Tom Hill endorses equal rights and shares our priorities

Some readers of the Mountain Xpress may be reluctant to vote for Tom Hill for the U.S. House of Representatives because he has not been an outspoken supporter of LGBT rights.

So I would remind all Asheville area voters that the job of a congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives is primarily to vote on allocating federal tax dollars and passing useful laws. A member of Congress is not a unitary, power-wielding, governmental executive —  such as a governor, president or big-city mayor.

In the House, that member is one of 13 legislators from North Carolina and just one of 435 legislators nationwide. Consequently, on the subject of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gender rights, a congressman has far less power than an executive or a judge on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, Tom Hill is a bright, outspoken and successful Democrat, who endorses equal rights and shares our priorities.

Unlike the reckless freshman tea party incumbent, Tom Hill will never ever  back a repeat of the  2013 shutdown of the national government — a closure which cost dozens of billions of dollars and diminished America’s standing in the world.

Hill knows that our region needs the  Affordable Care Act, the Interstate Highway System, its many national parks, Social Security, its Federal Emergency Management Agency, Medicaid, its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, its Medicare, its unemployment compensation and our Blue Ridge Parkway.

So, in this 11th Congressional District, please support Tom Hill, the Democrat.

Ralph W. Bastedo

Hendersonville