LOVELOCK - Randy Pontius may have a challenging job ahead as new leader of the Pershing County Democratic Party. The Lovelock custom machine-shop owner, recently handed the party reins by long-time party Chairman Roger Mancebo, intends to rally local support for President Obama and state Democratic candidates opposed by local GOP supporters.
After meeting with state party leaders, Pontius said he hopes to increase voter registration and energize Democrats for the battle against Republicans. One of his first priorities is counteracting what he calls "misinformation" being spread by opponents of the new health care reform law they call "Obamacare." Pontius defended the Affordable Care Act and says it strengthens support for Obama.
"Nothing is planned at the moment. I just took over as county chair for the Democratic party so I'm waiting to call the state and president's committees to see what's going there and to see what we can get done here," Pontius said. "First, I'd like to have a party so the truth can come out about the health care bill. There were town hall meetings all over the country that Republicans and the Tea-Partiers were crashing and not letting anyone tell what the bill was about. All over the country, no one knew what it meant but they were demonstrating against it."
Pontius believes 95 percent of Americans would be in favor of the health care bill if they truly understood it. He blames the misunderstanding and fear on the conservative media. Conservatives who oppose the health insurance mandate say it will increase instead of reduce health care costs.
"When you say Obamacare, people are afraid because they've been told to be afraid," he said. "They think big government is going to step in and take over their health care."
"Just the fact that more people will have health insurance is a good thing for everyone," he added. "A huge amount of what we pay in our premiums is to cover people who aren't insured."
"We have to buy car insurance, we don't have a choice," Pontius said. "Still, there are lots of people who don't have car insurance that get in wrecks. We have to pay for their carelessness and it's the same thing with health care. We're paying huge amounts (for health care) because so many people aren't covered."
Pontius mentioned a local family with a very sick son whose medical costs exceeded the $1 million limit on their health insurance coverage. It was catastrophic for the family so the state, charities and friends had to step in to assist with the costs, he said.
"One of the No. 1 things driving up costs for counties and states is health care," he said. "People are going bankrupt left and right. Even if you have health care (insurance), if you get something really catastrophic, you can end up being bankrupt. One of the good things about this bill is there's no limit anymore on what an insurance company has to cover."
Pontius said he's pleased with Obama's performance considering the economic situation and foreign policy he inherited from President George W. Bush.
"I don't think anyone could have stepped into the situation that he had with two wars, the economy in the dumpster and please anybody," he said. "A lot of people are saying, 'well, he's such a radical liberal.' He's not a liberal - the liberals don't truly like the president because he's taken too many Republican ideas into practice. A lot of the health care bill was recycled Republican ideas from 1996."
Pontius expressed mixed feelings on what he called sometimes "unavoidable" military conflicts. He's proud of a nephew who's serving in Afghanistan as an Army medical helicopter pilot, but is angered by the costs and the resulting debt.
"It makes me very angry that our country's at war and we're just putting it on a credit card," he said. "One of the reasons that countries don't fight wars, besides what it does to your country, is the loss of your children, but it's also hugely expensive. These last two wars are far and away the most expensive wars in our history and we're not doing anything to try to pay for it."
"I don't like wars but sometimes wars are forced on you," he said. "As far as cleaning up Afghanistan, I don't think we had a choice. But, in times when the whole world is having financial crises, can we really afford to be the policemen for the whole world? Nothing costs more than war and I'm not talking just about money, I'm talking about the lives of our children and everything else."
Pontius has confidence in Obama as both a world leader and an economic leader and believes American jobs will increase if the president is re-elected. Pontius said he has little confidence in Gov. Mitt Romney's abilities despite his business experience.
"You look at the 10 years and the number of jobs produced in this country has gone down and down up until the last three years, it's gone up and up and that's a trend we have to have," he said. "I don't think Romney can do that. Let's say, he hasn't shown that he can do that. You look at all the outsourcing of jobs that he did when he was with Bain (Capital) and when he was governor of Massachusetts. He stepped in and unemployment was at 4.5 percent and when he left it was 6.5 percent. He hasn't shown that he can produce jobs."
Pontius doubts he'll see Obama campaigning outside of Reno or Las Vegas, but he warned other Democratic candidates against ignoring the rural areas. He'd like to see U.S. Representative Shelley Berkley rally voter support in Pershing County. Berkley is attempting to unseat popular incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dean Heller.
"One of the first calls I have to make is to see what we can do with Shelley. Heller's been campaigning here in the north for a long time and the people in the north don't know her," Pontius said. "She can't just say, 'I'll take Las Vegas and then I'll take the state.' If she doesn't campaign in the rurals, she's going to have a hard time winning. It's going to be a very close race."
Being a Democrat, liberal or not, in a small town puts Pontius at odds with many of his conservative customers, but he normally avoids political discussions at work, he said. He and his father Lorin have owned Desert Metal Products, Inc. for 34 years.
"I took this job (as party chairman) because I believe in the Democratic ideals," he said. "The Democrats believe that one of the first jobs we have to do is create jobs for our country and raise the median pay that we're getting. Salaries have to go up in this country. We can't keep giving money to the very, very rich and expect their benevolence to trickle down on us. We've had Reaganomics, the Reagan tax plan for 12, 14 years now and employment went down and down and the economy is deeper in debt. It hasn't worked but that's the only solution that Republicans keep throwing at us - that we need more tax cuts. The truth is the only tax cut you and I have seen, came from the Democrats in 2009. The rest of the tax cuts went to the very, very rich, the 1 percent."
"The only two presidents since World War II that have given us any kind of stabilized budgets are Democrats," he said. "People are going to call me a liar, they're going to say you don't know what you're talking about, but it was Carter and Clinton who gave us balanced budgets. Clinton did it three years out of his eight. The worst deficit spending presidents are Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush."
Pontius said budgets cuts, at the state and federal levels, may be needed but schools and teachers should not be targeted.
"Look at our state - they want to keep saying, the only way to balance the budget is to cut our schools. They can't cut our schools anymore," he said. "I was on the school board, I know what the schools spend and there are no frills over there."
Pontius is not afraid to use the "t" word when it comes to balancing budgets.
"I don't think we can just keep cutting the budget - you have to raise revenues somewhere," Pontius said. "Everybody's going to say there's another tax-and-spend liberal but I'm not a liberal either, I'm a middle-of-a-roader who I think has his head in the right place. You can't just keep cutting, you have to raise revenues somewhere."
To raise revenues, Pontius believes higher taxes will be needed across the board - even for small business owners like himself.
"We may have to go in every single direction. Nobody wants to pay more - especially me," he said, "But I don't think it's fair to target mining and gaming. I think we've all got to pay our share."
Pontius will be pushing local Democrats to show up and vote in November.
"If the Democrats don't come together and vote for the president, we'll have Mitt Romney and I don't think he has anything to offer us," he said. "Is that (business experience) a plus for our president? The most important thing for a president to do is work with Congress. If he can't work with Congress then he's wasting all of our time."
"Obama's got to find a way for people to accept the truth," Pontius said. "People have been hearing a lot of crap on the airwaves. People don't want to believe what they don't want to believe. They believe what they want to hear. So far, in a lot of the rural areas, they say Obamacare is bad and the Democrats are just running the country, but both parties are in power and nothing's getting done. If there isn't some give and take in our government, we're not going anywhere."
"On the local level, I'm hoping to work hard for our state candidates," Pontius said. "We need to work real hard on our state stuff because if we don't balance our state budget, we're in trouble. If it can't create more revenue, just cutting isn't going to do it."
Pontius knows he's a got an uphill battle motivating local Democrats.
While local Republicans are gearing up for the election, Pontius said he's hoping to energize the low-profile but "highly-opinionated" Democrats in Pershing County.
"If I'm going to help, the state party and state candidates need to let me know how. As the election comes around, they're going to want to campaign here and everywhere else."
"I'm hoping to get Democrats excited again," he said. "It's been such a long, negative haul the last several years. Anything the president and any Democrat wants to do has been evil and vile, so Democrats have kind of hidden their head in the sand. They don't want to get in debates with some of the more rabid Republicans. They (Republicans) don't want to pay taxes but our taxes in this country are the lowest they've been in my lifetime. The taxes have never been lower - that is a fact."
Pontius called President Obama "one of us" as opposed to his opponent, Romney, who Pontius believes is out of touch with the struggles of the middle class.
"He's a president who cares about us, he's one of us," Pontius said. "He's not from the 1 percent. His mom was a single mom before he was a teenager. He knows what it's like to struggle."
As a machine shop owner, Pontius sells parts and repairs equipment for, among others, Pershing County farmers.
"I may not after this interview," he said, with a laugh. "There's a huge political divide between the Republican farmers and most of the rest of the county. Other than that, we're a pretty close knit community, but politics is a huge divide around here."
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