Opposing Trump propels Gaston man into House race

MCADENVILLE – Last year's presidential election was "a big wake-up call" for local Democrat David Wilson Brown and his campaign for U.S. House is predicated on the idea that what has followed was the same for the 10th Congressional District.

Brown announced this week that he is running for his party's nomination for House in the 2018 primary, making him the second Democrat seeking to represent the district that stretches from West Asheville to suburbs just west of Charlotte.

The Gaston County resident is a 43-year-old information technology consultant making his first bid for public office. Kenneth Queen, a Navy veteran from Rutherford County, is the other Democrat in the race so far.

They are seeking the right to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-Lincoln, who is his party's presumptive nominee.

"I'm hoping for an anti-Trump wave for sure," Brown said. "Patrick's been up there for a long time and he's not done a lot for this district. Many people don't know who he is because he's that out of touch."

McHenry was first elected in 2004 and hasn't had much trouble convincing voters to send him back to Washington since. He got more than 60 percent of the vote in the 2014 and 2016 general elections.

Brown calls President Donald Trump "a national embarrassment" whose presidency "threatens our republic on a daily basis."

He said he favors a national jobs program comparable to the Works Progress Administration or Civilian Conservation Corps the country had during the Great Depression.

Those workers could "revitalize our infrastructure, conserve our natural resource" and boost the renewable energy industry, he said.

"We've had a slow recovery from the recession. ... People in our district are still suffering from it," he said. The wealthy, Brown said, have "taken the lion's share of that recovery and have just gotten wealthier."

He said he opposes what he calls Republican efforts to make it harder to vote and wants the government to protect the environment, including dealing with climate change.

He said he would vote to fix problems with the Affordable Care Act but wants to largely keep it in place.

"Republicans have done everything they could to completely cut it off at the knees," he said, despite the fact that it is based on ideas first advanced by the GOP.

"The Affordable Care Act was a Republican plan before it was a Democratic plan," Brown said.