Republican candidates Dee Adcock and Mike Tomlinson earlier this month asked members of the Normandy Civic Association for their support in the upcoming general election.
“Every candidate should do what I’ve done,” said Tomlinson, who is running against Democrat Mike Driscoll for the 173rd Legislative District seat. He’s gone out and met district residents.
“I’ve knocked on almost 20,000 doors,” he said. What people are telling him, he said during the association’s Oct. 8 meeting, is that they are afraid, in despair and want to move out of the city. They’re especially concerned about education, he added, and with good reason. Eighty of Pennsylvania’s worst schools are in Philadelphia, he said, and the quality of the education is poor.
The school district is simply mismanaged, he said, and Philadelphians who smoke must now pay an extra $2 a pack that goes to the city’s schools. If you smoke, he said, you are the one who has to pay for the school district’s mismanagement. We don’t need new taxes, he said, we should manage what we’ve got.
Adcock is running against Democrat Brendan Boyle for the 13th Congressional District seat. This is his second run at the post. Four years ago, he was defeated by Allyson Schwartz, who is leaving Congress after making a failed bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
If elected, Adcock said, he will donate his congressional salary to his district.
The candidate, who runs a suburban pool company, said he is a small businessman who doesn’t care much for big business and big banks. He feels the same about people who spend their lives only in government.
“I’m running against a budding career politician,” he said, and added that he doesn’t intend to make a career of public office.
Adcock said he favors developing energy policies that will lessen the chance that the United States will be blackmailed by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president.
He also is in favor of reforming the Affordable Health Care Act. Pointing to problems the federal government had with its healthcare registration Internet site, he asked why the government should be in charge of healthcare when it can’t make a website work.
Association members will meet again at 7 p.m. on Nov. 11 in the Norcom Community Center on Norcom Road. ••
