Jim Brown (not the NFL Hall of Famer) is a retired businessman who until recently was running for Congress in CD 1. He has since switched districts to run for Congress in CD 2 in the Tea-Publican primary against Martha McSally and Shelley Kais.
Note: The Pima County GOP events calendar lists a Pima County Tea Party Patriots CD 2 Forum on April Fool’s Day (April 1) — perfect! — all candidates have been invited.
Things are getting off to a bad start for this political novice. Think Progress reports, Congressional Candidate: Entitlements Are Like Slave Owners That ‘Took Pretty Good Care Of Their Slaves’:
Arizona congressional candidate Jim Brown (R) compared entitlements to slavery in a Facebook post Wednesday, explaining that entitlements give politicians “power over the people allowing them to control us” much like slave owners that “took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock.”
Brown urged people to vote so lawmakers start to focus on “jobs, education, and opportunity – not slavery”:
The government programs panned as “slavery” include Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment insurance, and low-income tax credits — all of which take aim at reducing poverty. Without them, the country’s poverty rate would be twice as high today.
CD 2 has a large number of retirees on social security and Medicare. CD 2 also has a high rate of poverty and unemployment for which people are in desperate need of unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies, and who qualify for low-income tax credits. So Mr. Brown has pretty much alienated everyone but the most ardent ideological extremists in the Tea Party.
BTW: Mr. Brown is “retired.” Is he receiving social security and Medicare?
Sadly, he’ll likely get the vote of far too many of those retired CD2 voters, the same kind who yell about getting that danged gummint outta their medicare!