson, speaks to a small showing at a Meet and Greet held at the Overton Community Center last week. |
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While his competitors have spent a good deal of time raising millions of dollars for their campaigns, Parson has done virtually no outside fundraising. Instead he has spent nearly $70,000 of his own money on a very lean campaign run by himself only, with no paid campaign staff.
Actually, he has preferred it that way. “Americans are upset with all the money flowing into the political process,” Parson said. “They recognize the corrupting influence it brings to the process. I wanted to be free of that and keep my message pure.” Parson spoke to a handful of local residents that showed up at the Overton Community Center on Tuesday, May 25 for a Meet and Greet event. “Pollsters are in the business of shaping people’s actions,” Parson said in answer to the question of how he was doing in the polls. “When the poll asks you which candidate you will vote for and then only gives you three options out of the dozen candidates how will you get a real answer? There are a lot of things that the polls don’t show.” Parson said that, as he has travelled the state, people approach him. “They recognize me from some political event or other and they want to voice their support to me,” he said. “That kind of support doesn’t show up in the polls. So how will it all pan out? I don’t have a clue.” But win or lose, Parson is determined to continue waging the battle for his principles. Those principles are, quite simply, a return to the U.S. Constitution as it was originally intended. This, he says, is what sets him apart from his many Republican opponents. “The Constitution is a black and white issue,” Parson said. “It is fully defined by the founding fathers. We know exactly what was intended. My competitors are fond of saying that they are Constitutionalists but then you have to listen to what they say; things like ‘We’ve got to do something to create jobs’ or ‘We need to return to being a Christian nation’. As if it was a clear Constitutional principle that government should manage these things. But the Constitution gives government no place in these things. Some of these things may be a problem, but they won’t be solved by government stepping in. Rather they will be solved by government stepping out.” Though he is running as a Republican, Parson says he is a different class of Republican than his opponents. “I’m not really comfortable with being called a conservative,” he said. “That entails keeping something the way it is. I don’t want that. The system is broken. It has wandered off of its original footings. I want to go back to what the Founding Fathers envisioned.” To Parson, this means getting away from the current tendency to “federalize” every problem. Parson would begin by identifying federal departments and agencies that operate without enumeration of power from the Constitution. He lists a few: the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy. “These entities are usurping powers of the states that were never given in the Constitution,” Parson said. Parson feels these huge federal bureaucracies should be phased out with their functions being returned to the states. Parson also proposes the repeal of the 16th Amendment which provided for the federal income tax. He advocates the dismantling of the Internal Revenue Service and replacing the income tax with a Fair Tax. This Fair Tax would be essentially a national sales tax. Parson recognizes what he is advocating won’t happen overnight. “The move away from Constitutional principles has been going on for 100 years now,” he said. “It is not going to be fixed right away. It will take a generation of fighting to educate today’s youth.” “We won’t solve it in 2010,” Parson concludes. “But we can send a clear message that starts the ball rolling. We can send a message to those currently in power that ‘We the People’ are coming for you.” TELL US WHAT YOU THINK! Comment on this story. Send a letter to the editor by email, click here: EMAIL US |
