By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Recently, Gary Palmer and the other Sixth District Congressional Candidates addressed the Republican Women of Trussville at their dinner meeting at the Greyson Valley Country Club in Jefferson County.
Palmer said, “I am the guy who doesn’t smile a lot.”
Palmer said, “Unlike some of the other candidates, I didn’t marry my childhood sweetheart. I couldn’t get a date in high school. All the girls said I looked like Barney Fife. I am married now to Anne, who is the love of my life.
Palmer said, ” We have real problems in this country. 1 in 6 men between the age of 25 and 54 are not working.”
Palmer said, “The country is in debt, but it is not broke, it is stupid. We have more oil in one formation out west than the world has used in the last 100 years and 75 percent of it is owned by the Federal government. We have 200 years of natural gas resources and 300 years of coal. Palmer said that there is the beginning of a manufacturing renaissance in this country and it is because of the natural gas reserves that have been discovered.”
Palmer said, “I want to talk about the bigger picture and bigger ideas.”
Palmer said that it is ideas that will improve America but those ideas need to come from the bottom up. As the co-founder and longtime President of the influential Alabama Policy Institute (API) Palmer said that he has the ties to similar policy based think tanks in all fifty states who can promote ideas at the grassroots level so that they eventually get enacted.
Palmer said, “I believe we can change this nation. We have an opportunity to turn this country around but we need to send the best trained, best networked person we can to Washington and I believe that is me.”
Gary Palmer is running in a crowded District Six field that includes: state Representative Paul DeMarco (R) from Homewood, prominent Harbert executive Will Brooke, state Senator Scott Beason (R) from Gardendale, the owner of Royal Mattress Manufacturing in Pelham Tom Vigneulle, retired attorney Robert Shattuck, and Indian Springs orthopedist Dr. Chad Mathis.
Longtime Sixth Congressional District incumbent Spencer Bachus (R) from Vestavia is not seeking re-election. Bachus has served the Sixth District for 11 terms in the U.S. Congress.
