CUMBERLAND —The six Republican candidates hoping to represent the 11th Congressional District seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Marietta) squared off in a candidate debate Saturday night in the ballroom of the Cobb Galleria Centre.
The winner of the May 20 Republican primary is expected to take the seat given there are no Demo-cratic candidates in the race.
Rose Wing, 1st vice chair of the Cobb GOP, numbered the audience at between 650 and 700 people.
The debate was a fairly tame affair with perhaps the most unscripted moment occurring when the microphone system died as Marietta’s Tricia Pridemore was answering a tax question. While the crowd waited several minutes for the problem to be fixed, some of the candidates pulled out their iPhones and snapped pictures of the audience, sparking amused laughter.
Stop Obama with the power of the purse, Barr says One of the questions candidates were asked is how they would serve as a check against the “uncontrolled power” of President Barack Obama.
Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr of Smyrna was first to answer.
“As the House of Representatives member who first called for the impeachment of President Clinton, I have a little familiarity with how to stop a president run amok,” Barr said to applause.
Barr said the president cannot spend “a dime” on the running of the White House without funds appropriated by law from Congress.
“That starts in the House,” Barr said. “And when a president signs an executive order that goes beyond his authority, which we have seen this president do time and time again, it’s time for the House of Represen-tatives to attach a rider to the White House appropriations bill denying any money can be spent for that particular order.”
Barr said the House can do the same thing for any government agency.
“That will do one of two things,” he said. “Either force the president to sign it because he needs that spending bill, or it forces him to do what we did with President Clinton, it forces him to come to the table and talk about these issues on our terms. We have that power in the House. We need to define the rules of the playing field and actually hold this president accountable and stop him through the power of the purse strings.”
Who won?
Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University who is not endorsing any of the candidates, served as one of the moderators.
Swint said after the debate the evening’s winner couldn’t be chosen based on applause given how many of the candidates’ supporters were in attendance.
“If you were looking for thoughtful answers, stuff that’s not just canned in a box, I thought Barry Loudermilk did a good job of answering the questions in a thoughtful way, putting forth ideas that aren’t focus-grouped and ballot-tested and all that,” Swint said. “I thought Tricia Pridemore did a good job, too, of answering the questions in a thoughtful way. If you were looking for red meat, it was Bob Barr. And Ed Lindsey did a little bit of both. He had some red meat in there, but I think he had some interesting things to say, too.”
As for who Swint believes won the evening: “If I was an unattached voter and just was coming in trying to learn, I would probably go with Loudermilk, but that’s just an off-the-cuff reaction,” he said.
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