By Christian Sullivan
Reasonable, not hardline, open to dialogue” are the three takeaways Joe Hunt wants voters to remember from his campaign for Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, an accurate and honest representation of who he is and what he stands for. Currently represented by Rep. Jody Hice (R), Georgia’s 10th Congressional District includes the cities of Winder, Athens, and Milledgeville. A native of Elberton, Georgia, Hunt attended Georgia Southern University where he received a degree in public relations. While concurrently completing his MBA at the Stetson School of Business at Mercer University, Hunt began his career at Zaxby’s, where he has worked for the last sixteen years and currently serves as the Vice President of Franchisee Relations. However, despite his considerable success in business, he remains deeply concerned with community affairs.
Politics entered Hunt’s life after the 2016 election, a divisive and polarizing event that he believes does not accurately reflect people’s actual political sentiments. However, the real wakeup call for Hunt appeared when he went to the polls to vote and discovered that the incumbent for Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, Rep. Jody Hice (R), ran unopposed by both Democrats and Republicans. Hice’s successful reelection in 2016 angered Hunt, who strongly dislikes Hice’s polarizing focus on social issues such as gay marriage. In his frustration, Hunt wrote himself in on the ballot for Congress and vowed that Hice would never again run unopposed. Sticking true to his word, Hunt announced his campaign in June 2017 as the only Republican opposition to Rep. Jody Hice (R) in the primary, pledging to focus primarily on the reinvigoration of local communities’ economies.
At the center of Hunt’s campaign to augment American economic success are rural towns such as Sparta, Georgia, a town that has experienced diminishing industrial, scholastic, and agrarian opportunities in the past several years. As these opportunities dissipate in towns such as Sparta, high school students have and will continue to see little reason to stay in their hometowns, moving to larger cities and slowly causing the death of rural communities. Hunt wants to keep small town, rural America alive by providing other opportunities through programs that he says will bring “economic empowerment.” One of these programs is the Trade Industry Apprenticeship Program (TIA). Funded through taxes, the TIA would establish partnerships between public high schools and local privately-owned businesses, which would allow high school students to complete two-year apprenticeships in trade/vocational occupations such as welding and plumbing, earning money to pay for trade school tuition after graduating from high school. In exchange for participating in the TIA, private businesses would receive tax credits or deductions. Through the TIA, Hunt hopes to increase economic growth in small rural towns throughout America. Along with other programs such as privatizing student loan debt and attracting businesses and larger scale operations to rural areas, Hunt believes that the TIA will increase the tax base because more productive members of society with higher incomes will increase tax revenue. Although the TIA will require an enormous initial investment, Hunt believes that over time the program will pay for itself by adding new, more productive individuals to the American tax base. This fiscal concern with maintaining programs through adding more individuals to the American tax base even permeates his views on immigration policy.
Hunt’s immigration policy reflects a more centrist fiscal approach. Although he supports strengthening border security, he’s not 100% sold on President Trump’s proposed border wall because, as he reasons, “How many tuitions could we [the American people] pay for with that same amount of money” reserved for the border wall? Instead, Hunt suggests focusing on immigration services rather than a border wall. In his opinion, most illegal immigrants are good, hard-working people who fulfill necessary roles in the hospitality, construction, and agricultural industries. Hunt wants to harness the “economic engine” of illegal immigrants by allowing them to work and live in the United States. However, he does not support granting them citizenship unless they complete the necessary steps for becoming a legal citizen. For children of these illegal immigrants, he supports programs such as DACA because these children did not choose to walk across the border. Hunt wants to allow these children to be successful participants in the American economy. Ultimately, however, Hunt seeks to discover a balance through securing the American border effectively while also allowing immigrants and their families to provide a better life for themselves and contribute to the American economy. As these immigrants become legally documented, they will both continue to contribute to the growth of the American economy and augment the American tax base, another example of how central economic issues are to Hunt’s viewpoints on national policy debates.
The economy even affects his views on the environment. For Hunt, regardless of the diverse views present on climate change’s existence no matter, protecting the environment remains a vital concern. He understands the need for some regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency but wants to ensure that ineffective regulations are removed not only to protect industry and economic growth but also to protect the environment. Hunt believes that industry will eventually determine the best course for environmental policy by creating sustainable technology that will protect and improve America’s environmental conditions. However, Hunt believes that tax incentives are necessary to stimulate this innovation. For example, because petroleum refinement is America’s largest industry with a finite supply of resources, Hunt proposes tax incentives “to enable Georgia’s entrepreneurs to develop inventive energy solutions in order to reduce costs for future generations.” Again, for Joe Hunt, the economy remains central to solving American policy issues.
Based upon on these policy initiatives, Joe Hunt hopes that residents of Georgia’s 10th Congressional District will vote for him as the Republican nominee on May 22, 2018. Although it appears to be an uphill climb against the incumbent Rep. Jody Hice, Hunt believes that his message centering on economic development will appeal to his mainly rural electorate. And Hunt’s economically centered campaign certainly does provide Republicans a strong alternative to Rep. Jody Hice’s polarizing campaign. Ultimately, whether he wins or loses, Hunt is satisfied with the 2018 primary election because, in his opinion, “Everybody deserves a choice.”