Dr. Paul Broun announced Wednesday that he will run to succeed Rep. Jody Hice in Georgia’s 10th District seat in Congress.
Broun was previously in the U.S. Congress for four terms and represented the 10th District from 2007 until 2015. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2014 and lost the primary to David Perdue. In 2016, Broun challenged the incumbent 9th District Congressman Doug Collins but lost in the primary.
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Now, with Hice, his successor from the 10th District, Jody Hice, stepping down to run for secretary of state, Broun says he is ready to get back into the fight.
“When I left Washington in 2015, it was bad. It is much worse today,” Broun said. “Spending has been spiraling out of control, and Republicans are just as guilty as Democrats. There’s only a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. Spending on such an unprecedented scale will cause hyperinflation and eventually the financial collapse of America.”
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Broun says he plans to run on his record and that voters remember him because he never voted for a tax hike, omnibus bills, or debt-ceiling increases, and he introduced the most targeted spending cuts during his previous time in Congress.
During his tenure in Washington, Broun was known as a maverick, even in conservative circles, and he says he wants to bring his brash conservative nature back to the halls of Congress.
“I’m a Marine veteran and family physician who understands basic economics, that something cannot come from nothing,” he says. “That’s Washington’s worst nightmare.”
Locally, Broun wants to continue the late Congressman Charlie Norwood’s work in keeping Fort Gordon active in Augusta. Broun was a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and served in Afghanistan while he was a member of Congress.
Broun says he also wants to be a good steward to Thurmond Lake as well as the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam.
“The Corps of Engineers either need to manage lake levels better or get out of the way and let someone else do it,” Broun says. “The same goes with the Lock and Dam; it needs to be totally fixed to where it is working at the optimal level.”
The only blemish to be found in Broun’s public service record is controversy over campaign finance irregularities, some of which were discovered after his tenure in office.
In 2014, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) alleged that Broun personally loaned his campaign $179,000, and it was paid back with interest which would have meant that Broun was profiting off of his donors.
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That case was tossed out by the Federal Election Commission because CREW had waited until two months past the statute of limitations to file the complaint. Broun maintained he took a second mortgage out on his home and that the bank, not he, received the interest on the loan.
In 2016, Broun’s office was alleged to have used $43,750 in taxpayers money to hire the Washington, D.C.-based consultant Brett O’Donnell, who was known in conservative circles as the “tea party whisperer,” to give campaign advice.
Eventually, Broun’s former chief of staff, David Bowser, was convicted of three counts of making false statements, one count of obstruction of proceedings and one count of concealment of material facts.
“He (Bowser) was railroaded. I fully believe that,” Broun says. “The grand jury looked into everything and found I did nothing to get indicted for. I cooperated fully and they found I had done nothing wrong. Besides, the statute of limitations is up on that, it’s history.”
Broun says he is ready to take back his old seat and fight against the Democrat-led majority in Congress.
“This is not so much about what I will do as much as what I will prevent from happening,” Broun said. “I will expose and block the liberal agenda with every fiber of my being. I did it before, and I will do it again. Everything we stand for in Georgia is at stake.”
Scott Hudson is the Editorial Page Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com.
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