Mark Barrett

mbarrett@citizen-times.com

CULLOWHEE – Democratic congressional candidate Rick Bryson said at a debate Friday that U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-Jackson, has done little to benefit Western North Carolina during his time in office and plenty to hurt it.

Meadows told the audience at Western Carolina University and viewers online that he has represented the views of his constituents and pushed several causes and projects to benefit them.

"His fingerprints are on nothing in our district, not even a boat ramp," Bryson said of Meadows.

"When you really look about what is wrong in Washington, D.C., it's people that go to Washington, D.C., that go along to get along," Meadows said.

Bryson, a Bryson City alderman who is the underdog in the conservative 11th District, was the aggressor in much of the debate. The two men disagreed over how Meadows had run his office, his role in a 2013 shutdown of the federal government, how to handle Syrian refugees, the war on terror and gun rights, among other issues.

Bryson said Meadows had cost the 11th District $23 million by opposing passage of a federal budget in 2013 in hopes of keeping money from flowing to implement the Affordable Care Act.

He compared Meadows' actions to "a farmer who fancies that he sees a mouse in his barn and he burns the barn down."

A letter Meadows circulated in 2013 suggesting a government shutdown was widely credited as helping lead to the budget impasse. Meadows, who took office in January of that year, said Friday his role has been exaggerated.

"It's amazing that I get the reputation after eight months that I'm able to shut down the entire federal government on my own," he said. He said some figures actually show an increase in economic activity in WNC during the 2013 shutdown.

But, Meadows said, "I think it's a bad idea generally to shut down the government, and the consequences of that are tremendous." He said he and another congressman will introduce a measure Monday to keep the government running into January if no federal budget is passed this year.

Bryson said he had helped move Bryson City's water system from a losing operation to a profitable one, improved its fire service and won a special designation for the Swain County town as a destination for trout fishermen.

Voters' choice, he said, is between "someone to make inflammatory headlines or one who makes real progress."

Meadows said Bryson failed to mention Meadows' role in winning a grant for the Bryson City fire department and that he has worked cooperatively with people in the region to win millions of dollars in federal funds for projects like greenway and other transportation improvements in Asheville's River Arts District and a new runway at Asheville Regional Airport.

Bryson said Meadows knew his former chief of staff, Kenny West, had tendencies toward sexual harassment before West became his first chief of staff in January 2013.

Meadows removed West from the job in 2015. The House Ethics Committee is investigating whether Meadows violated House rules by paying West his full salary when West was barred from Meadows' offices because of sexual harassment allegations and was performing limited duties.

Meadows said he did not know of potential problems with West until 2014 and acted quickly once complaints arose. He said his daughter volunteered in his office for six months at the beginning of 2013 and, "I would not have put my daughter in that situation or any woman in that situation if I thought there was a threat."

He said he had conferred with a House lawyer on payments to West and thought he was following the rules.

"If the Ethics Committee says that I made a mistake, I will make it right, both personally with an apology but also financially for anything I didn't do properly," he said. "I acted in good faith in a difficult situation."

Bryson said he would push for federal funds to finance small business startups in the region if elected so WNC's young people could return to the mountains after attending college rather than looking elsewhere for work.

Meadows said he has also been working on a regional job creation effort but is skeptical of a major federal role in general.

"The federal government doesn't create any job that is lasting ... so what they can do (is) get out of the way" and let entrepreneurs build businesses that add jobs, he said.

Meadows seemed to look more favorably at military action overseas to fight terrorism than Bryson, although he made no specific proposals.

"The problem is the terrorists believe that they can continue to take American lives and lives across the globe without any consequences," he said.

"We have either an opportunity to fight them over there or we're going to fight them here, and it's time that we take the battle to ISIS and make sure that they run," Meadows said.

Bryson said he was opposed to U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and is skeptical of America's ability to "straighten out countries where we don't understand the culture."

He said a first step in dealing with ISIS would be to improve intelligence: "So often, we don't know enough about the people who want to do us harm."

The debate was sponsored by WCU's Public Policy Institute and Department of Political Science and Public Affairs.