Our Constitution is the basis for the freedoms we enjoy as Americans, and I pledge, as a Constitutional Conservative to work hard to defend the Constitution from the many attacks that are being made upon it. Our founding fathers were inspired by a strong belief in God and Judeo-Christian values and that formed the basis of our Constitution which gave us the Rule of Law. We must be vigilant to maintain our Constitutional republic and not let America as we know it slip away from us.

A republican form of government requires that our elections be honest, proper, and fair, but we have recently seen efforts to undermine the integrity of our election process various places around the country.

North Carolina must work hard to insure our election process is honest and above board.

That means closely monitoring the equipment, policies and procedures used to conduct elections.

It means achieving photo voter ID for elections, which the majority of states and almost all developed countries around the world already have.

Growing up with a father who worked in law enforcement, as Havelock Police Chief and as a military CID investigator at Cherry Point, instilled in me a strong support for our law enforcement community.

Some parts of our country are seeing an alarming uptick in crime, and if we are not careful, we will see that locally. I will fully support our law enforcement community, support bail laws that keep those who are a danger to society behind bars, and support maintaining punishment levels that will deter those who contemplate criminal activity.

The politically motivated orgy of looting, vandalism, and arson that struck our country in 2020 must not be allowed to be repeated. Raleigh was hit, as was Greenville, here in eastern North Carolina. I will support efforts to toughen the response to this sort of crime. Peaceful protest is fine, but mob violence is not.

Families are the cornerstone of our culture, but the traditional concept of the American family which is based on Judeo-Christian values has been under attack in recent years. Too often, government policies, such as in our welfare programs, have worked to tear families apart instead of strengthening them.

I will work for policies that strengthen instead of weaken families, and I will work to protect the traditional American family and its values, such as promoting abstinence and fatherhood.

In recent years, alternative lifestyles have been allowed to run roughshod over traditional family values and religious liberty, and this needs to be reversed. I will work to see that our family values and religious liberty are not forced to yield to alternative lifestyles.

Free enterprise is what made our American economy great, and it is something I strongly support. The market, not government, should be the one picking winners and losers.

Government interference in the market including subsidies that amount to corporate welfare and regulations that favor some over others should be eliminated. Government interference should be minimized and small businesses which are the engine of our economy should have the freedom to flourish and create more jobs. Our commercial fishermen, our farmers, and our coastal tourism industries are important to eastern North Carolina and should be kept free of excessive government regulation. The military presence in eastern North Carolina is an important part of our economy, and I will work to support it.

We are not under-taxed. Government overspends. Under Republican leadership, our General Assembly has been working to get spending under control and has been successful at reducing our taxes, but we still have further to go.

I will take a sharp pencil to budget issues. There is still fat we can cut. We also do not need to backslide. I will join conservatives in the House who have successfully opposed the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

North Carolina is regarded as one of the most military friendly states in the country and I will work to keep it that way.

Those who serve our country and who have retired from service deserve our support and respect.

Our military bases are an important part of our state economy and we must do all we can to support them. We must not let the governor's drive for wind energy lead to siting wind turbines in areas that negatively impact military aviation.

Education of our children is one of the most important functions of state and local government, but it is one where the desires of parents must be fully respected. Many parents today are rightly concerned that there is too much political or ideological indoctrination in school systems around the state on such things as Critical Race Theory and gender indoctrination. I will work hard to get our schools focused on education instead of pushing indoctrination, and that will include taking on the very left-wing appointees of Governor Cooper on the state Board of Education.

The Obamacare debacle has driven up health care costs and reduced medical access for the Middle Class, tied medical providers in red tape, and created a bureaucratic jungle. In North Carolina, our health care costs are among the highest in the nation, and there is much we can do at the state level to address that.

I support the proposals of President Trump and State Treasurer Folwell to compel hospitals to be more transparent on pricing so patients can make informed decisions. I will push for repeal of our outdated Certificate of Need (CON) laws that stifle medical competition and drive up prices. I am opposed to COVID vaccine mandates.

The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right granted to American citizens by the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and is one of the rights that is presently most under attack.

Whether for sporting purposes or personal safety, this is a right enjoyed and utilized by many of our citizens, and I will work to prevent any government infringement on this right, including so called “red flag laws”.

Our country has recently seen some startling changes in abortion law in some states, where babies can be killed right at the point of birth. I am a strong supporter of the Right to Life and will work to reverse this awful trend. I believe it is morally wrong for government to use taxpayers money to fund abortion and I will never vote to give taxpayer money to any abortion provider.

Abortion must not be used as a form of birth control. I favor exploring ways to encourage adoption as an alternative to abortion.

Our welfare system should be a safety net and not a hammock. It should be there to sustain people when they are down, but not become a way of life. I will work to implement “workfare” provisions wherever possible in social programs, which require participants to either engage in job training and search or public service work as a condition of receiving assistance.

It is to everyone's benefit to get people off of welfare and into the workforce. I will also work for drug testing of those participating in social programs. Faith based charities foster benevolence and patriotism, and I will work to allow them a role along with government entities in social programs.

Illegal immigration is a huge burden on taxpayers, federal, state, and local.

While most of the power to deal with immigration issues is in the hands of the federal government, some states like Texas and Florida are being very innovative in ways that states can discourage illegal immigration.

I will work to see that North Carolina strives to follow a similar path to find ways to reduce this burden.

In particular, I will work to stop North Carolina local governments from making their cities or counties sanctuaries for criminal illegal aliens.

Legal immigration has been a cornerstone of the American experience, but illegal aliens thumbing their noses at our immigration laws is another thing entirely.

North Carolina needs energy that is both reliable and cheap. Our middle and working classes cannot afford huge spikes in their electric bills, and expensive and undependable sources of electricity will make our state an unattractive place to do business. We need additional gas pipelines to and inside our state to insure a plentiful supply of natural gas in coming years. We need an electrical system geared to low cost and dependability, not “virtue signalling” to the AOC's of the world.

America has made great progress in clean air and water, but much industry has moved to countries like China and India which have very lax environmental standards and, as a result that is where most of the world's pollution is coming from these days. North Carolina must balance our environmental rules to keep our water and air clean while not overburdening our businesses with red tape. We must keep a sharp eye on our environmental rule-making bodies.

Commercial fishing is one of North Carolina's very oldest industries and one that is important to our area.

Most of us enjoy our fresh local seafood and it is our hard working fishermen who supply it to us.

There is no reason why commercial fishing and recreational fishing cannot coexist, but there are some who claim to speak for recreational fishing who seem constantly determined to destroy our commercial fishing industry with crippling regulation. I will work hard to protect our fishing industry from such threats.

Governor Cooper and President Biden are pushing offshore wind power, a very expensive way to make electricity, and one with a lot of other drawbacks. Offshore wind turbines can damage fishing grounds, be a threat to navigation and aviation, including military aviation, impair coastal tourism, kill many of our seabirds, and hurt property values. I will introduce legislation to give county commissioners in coastal counties a greater say in whether wind turbines are built in the coastal waters of their counties.