WPSU is interviewing candidates running for Congress in our listening area. Democrat Zach Womer is running for the U.S. House of Representatives, 15th district. The district covers a large stretch of central and northern Pennsylvania, including Centre, Clearfield, Cameron, Elk, Forest, Warren, McKean and Potter counties. WPSU also interviewed the Republican in the race, incumbent Glenn “GT” Thompson.
Here is Zach Womer's conversation with WPSU:
Anne Danahy
Zach Womer, thank you so much for coming in to talk with us.
Zach Womer
Absolutely, it's a pleasure.
Anne Danahy
You live in Centre County. You're currently in law school at Penn State. Why did you decide to run for Congress, and what makes you qualified?
Zach Womer
So starting with the first part, why I'm running for Congress. So I'm from Philipsburg. I live in Philipsburg, and more broadly, politics seems to be a lot of discussion, but it seems the discussion is not usually about the issues that are present in Pennsylvania. If you just look at the debate where they talked about Pennsylvania, it was almost exclusively in the frame of fracking, which, I'm not anti-fracking or anything, but there's a lot of issues in Pennsylvania, specifically where we live. You have hospitals closing. You have a lack of jobs. I mean, there's counties in this district that have less jobs today than they had in the 1990s so it's a huge problem. You're talking about getting smaller tax bases, less services for people. I mean, you have Forest County in the district, which doesn't have full-time ambulance services, which is a huge problem. So I just saw a lot of problems in a region that are not necessarily partisan, but a lot of the speech and debate broadly in politics is partisan, which I think gets in the way of good policy. I'm most prominently focused on helping the district, if that comes out in a Democratic bill, a Republican bill, I really don't care, because I'm just focused on improving the region. And I've lived here my whole life. My family, my dad's lived here his whole life, and I'm the 12th generation of my family to live in the area. And I've seen a drastic change just in my lifetime. You've seen the loss of manufacturing jobs because of NAFTA. You see all these problems, and I didn't see it being addressed. And I felt like I had the voice and the knowledge to attack that issue, as it pertains to qualifications. So a lot of people are not necessarily understanding that the purpose of the House is to reflect the district, and not necessarily having representative that's like, oh, they did this. They did this. They do this. It's about reflecting the district. So the closer you are to the problems of the district, the better equipped you are to actually represent them. That was actually part of the Federalist Papers. They didn't say, we want this statemanly, you know, dignified person. That's the Senate. The House is meant to reflect the will of the people at the time that they're being represented. So having someone like myself, who's worked in construction, who has had a tough life, who understands the issues and has the personal connection to them, I think better represents the district than like a long-term incumbent. I see the issues every day. When I walk out my door in Phillipsburg, it's not peaches and cream. You know, it's not like State College. You see the issues every single day. You see the opioids, you see the struggles people deal with. And I think it makes you more equipped to deal with those issues. But, you know, being a law student, being someone that is educated, I do have the, you know, the hard skills to navigate those issues. It's not like I'm coming in off the street with no understanding of the law. I'm going to be a lawyer by the time I'm in office. So it's a big issue in terms of representing people where they are.And that's what I guess, brought me into it, but also why I'm qualified, because the most important attribute is representing the district you represent.
Anne Danahy
You've been critical of the Democratic Party at times, including for what you described as being anti-coal. Do you consider yourself to be pro-coal or, what is behind that comment? What does that mean?
Zach Womer
Yeah, so if you just look at, you know, the electoral consequences in coal country, you have Greene County, Pennsylvania, which voted for Democrats almost the entire 20th century and is now voting for Republicans. The same is true in West Virginia. Same is true with our region where there's a voting consequence. You see people saying, "I don't want Democrats because they're hurting my industry," but also a practical consequence. You saw Obama's EPA era regulations around coal, which put a lot of people out of work. And so it's not necessarily about coal as a commodity. I'm not like, you know, going to sleep at night and dreaming about coal. I'm concerned with when we implement these regulations, are we concerned what happens to people afterwards? Because there really hasn't been an effort to retrain miners, to bring new economics into the area, and that's why I'm endorsed by the United Mine Workers, and their position is, look, we don't have to mine coal forever, but you're going to crush our local economies. And as we know, in the United States, when jobs leave, there's never a significant effort to replace them. You saw it with manufacturing, with NAFTA, you see it with the coal industry. And there's going to be a situation where, even if I'm a Democrat, I have to speak out and say this is wrong for our community. You know, we have to replace jobs if we lose jobs.
Anne Danahy
You've been critical of free trade. Are there specific steps that you think Congress should take, and would you support the tariffs that former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump has proposed for Chinese goods?
Zach Womer
Yeah. So what's interesting about trade is that you have a situation where Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are both ardently opposed to free trade. They're people which no one thinks are similar in any way, but they're both in the same side of the issue. I think blanket tariffs are a bad idea, especially for agricultural producers. That's going to be a problem as you export crops, because we are, we're not a net exporter, but we do export a lot of crops. But targeted tariffs on industries are important to certain states. So Pennsylvania, with our steel industry, I believe we should have tariffs on steel to make sure that U.S. Steel stays in the state of Pennsylvania. So I believe in targeted tariffs that are a little bit more well thought out. Across the board tariffs would be, they say it'll raise prices, but actually it gets into a bigger issue of corporate consolidation, and whether there's going to be a competitive market. Hypothetically, if you have a tariff with a competitive market, prices won't go up, because it's tied to the actual cost of producing the good, instead of the speculative cost of what people will pay.
Anne Danahy
What do you see as the biggest issue facing Americans today, and what would you like to see Congress do about it?
Zach Womer
I guess that's a kind of a abstract question, because there's issues of how we talk to each other, there's issues that are pertaining to policy. As it pertains to policy, I do think, and I hope this is the view of all people, that corporations are kind of the biggest issue in this country. The consolidation we see in, you know, agriculture, news, there's so many industries that are consolidated according to our Department of Justice, and very little action is taken. So when we talk about agriculture, one thing that the Big Four in meat processing is pushing back on is a new provision from the USDA, which is going to use the Stockyards and Packers Act to force transparency on chicken producers. And you might say, "Well, why do you want to do that?" Well, if family farmers are putting into that, they're selling chickens to this company, and the company has all the power in the market, they're setting the price, and they're also setting the price for consumers. So a strong antitrust agency like the Stockyards and Packers Association is essential to having free markets that lower prices and have the effect of, you know, weakening the power of corporations in this country. And that's something that's bipartisan. If you poll Republicans and Democrats, they both believe corporations have too much power in this country. So overarching, I'd say corporate attitudes are a huge problem. You look at stock buybacks, which are huge issue, where they were illegal until the 1980s. And I was just watching something with U.S. Steel, where they're saying, well, we can sell Nippon because they're going to reinvest in the community, but we won't reinvest because we're going to invest in stock buybacks. Stock buybacks are not good for anyone. They're only good for the shareholders, which I'm sure the shareholders have got their fill in this country.
Anne Danahy
Zach Womer, thank you so much for coming in to talk with us.
Zach Womer
Absolutely.
