Dems agree they don’t agree with Trump at debate

Aug. 04--The seven candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for this fall's special Senate election agreed on most issues during a forum Thursday at Decatur's Princess Theatre as they fielded questions on health care, the environment, North Korea and taxes.

President Donald Trump was a frequent target.

"Maybe build a wall around the White House," candidate Doug Jones, a Birmingham lawyer and former U.S. attorney, said when fielding a question on what he would do to protect the environment in light of U.S. policy changes enacted by the president.

The comment garnered the biggest laugh of the night from the roughly 140 people attending.

"I think everybody on the stage has done their best not to make this about Donald Trump, but he's making it so damn hard," Jones continued. "The fact of the matter is he is trying to dismantle the EPA."

Virtually all of the candidates voiced support of the Environmental Protection Agency or some type of regret for the U.S. departure from the Paris Climate Accord.

"Donald Trump keeps believing that science is not real, and I keep telling people as long as he does this, he's going to find that Mar-a-Largo is going to one day be Mar-a-Long-gone," said candidate Will Boyd, a minister from Florence and chairman of the Lauderdale County Democratic Executive Committee, in reference to rising sea levels.

On the issue of health care, the candidates voiced opposition to Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, with candidate Michael Hansen going so far as to say he supports a single-payer health system.

"Poverty should not be a death sentence in the wealthiest country on Earth," said Hansen, the executive director of a Birmingham environmental group.

Hansen is the first openly gay candidate to run for statewide office in Alabama. He described himself as the most progressive candidate in the race.

Jason Fisher, a nonprofit executive and from Orange Beach, said he would support single-payer health care in the future but work needed to be done immediately to stabilize the health insurance market by guaranteeing federal cost sharing payments to insurers and offering incentives to bring more young people into the market.

He blamed Trump's threats to withhold those payments for recent premium increases.

"(Trump) wants to sabotage Obamacare, as he calls it, and watch people suffer, and that's absolutely immoral, and he's doing it for political purposes," Fisher said.

Questioned about proposed legislation that is expected to reduce legal immigration into the U.S., the candidates generally agreed that it would be bad for the U.S. economy.

Candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., a marketing business executive from Mobile, said the policy would impact companies that rely on foreign-born talent to compete in a global market place.

"If you were to implement a policy that was recently proposed, those folks that are allowing a U.S. business to compete around the world would have to leave, and that would make us less competitive," he said.

Kennedy is not related to the family of President John F. Kennedy.

He and other candidates said the question incorrectly presumed that immigration is a problem.

"Lady Liberty, when she came to this country, she did not speak English, she spoke French," said candidate Charles Nana, a business consultant from Birmingham, himself an immigrant.

On the issue of how to handle rising tensions with North Korea and its expanding nuclear program, most of the candidates said the U.S. needs to work more closely with allies such as China and that rhetoric from the president was not helping.

Kennedy, a U.S. Navy veteran who served in Japan from 1993 to 1996, offered up a different plan, saying nothing needs to be done, because the U.S. military is already prepared "the minute the leader of North Korea crosses the line" to "take him out."

"Ratcheting up the rhetoric through 2 a.m. tweets doesn't do anything to actually solve the problem," he said.

Candidate Vann Caldwell, a constable from Talladega County, said he would work to balance the U.S. trade deficit with China in order to exert pressure on the country from which North Korea derives much of its support.

"With the current president, he has factories in China, so you know he's not really going to be firm with China," he said.

Caldwell also called for a missile defense shield along the borders of South Korea, Alaska, and the U.S. west coasts.

The candidates will face each other in the Aug. 15 primary. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination likely faces an uphill battle.

Jess Brown, a retired political science professor from Athens State University, said Alabama is probably the most Republican state in the South and perhaps in the top five nationally, making it a likely Republican win regardless of which candidate take the Republican nomination.

"It would be uphill climb for the Democrats if the Republicans nominated Daffy Duck," he said.

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