Challenger finding little time to take on Coble

By Mark Wineka

mwineka@salisburypost.com

Sam Turner, a United Airlines pilot, has discovered it’s hard to fly passenger jets and be a viable congressional candidate in his spare time.

“I don’t see how I can pull it off, being an airline pilot,” acknowledges Turner, a resident of Salisbury. “It just isn’t doable, to be honest with you.”

Turner is basically in the air Monday through Friday, leaving him little time to campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., who is seeking his 14th consecutive term in the 6th District.

Turner is left to writing blogs on his website at samturnerforcongress.com. He confesses that he signed up as the lone Democratic candidate this year as a means of introducing himself to voters and preparing for a more serious run in the future, should redistricting change the 6th District’s boundaries.

As it exists now, the 6th District is close to a Republican lock. Coble’s biggest challenge, most observers agree, came in the May Republican primary when five others vied for the nomination — Coble’s first primary opposition since 1984.

But Coble conquered the opponents handily, capturing 65 percent of the primary vote and avoiding a runoff. Turner, a first-time candidate, was unopposed in the Democratic primary, setting up the Nov. 2 election.

“Hopefully, you always learn,” Coble says of what he took away from the GOP primary battle.

What he found most interesting in the primary, Coble says, was that “no one really attacked me on my voting record.” Instead, his opponents complained that he has been in Congress too long and suggested he was “too long in the tooth,” says the 79-year-old Coble.

“The Lord has blessed me with good health,” Coble says, adding he is able to sustain the physical demands of the job — “and they are demanding.” He argues that he has always been accessible to his constituents and thinks anyone taking his place would have a hard time matching that record over the years.

But Coble never takes an election for granted.

He says an anti-incumbent mood is sweeping the country, meaning anything could happen.

The 6th District includes all of Moore and Randolph counties and portions of Rowan, Davidson, Guilford and Alamance counties.

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Coble is considered among the more conservative members in Congress.

He contends that a glaring mistake President Obama committed was making health-care reform the No. 1 issue when Americans were more concerned about unemployment, the lack of new jobs, reckless government spending and uncertainty over whether Bush tax cuts would be extended.

Obama “put all his eggs in that one basket” and ignored the more pressing concerns of the country, Coble says.

Should Republicans regain a majority in the U.S. House, Coble says he doubts he would be in line for a full chairmanship of the Judiciary or Transportation committees, but he would like to return as chairman of the Internet & Intellectual Property subcommittee — one of the few areas, Coble says, where the United States enjoys a favorable trade balance.

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Turner, 49, learned to fly in the Air Force. He is a graduate of Salisbury High School and N.C. State University.

Turner says with all the problems facing the country now, the root cause is a broken political system running on greed.

He expresses frustration with Republicans who play political games “by blocking everything,” even ideas they would support otherwise. He also thinks his own party is wrong is trying to affix all the blame for the country’s current economic woes to the Bush years.

“This was a 30-year path starting in 1980 with (President) Reagan,” Turner says.

He contends that the latest bailout of the banking system was the seventh or eighth in the past 30 years, “but people forget that.”

Turner says he would have supported the $800 billion stimulus package, though its major flaw was that much of the money went to bail out distressed states. He said he also would have supported healthcare reform that would allow for a single-payer system.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.