Debate Probably Changed Little

photo Chuck Fleischmann and Mary Headrick debate about pressing issues during a live televised Congressional debate at WTCI PBS TV station in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Monday, October 27, 2014.

If anyone had their minds changed from Monday night's 3rd District congressional debate between Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann and Democratic challenger Dr. Mary Headrick, they probably hadn't been paying attention before.

The live debate, at the studios of WTCI, lacked the fireworks of the July Republican primary debate in the same place between Fleischmann and challenger Weston Wamp, who came within a whisker of upsetting the two-term incumbent in August.

But on Monday, just eight days from Election Day, neither candidate interrupted the other, raised their voice or needed to rebut the other's words.

Since Fleischmann and Headrick faced each other in the general election two years ago, with Fleischmann winning 61 percent of the vote, their ideological stances on most issues are familiar to voters, but Times Free Press Business Editor Dave Flessner attempted to engage the candidates on current issues.

The candidates found common ground on the lack of a current need to put American soldiers on the ground in the struggle against Islamic State fighters, on the fact the American health care system was in bad shape before the advent of the Affordable Care Act, on the importance of caring for veterans, on the desire to get work re-started on the Chickamauga Dam lock and on the need to keep open the Shallowford Road mail distribution center.

However, the nuances of their answers often took them down divergent roads.

None was more clear than their stance on the Affordable Care Act, which Headrick said had "worked well in Tennessee" and would be even better if Gov. Bill Haslam accepted Medicaid expansion funds for the state.

But Fleischmann called the ACA, or Obamacare, "a disaster" and a "failed patchwork" and made the case for the middle class Headrick claims to have at the heart of her campaign when he described the 30 to 50 percent insurance premium increases so many are experiencing because of the government program.

They also differed widely on abortion, Headrick terming it "a sad conclusion to something that happened in a person's life" and Fleischmann saying the original Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973 was "flawed precedent" and "life begins at conception."

The two candidates also took different -- but typically ideological -- approaches on raising the minimum wage. Citing her onetime experience as a sales clerk, Headrick said the minimum needed to be raised to a "living wage" because any additional money in workers' pockets would be spent to stimulate the economy.

But Fleischmann, citing his early minimum wage job, said minimum-wage jobs are meant to be entry-level positions and that a rise in the rate would cost jobs and employers and would do so especially for those vulnerable in a "very fragile recovery."

Although opinions vary about long-term climate change, Headrick declared her buy-in for "man-made climate change," opposed the fracking that has lowered U.S. energy prices and said the country should "use fossil fuels as a last resort." Fleischmann, though, said he was "not convinced" about all climate-change claims and stressed the need for an "all-of-the-above" (fossil fuels and green energy) strategy.

The climate exchange also brought the most pointed barb of the night, with Headrick saying she "would have to ask what planet [Fleischmann] lives on" following his description of the "abundant coal, oil and natural gas" resources in upper east Tennessee.

The 30-year Maynardville physician, former computer analyst and one-year teacher also made the evening's only news, saying she would serve only two terms if elected. She is 65 now and would be 69 at the end of two terms. She said she is "not a career politician."

The incumbent, a 52-year-old attorney, believes as a member of the House of Representatives, whose members are closest to the people and who have the shortest election cycles of federal lawmakers, that "constituents ... are therefore given the ultimate authority as to who remains in Congress every two years," said senior campaign adviser Brian O'Shaughnessy. "Congressman Fleischmann believes that power should remain with the people."

With the civil debate likely having convinced few but solidifying both sides, Headrick summed up her campaign by saying she wanted not a small government that served only 1 percent of the population but an "efficient" government that benefited the middle class. Fleischmann asserted his conservative bona fides, noting he "believed in free enterprise," that too much spending and borrowing had put the country $17 trillion in debt and that it was important to keep in mind it is "the people's money, not the government's."

We prefer the incumbent's fiscal and social views and urge his re-election.

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