DesJarlais will vote district wishes

Not that you'd know it, but U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais is running for a third term in Congress in Tennessee's 4th District.

• As of late last week, he'd made only one public appearance since winning the Republican nomination - by 38 votes - in early August.

• The South Pittsburg Republican's campaign website contains only news about his primary battle with state Sen. Jim Tracy, who was heavily favored in the race.

• His campaign did not answer requests - by phone and by email - for a conversation about his re-election prospects with the Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial board.

DesJarlais is battling both cancer and Democrat Lenda Sherrell, and reports say he has the upper hand on both.

We would love to offer the conservative Republican a ringing endorsement, but his campaign's silence makes such an endorsement difficult.

So, we recommend DesJarlais be re-elected because we believe he will vote the way the majority of his constituents would want him to, but we believe the public deserves to be told by the candidate if his cancer - or something else - is keeping him off the campaign trail and away from general scrutiny.

If he doesn't have the strength to conduct a public campaign or serve a third term, he should be up front with voters so different arrangements can be made.

Sherrell, a Monteagle retiree who spent most of her career as an accountant in Chattanooga, has had the campaign trail virtually to herself and outraised the incumbent by a quarter million dollars in the third quarter of the year and has far more money on hand for the stretch run to the Nov. 4 general election.

She is clearly no amateur, either.

The Cumberland County native got into the race for the right reasons - because she was "always involved" and wants to "make the community better" - and believes she and the Republican-leaning district have a lot of common ground. They both want taxpayer money "spent in the best possible way," a "fair tax code" and for corporations to play by the same rules as individuals.

On the campaign trail, Sherrell said people tell her they are "fed up and frustrated with gridlock" and that they are "worried about Medicare [premiums] being raised."

DesJarlais supporters, she said, tell her "he did what he said he would do" with his votes.

He is ranked by National Journal Magazine as the fourth most conservative member of the House, has consistently voted against the Affordable Care Act, believes energy producers do not need to be overburdened with regulations, believes illegal immigration "compromises national security, increases criminal activity and erodes the significance of being an American citizen," has a 100 percent score from the National Right to Life Committee and believes traditional marriage between a man and a women "is important to the well-being of the American family."

Sherrell, in an interview with the Times Free Press editorial board, said she "does not like labels" and was "not particularly partisan" before deciding to enter the race. However, she said Democrats over time "stood up for the working man and woman" and had "taken up for people like my family [of origin]."

However, her concept Democrat has been replaced by the Obama Democrat, whose burdensome regulations have hurt the working man, whose intrusive Internal Revenue Service has singled out the working man, whose actions have increased poverty for the working man and whose Affordable Care Act has driven up medical costs for the working man.

Indeed, Sherrell worked with one of the president's core groups, Organizing for America, the left-leaning political arm of the White House that advocated for administration policies.

While we believe she would probably go to Washington as a moderate Democrat because of the makeup of the district, and we believe she is a thoughtful, rational and intelligent candidate, we believe DesJarlais will cast the conservative votes the majority of his constituency expects.

However, we want the incumbent - who appears to be active on Facebook and Twitter - to be more visible in his campaign. And since his constituents apparently believe the ghosts of his personal past are just that - past - they deserve a candidate who will be honest and forthcoming and willing to work for all the people of the 16-county district that stretches from Cleveland to Murfreesboro. We endorse that candidate.

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