I first met Andy Harris in Easton, Maryland in 2010 at an event organized by the then burgeoning “Tea Party” movement. Much maligned and smeared in the subsequent portrayals, the Tea Party was nothing more than a grassroots movement organized around two focal issues: escalating national debt and the passage of Obamacare. The latter effectively nationalized 6% of the GDP and permanently embedded the federal bureaucracy in the sacred doctor-patient relationship.
Contrary to President Obama’s assurances, millions of Americans lost their insurance coverage only to be replaced by inferior policies with deductibles so high that for all intents and purposes made policy holders “uninsured”. Who could afford an $8K annual deductible on their medical policy? It was against this backdrop that Andy Harris won his first election for the Maryland Congressional District One. He defeated the popular incumbent, Queen Anne County Judge Kratovil — who had voted for Obamacare — in a landslide. By electing Andy Harris back in 2010, Eastern shore had spoken and allied itself with the forces of freedom, American traditionalism, and fiscal conservatism. Andy has not failed us and we have stuck with him ever since. He has one of the highest district-wide approval ratings in Congress.
The Tea Party movement represented the second wave of political realignment favoring the Republican Party. The first was in 1980 with Ronald Reagan when millions of working class Americans, the “Blue Democrats” as they became known, joined his movement. This second, the Tea Party wave, was markedly a middle class movement concerned about the fiscal health of the nation — the national debt under Obama eventually doubled during his two terms in office, from $10 trillion in January of 2009 when he took office, to $19 trillion by the end of his second term. That’s a hell of a lot of “quantitative easing”. All the while we were shedding jobs, entire industries, manufacturing base, and individual and corporate tax base along with them, in the name of “globalization”.
Andy Harris points out that Obamacare was not just about “medical coverage”. It represented a fundamental shift in Americans’ self-understanding and their relationship to their government. To conservatives government is not [or it ought not to be], a provider of consumer goods and services. It is to be an arbiter and provide the scaffolding, the structural background, for the free market and civil society to flourish. Obamacare had shifted that line by creating new entitlements and new dependencies. Political philosophy, and political psychology tell us a lot of what happens with “dependent classes”: they become democratic constituencies and remain forever mired in that dependent relationship, but that is a story for another time.
Andy Harris, who is a medical doctor by profession, and continues his practice here on the Eastern shore to this day, took the Hippocratic Oath: “First Do No Harm” — this is the shorthand version of the oath we are all familiar with. Andy Harris extends this “First Do No Harm” oath to his practice of politics. And we, his constituents, are the better for it.
When a mutual friend introduced us back in 2010, at that Tea Party event in Easton, we bonded at a rate of knots over our shared abhorrence of all things socialist, totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial, call it what you may, the outcome is always much the same. Andy, the son of refugees from the former Eastern Europe, had no difficulty in connecting with my reality of having grown up under the horrors of communism. We both understand, and are forever vigilant about the fact that liberty, and liberty alone, stands in opposition to all that — Frederick Hayek, the Nobel prize winning economist, and an indefatigable defender of liberty, put it rather succinctly: “Liberty is the ground of all things”. Andy and I, and many like us, having had first hand experience of the world without liberty, understand the existential threat that these movements pose. To remain a stable, prosperous, Constitutional Republic, the light of liberty must continue to guide the way. It was with that in mind that Andy proudly joined the House Freedom Caucus in 2015.
The election of President Trump in 2016 represents another wave-realignment in the American political landscape. Traditionally democratic “working class” voters migrated over to the Republican Party in support of Mr. Trump’s America First agenda, rejecting the globalist model that had exported American industries and jobs in a wholesale fashion. The promised benefits from this globalization never materialized. Left behind are desolate towns and cities that were once proud centers of American manufacturing and entrepreneurship. One only has to look at Detroit, where boulevards of gracious Victorian villas sit in urban ruin. Uncontrolled immigration was suppressing the wages of the most economically vulnerable among us, yet failing to provide us with the skilled labor that we actually needed. Andy was proud to jump on board with America First policy agenda to protect American markets, American agriculture, energy independence, and the American labor force — Andy is America First!
We are a Constitutional Republic. We elect our representatives and send them to Washington, D.C., to represent our interests. Period. Andy has not lost sight of this basic fact; you will not find Andy in a fancy dress at the Met Gala! Due to his seniority Andy is now the Ranking member of the Agriculture Subcommittee to the Appropriations Committee. He is standing up for all the farmers in our community and he has received the “Friend of the Farmer Award” every term he’s been in office. He has secured funding for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, specifically for the eradication of destructive invasive species. He sponsors Oyster Restoration Language every year to direct NOAA to continue the oyster restoration project in the Chesapeake Bay. He continues to fight for the H2B visas essential for the crab picking industry. Andy is the best friend that our local waterman, small businesses and farmers ever had in the “People’s House”. Andy is very proud of having received honors such as “Guardian of Small Business” and “Hero of Main Street”.
The mid-term election of 2022 truly is an existential election. I will not recount the destructiveness the current Democratic administration has wrought. I don’t have to. We see it, we feel it every time we gas up, every time we do grocery shopping. Sticker shock is an understatement. Home ownership is increasingly out of reach for young families. Suffice it to say that 75% of Americans now say the country is on the wrong track. That is the highest number ever recorded. While there will not be an opportunity to change course in the Executive Branch until 2024, we have to make sure that there is a switch in the balance of power in the Senate and of course, the “People’s House”, the House of Representatives, so that these institutions may act in the manner envisioned by our founding fathers: as a check-and-balance on the power of the Executive.
Andy Harris has been a faithful and an honorable representative for our community and our interests. The oath “First do no harm” that he took as a medical doctor, and that continues to be his guiding light has served him, and consequently all of us, well.
Godspeed.
Tatiana Croissette is the Former Chair of Kent County GOP
Paula Reeder says
Speak for yourself Ms. Croisette. You certainly don’t speak for the many disenchanted District 1 residents who believe we need Andy Harris to continue in office like a moose needs a hatrack. It’s high time we opted for enlightened, responsive, compassionate leadership and representation in the House of Representatives for a change.
Gren Whitman says
Disappointed in you, Spy, for printing this claptrap from a GOP extremist.
Couldn’t you find a rational conservative?
Will you now start accepting Flat Earth screeds?
Bill Minus says
I’m not sure I have ever read so much garbage in one place. It is hard to believe there is so much ignorance.
Gretchen F Stroh says
Andy Harris has done nothing but harm. Nuf said.
Michael McDowell says
Ms. Croissette’s risible defense of irresponsible right wing extremist Andy Harris is easily rebutted.
She begins by saying the Tea Party (which propelled Harris into Congress, on a second try) was based on “escalating national debt.” Hmm, Harris the hypocrite, campaigned for years as a “deficit hawk” until….Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and big business blew the deficit sky high. Then….the usual deafening silence from Harris…until President Biden was convincingly elected and then Harris was back on the “deficit hawk” trail again.
She goes on to say Harris was a great champion against Obamacare. Indeed, he was. But Obamacare is supported, as polls consistently show, by a significant majority of voters. Fact. If Republicans in Congress tried to take Obamacare a way they would suffer a backlash now, and they know it.
And let’s be fair; the shameful O’Malley/Miller gerrymander, cramming a massive majority of Republicans into District 1 is the only reason that Harris has a big majority. Fact.
Harris, who boastfully always insists on adding “M.D” to his title in Congress, this year prescribed the largely animal centered drug Ivermectin! And before that was selling the evidence-free “cure” of hydroxychloroquine medication. He rabble roused along the Shore, months before, criticising Republican Governor Hogan for bringing in safety measures on Covid. Harris, laughingly, compared Maryland to North Korea and Communist China! And why is this cookey doctor earning money doing hospital work? He’s paid handsomely to be a Congressman. That’s his job. But he likes to earn on the side.
Speaking of his 13 year record in Congress: not a single piece of legislation passed in his name. Oh, wait….the naming of a post office. Never a committee or sub-committee chair, ever.
Then he lied about only running for 6 terms. Now he’s running for a seventh. And Harris was the “term limits champion” until….he wasn’t. He even sponsored a term limits bill in the House but he doesn’t mention that any more.
Ms. Croissette writes about Harris’s parents being “refugees from Eastern Europe.” No, tell the whole story, which is all there now on the web. For years, Harris touted his father in glowing terms as some find of freedom seeker fleeing “socialism” (in fact, communism, not democratic socialism which thrives in many countries across the globe, UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, etc). But his father, as a distinguished Yale historian who was a real Hungarian hero found last year, was a member of the Hungarian Nazi Party, the awful Arrow Cross movement which was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Jews.
Now, Harris fans will say, “but you can’t blame the sins of the father on the son.” Oh it is entirely legitimate to force Harris from spreading the lie that Zoltan Harris (just Google “Zoltan Harris and Hungary”), the awful dad, was a democrat (small d). Zoltan Harris fought with the Nazi Army against us and the Allies. Hell, Zoltan Harris, when brought before a Budapest court in 1946, tried to hide his past by joining the Hungarian Communist Party! Fact. And Andy Harris’s claim that the father was in a “Soviet gulag” is too clever by half. He was a legitimate prisoner of war and was in a POW camp. Talk about chutzpah. And then Zoltan Harris skipped Hungary for a displaced person camp in Salzburg, Austria, and then managed to slip into the US.
And who does Harris support financially? Well, from his war chest he funded the initial runs for Congress of “Jewish space lasers/QAnon” fan, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and fellow gun nut, Rep. Lauren Boebert. Talk about extremism.
And beware of Ms. Croissette’s artful use of the telling phrase “Constitutional Republic.” This euphemism is a way of trying to sell the lie that we are not a country where the majority of votes decides on who forms the government in the presidency, or Congress. We are a DEMOCRACY. Some smart alecks like Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah suggest that there is nothing wrong with minority rule. Oh, yes there is.
And of course Harris supports The Big Lie, an utter sycophant of Trump who just loves Harris.
I could go on at length.
But let me finish with this. At the time of writing this response, the appalling Harris has not commented for more than two weeks on the slaughter in Buffalo OR Uvalde. That’s the pattern. Harris waits for the anger against a free-for-all on gun safety neglect before he opines, or just ignores what a true representative would feel the need to answer.
“First, do no harm”, indeed. Not with “Dr. No.” Irredeemable.
Beryl Smith says
Thank you Michael. That was the best refutation of Andy Harris ever!!!! I doubt it will convince Ms. Croisette, but it certainly educated me. Let’s get Andy Harris out of office, out of politics. I have only one worry and that is that if he is turned loose he may be spending more of his time “doctoring” at a great risk to many more lives than he has in these last year. He is an embarrassment to our state and our district and also to the medical community.
Bob Crandall says
Michael,
If the above editorial is so “risible” as you put it, why then put so much time and effort into trying to counter the points made Ms. Croissette?
One would think the “risibility” factor would negate the need for any disputation whatsoever? You seem to have grievances, but none of them seem factual in nature.
You seem to be quite bothered by the fact Rep. Harris continues to practice medicine — you object on multiple grounds, including financial.
First of all, some of us have a “calling”, a “profession” that we practice/pursue irrespective of the financial rewards or lack thereof.
Second, that is exactly what our Founding Fathers envisioned: citizens legislators; persons who continued to be engaged in the communities which they represented, persons who were not professional politicos, but members of the community who saw fit to represent that community in the political arena. Rep. Harris should be honored for his commitment to his profession, not maligned for it.
Third, you suggest that the “handsome” remuneration for his Congressional service should be adequate. We, on this side of the isle, don’t make decisions what level of income is “sufficient”. That is an individual choice.
Finally you object to Rep. Harris’ usage of the M.D. title. That just smacks one as a bit of envy, that deep, angry, “Nietzschean ressentment” some harbor against the more accomplished, the more successful among us. That is his title. He earned it. He is a practicing physician in the State of Maryland.
You bemoan the redistricting that created District One. But then you go on to admit that it was done by the Democrats. You affirm that Rep. Harris does have majority support in this district and that his victories are decisive, but then you turn around and complain of “minority rule”. Your argument is both illogical and incoherent.
The left likes to manipulate language. You attempt this maneuver by labeling “Constitutional Republic” a “euphemism”. Really? Constitutional Republic is what we were founded as and what we are. This is standard nomenclature in political science. At best we are a Representative Democracy, but we are not, as you claim, “a democracy”.
Your attack on Rep. Harris’ family, trying to villanize his family and his family’s history. Your attempt is hate-filled and reprehensible. So much spewing of hate and name calling from the party of compassion, diversity and inclusivity. It never ceases to amaze me.
I stipulate that we have a difference of opinion. Emphasis on opinion. That famous quote popularized by Daniel Patrick Moynihan comes to mind: “You’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.
Bob Crandall
Worton
Michael McDowell says
I will be brief. I supported what I wrote in rebuttal of Ms. Croissette with EVIDENCE. As for “villanizing” Harris’s family, you are too clever by half — or not of course. Harris went round the Legion, VFWhalls and vets’ events for years on the Shore and in other fora, touting his father’s “bravery” in “fleeing” socialism (which he knows was communism). It was all a lie. You don’t care that his father was in the Hungarian Nazi Party, the horrific Arrow Cross, which sent thousands of Jews to their deaths? Fact.That he fought against the Allies with the Nazi Army? Fact. hen when justice caught up with him after the war, in a daring dodge Zoltan Haris (original spelling) joined the Hungarian Communist Party!? Fact. Harris loves Hungarian neo-fascist (as John McCain rightly called him) Viktor Orban who gave Harris a decoration last year. Harris spoke at the hard right Conservative Political Action Committee in Budapest late last month. Fact. The fascist branch doesn’t fall far from the tree. BTW, I met Pat Moynihan many years ago and have several of his books. I have used facts. You don’t. Because you can’t refute the overwhelming evidence presented. I have no intention of allowing the hateful record of Harris go unchallenged. That is what any democrat (small d) has a duty to point out.
Bob Crandall says
Michael,
Thank you for your reply. I’m happy to have a dialogue, however, you don’t offer much in terms of discussion material. You say you’re presenting facts and evidence, but an accusation, merely repeated, is not evidence. Neither is emoting.
You repeat accusations from your previous posting and simply assert that they are “facts and evidence”. Assertions, like accusations, are not evidence.
What is your understanding of “evidence”? Evidence is something that affirms something that IS, in some objective, verifiable sense. To be on a firm evidentiary ground it should also be something that cannot be disputed, to borrow a concept from science. You provide neither.
You actually dispute your own assertions when you admit that the charges against Rep. Harris’ father were investigated but that he was never convicted of anything. “Innocent until proven guilty” not good enough anymore? I guess that is the next “Right” we have that is on the chopping block?
For the rest, you rely on a rather elementary Fallacy: “Appealing to Authority”, normally used when you run out of steam in your own argument.
You attempt to impress by saying you have met Sen. Moynihan, and you even have some of his books! That should put that argument away!
Well, I’ve met the Queen of England but that does not make me Royalty, or the “Duke of Delmarva”, or the Earl of Kent.
Judging from your rhetoric you either did not read Sen Moynahan’s books in your library, or if you did, you failed to comprehend them. Sen. Moynihan wrote extensively about the destructiveness of the modern welfare state, and the absolute havoc that white liberals and their social policies have wrought on the black community.
Bob Crandall
Jamie Kirkpatrick says
Your journey with Andy Harris: would it include trying to bring a handgun onto the House floor? He is an embarrassment to this District.
Kirk Young says
Total BS
Why don’t you look-up his lifetime voting record before you print such garbage?
Shame Shame on YOU!
Here’s handy Andy talking out of both sides of his mouth as usual. He’s an environmental nightmare and the ultimate hypocrite!
Look at his voting record “NO” on 97% lifetime!
https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/andy-harris
Don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling except for the fools that vote for him!