Former congressman Paul Broun is angling to get his old seat back now that his successor, Rep. Jody Hice, is running for secretary of state.
Broun, an Oconee County physician, served as Athens’ congressman from 2007 through 2014. He came out of nowhere to win a special election in which, lacking a Democrat in the runoff, most Athens voters supported him because his opponent had stated that he wanted to bomb Athens except for the football team.
While in office, Broun was known for attention-grabbing antics like comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin, warning that Obama would create a private Gestapo and declaring that evolution is a “lie straight from the pit of Hell.” While running unsuccessfully for Senate in 2014, he gave away an AR-15. It sounds like we can expect more of the same in 2022:
Dr. Paul Broun, M.D. will run to succeed Rep. Jody Hice in Georgia’s 10th District seat in Congress. Broun previously represented the district from 2007 until 2015.
“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.”
Broun says voters can know what he will do because he never voted for a tax hike, omnibus bill, or debt ceiling increase and introduced the most targeted spending cuts during his previous time in Congress.
“The Biden-Harris Administration wants an endless emergency to justify more lockdowns, open borders, nationalized elections with no voter identification, unconstitutional gun controls, critical race theory in our schools, and massive tax hikes,” Broun says.
“With one-party rule in Washington, we need a proven fighter for liberty and freedom to restore constitutional restraints on the federal government. I’m a Marine veteran and family physician who understands basic economics, that something cannot come from nothing. That’s Washington’s worst nightmare.”
If elected, Broun will enter Congress with seven and a half years of seniority, which gives him priority to become the highest-ranking Republican on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Broun chaired that subcommittee when Republicans still held the majority and has pledged to investigate the origins of COVID-19 and the public health response to it if he regains that gavel.
“This is not so much about what I will do as much as what I will prevent from happening,” Broun concluded. “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 northeast Georgia is at stake.”
So far, Broun is the only declared candidate for Hice’s 10th District seat, which covers an area from Athens to Augusta to Milledgeville. Other potential candidates include state Rep. Houston Gaines (R-Athens), Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Mariah Parker and Mike Collins, a Republican who lost to Hice in 2014.
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