Ben Carson announces presidential run

Kathleen Gray | Detroit Free Press

DETROIT — Before a packed audience in his hometown, Ben Carson officially kicked off his presidential campaign Monday morning.

"I'm Ben Carson and I'm a candidate for president of the United States," he said at Detroit's Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts.

He may not have the traditional political experience of a presidential candidate, Carson said, but he noted that he also didn't "have a lot of experience busting budgets."

"The real pedigree that we need to help to heal this country" he said is a candidate "who believes in our Constitution."

Carson began the day with a prayer breakfast with city pastors, then spoke to an assembly at the Detroit high school that bears his name before heading to the official launch of his presidential campaign.

Carson told a Florida TV station Sunday night that was joining the race. From Detroit, he had been scheduled to travel to Iowa for three days of events in the pivotal state where the first presidential caucus of the 2016 election cycle will be held.

But he switched up his plans and said he'll go to Dallas to be with his critically ill mother, Sonya Carson.

He sprinkled his remarks throughout the morning with religious references, noting, "If God ordains that we end up in the White House...we are going to change the government into something that looks more like a well-run business."

At the Charles Wright Museum of African American History before he announced his bid, Carson told reporters that he's anxious to hear what other GOP candidates have to say.

"If they're all saying the same thing I am, fantastic. The more the merrier, bring em on," he said.

His choice of Detroit for the official announcement is no surprise. He grew up in the city, the son of a house cleaner and a father who left the family when Carson was 8. His mother, Sonya, had only a third-grade education, but didn't let on to her sons.

In remarks to about 100 people at the museum, Carson talked about everything from the nation's economy, to his belief in creationism to the racial unrest that's been erupting in the wake of deaths of black men in cities across the country.

"People have lost hope and therefore an opportunity arises for to break into a place and to loot it and stuff your pocket with things," he said of the unrest in Baltimore."Some people actually find it easier to collect benefits than to work a minimum wage job. So can you really blame someone who decides to take that. But what it is doing is extinguishing the can-do attitude."

In speeches around the country, as well as in his autobiography, Gifted Hands, the Republican who now lives in Florida often tells of his mother demanding that her two sons turn off the TV, read two books each week from the Detroit Public Library and write a report on those books that she would mark up — even though she couldn't read the words.

"The main thing I'm hoping is that a lot of young people will recognize themselves in me, recognize that they themselves are the most influential factor in achieving their goals," Carson told the Free Press in an interview when a movie based on his book was being shot in Detroit. "Know that it is not enough to just wish, that it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, but it can be done."

Carson did it, turning what he calls his hated life of poverty, horrible temper and lack of enthusiasm for learning into earning high honors when he graduated from Southwestern High School in Detroit, a scholarship and psychology degree at Yale University and a medical degree from the University of Michigan.

"I had a mother who believed in me and who would never allow herself to be a victim," he said during a 2013 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. "We did live in dire poverty. I hated poverty."

Despite his rough beginnings, Carson, at 33, became the youngest director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was the first to successfully separate a set of conjoined twins who were attached at the back of the head, and the first to successfully place an intrauterine shunt for a hydrocephalic twin.

It was during his speech at that National Prayer Breakfast in 2013 that he burst onto the political scene, using part of his 27-minute presentation to criticize the nation's fiscal and health care policies. With President Obama sitting just two seats away from Carson on the dais at the breakfast, the doctor from Detroit said he had his own health care plan that would be much more efficient than the course that was started with the Affordable Care Act.

"We need good health care for everybody. It's the most important thing that a person can have. But we've got to figure out efficient ways to do it. We spend a lot of money on health care. And yet, it's not very efficient," he said at the breakfast. "When a person is born, give them a birth certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings account."

In a speech at the Values Voters Conference later in 2013, Carson said: "Obamacare is really the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. It is making all of us subservient to the government."

The comments resonated with conservative and Tea Party voters, and they've rewarded Carson with straw poll votes in Iowa, a growing national base of support and more than $2.1 million donated from 1,443 individuals — including $20,555 from 42 Michiganders — to the committee he created to explore a presidential bid.

"I knew of him from his surgeries and then I heard him at the prayer breakfast," said James Boucher of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., who came to the museum to hear Carson speak. "I've admired him for his whole career, and that he's coming out of Detroit. I think he's an inspiration for all the parents and all the children in Detroit."

But Carson has had some missteps.

He's had to apologize for comments he's made placing gay people in the same category as pedophiles and people who practice beastiality when it comes to same-sex marriage. After those comments in 2014, students at Johns Hopkins protested and asked that Carson not be the school's commencement speaker. Carson withdrew as commencement speaker.

And in March of this year, he told CNN that being gay is absolutely a choice because many inmates go in to prison straight and are gay when they are released.

He offered an apology on his Facebook page, noting: "My poorly considered reflex comment in no way shape or form represents my knowledge or appreciation for the LGBT ... community. ... While I remain opposed to same-sex marriage, I have and will continue to support recognition of same-sex civil unions."

Carson faces an already crowded GOP field for president.

Already announced candidates include Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Marco Rubio of Florida. California businesswoman Carly Fiorina also jumped into the race Monday morning. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is expected to announce on Tuesday.

Boucher thinks Carson's inexperience in elected office might hurt Carson's chances.

"I personally suspect that he'll hopefully be the vice presidential nominee," he said. "I think his lack of experience as a governor or even a U.S. senator is too much to overcome."

For Alexis Pyles, 8, of Romulus, who got the chance to have Carson autograph one of his books, meeting the doctor was overwhelming.

"He's my hero, my inspiration. It was amazing to speak to him, I thought he was going to faint," she said. "I like how before every surgery, he didn't rely on his skills, he prayed."

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