With just a few days more than two weeks before the midterm elections, candidates talked issues with Chadds Ford Republicans. The local GOP held its fall luncheon at Penn Oaks Country Club Saturday, with incumbent state Rep. Craig Williams and U.S. representative candidate Dave Galluch on hand.
Also attending was Manny Jones, representing the Mehmet Oz campaign for U.S. Senate. Jones said a poll about to be released this week shows Oz ahead of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman by three percentage points in that race.
Williams, a retired Marine Corps colonel and former federal prosecutor, is running for a second term as representative of the 160th Legislative District. He succeeded former state Rep. Steve Barrar after winning the 2020 election.
He wants people to be active, not just talk. And he wants people to get involved in these last two weeks of the campaign.
“It’s not enough to have an opinion,” he said. It’s not enough to be online voicing your opinion. You have to get in the fight…[My staff], and I are about to fall down because we’re working so hard and I could use you right now. Make phone calls. Be a warrior on Facebook if that’s what you do.”
He also gave a nod to the Oz campaign, saying, “the U.S. Senate cannot fall into absolute Democrat hands.” He repeated that for emphasis. “You will not recognize this country in another year if that happens.”
Williams said the high price of gasoline is intentional, designed to force people into an electric car.
“The design here is to change your form of life for an ideology. The President of the United States ought not to have to go to another country halfway around the globe to ask for oil so that we can have gasoline when we have all the natural resources we need right here under our feet, not only in the United States but in Pennsylvania. We could be an energy Mecca here in Pennsylvania if we just unleash our own energy resources.,” he said.
In an interview after his brief address to the party members, he said his primary concern is crime control.
“We seem to be turning a blind eye to violence,” he said. “In response to that, I’ve worked with the attorney general in Pennsylvania to establish a gun violence task force…to review every single gun arrest that happened in the city of Philadelphia.”
Williams added that he’s scheduled to go to the floor of the state House to push for additional sanctions on sexual predators and sexual kidnappers to put them on a sexual predator registry.
He went on to say he’s changed his mind on the constitutional carry of firearms. He had voted for it in the past but has backed away from that position.
(While Pennsylvania is an open carry state, meaning a legal gun owner may carry a gun in public as long as the weapon is not concealed, constitutional carry means a person may carry a concealed firearm without a permit.)
The police are against it, he said, and thinks it’s better to have an additional background check for a concealed carry permit.
The subject came up when asked whether he would favor constitutional carry and legal cannabis in Pennsylvania. Four states, Maine, Vermont, Arizona, and Williams’ state of birth, Alaska, have both.
As Williams said before, he’s opposed to legalizing cannabis because it’s a gateway drug. He had a brother who died of an opioid addiction that, he said, started with marijuana.
Galluch, a former naval officer who did two tours in the Middle East, is challenging incumbent Democrat Mary Gay Scanlon to represent Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He said he was never interested in running for office until he was “forced off the sidelines by the dissolution of leadership” in the country.
He said there are families “being raked over the coals because we have an ideological energy policy.”
As is Williams, Galluch is also focused on crime.
“We live in an area that has seen some of the largest spikes in crime, especially violent crime, and that crime is not just confined to Philadelphia where [the city administration] refuses to prosecute repeat felons who carry guns they shouldn’t have.”
He went on to mention a 15-year-old in Radnor who had a gun put to his head and was carjacked.
“We have carjackings every day in Delaware County. We have kids being attacked in Haverford Township at skate parks. The lawlessness is spreading, and it erodes communities and public safety is the most essential good of all.”
He spoke of inflation, disarray at our borders, and about the hazards of fentanyl “coming into our district,” how 69th Street in Upper Darby is no longer safe because of that, and that kids are being offered fentanyl pills at farmers' markets.
“This is what’s happening…We don’t need ideologues. We’re in the territory of just bringing common sense and courageous leadership back and voices who will stand up and fight for the right things.”
Yet, he’s more open to changes in laws regarding cannabis. In a brief interview after he spoke to his fellow Republicans, Galluch said he would favor de-scheduling cannabis on the federal level so that the states could make their own decisions regarding the plant without federal interference. Currently, cannabis users in states that have legalized pot are still subject to possible federal charges, even medical marijuana users.
Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 8. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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