Don Hewett
Republican | Washington
Candidate Profile
Moderate
BIOGRAPHY
Name
Don Hewett
Party
Republican
Election Year
2020
Election
Primary
Race
U.S. Rep., Dist. 10
Incumbent
No
Links
EDUCATION
University of Washington, Seattle, BS Math, 1983
University of Washington, Seattle, BS Computer Science, 1983
University of Washington, Seattle, BS Electrical Engineering, 1999
WORK & MILITARY
U.S. AirForce, Airman First Class, 1985
AFFILIATIONS
Church, Helping build housing for single mothers, Thurston County food Bank
Delivering food to those in need, North Thurston School district, Volunteering to help children (Watch Dog program)
Many other miscellaneous groups, Volunteering when needed
POLITICAL OFFICES HELD
(Candidate did not provide)
POLITICAL OFFICES SOUGHT
(Candidate did not provide)
ENDORSEMENTS
REPORTED BY CANDIDATE (1)
I have not spent much effort on this yet
OTHER INFORMATION
QUESTIONNAIRE
RIGHT TO LIFE
Human life begins at conception and deserves legal protection at every stage until natural death.
Agree
Abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, should not receive taxpayer funds or grants from federal, state, or local governments.
Agree
I support the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which requires health care providers to provide life-saving treatment for infants who survive an attempted abortion.
Agree
Under what circumstances should abortion be allowed?
Abortion should be legal but rare. We leave our sisters with the choice of abortion or ruin their lives. Imagine you are 20 years old in college and get pregnant. What are your options? Ruin your life or have an abortion? We need greater abilities to have the child without jeopardizing your dreams. A place to go, and be assured that you are safe and well taken care of and can have that child. Have an option. There is a great demand in our country by people who cannot have a child to be able to adopt, but a shortage of adoptable children. What will this 20 year old feel in her life if she has an abortion when she is 30 years old? She may have to live her life in guilt. I do not want that to happen to any of my sisters. If abortion is illegal, it will still happen it will just be much more unsafe. I do not want any of my sisters to suffer the guilt of their past, have unsafe abortions. Abortion should be legal and rare.
ECONOMY
It is the government’s responsibility to ensure everyone has a livable income.
Agree
Free enterprise and the right to private property are essential elements of a productive economic system.
Strongly Agree
How would you guarantee Social Security benefits for future generations?
This is a subject that I am committed to working to fix. You have paid into this system and it is yours. You earned it. Our government has borrowed from this program to a point that it may run short of funds. They anticipated that we would always have a larger and larger group of younger people paying into the fund for the older people. The problem is that our population is now aging. There are fewer and fewer younger adults than anticipated. If the money had not been borrowed, the fund would have grown, and this would not be an issue now. We will need to restore money back to this system. This is not an option; we were forced to pay into it. I fear that the government will just raise the age to collect or other actions such as this. I will not support changing these rules to cover for our government failing to meet its commitments.
What government spending would you reduce in order to balance the budget?
Before deciding where to reduce spending, we need to understand exactly where our money is going and what we are getting from it. First we need to audit most of the systems. Is our money efficiently spent? Much of our money is actually being mismanaged by our government. Before deciding exactly what to cut back on we need to figure out where it is being wasted. But, we must balance our budget, otherwise we are wasting much of our money just financing the interest on our debt.
Under what circumstances should taxpayers help pay off existing student loans?
This horse has already left the barn. We cannot afford to do this. We do need to work to have affordable school for our children from now on. We should not have our kids having immense debt just to get an education. We have a problem with our education system in which it is costing so much. I have heard many solutions to solve this, but am not certain how each of them would work. I would love to discuss each of these issues with you, but this discussion is too extensive to discuss here.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
Governments should not discriminate against individuals, organizations or small businesses because of their belief that marriage is only a union of one man and one woman.
Strongly Agree
Religious liberty is at risk in the United States and deserves the highest level of protection in the law.
Strongly Agree
I promise to protect the freedom of Christians to share the Gospel and to practice Biblical principles.
Yes
What does "separation of church and state" mean to you?
Separation of church and state means to me that the government is in no way involved in anyone’s religious beliefs. That does not, to me, mean that they can state for example that a public school cannot have things like Christmas ornaments or trees. That is up to the community with that school to decide what they want, not the federal government. If the public wants to have religious items in their public parks, they should have them, if not, they should not. The government should keep their hands off of these issues.
HEALTHCARE
It is the government’s responsibility to ensure everyone has health insurance.
Agree
I support the elimination of private healthcare insurance.
Strongly Disagree
How would you promote healthcare coverage that is adequate, affordable and accessible for all?
Our healthcare system is getting out of control. The expense is going up and up, but the care we get is getting worse and worse. The Affordable Care Act was a bit of a mistake. What occurred is that a great deal of money was made available for health care and all of the pigs came running to the trough. We need to audit the system and find out where the money is going. We still need to make certain that there is the availability of private insurance available. In short, for the ACA, follow the money, for the private insurance system; allow the free enterprise system to work.
NATIONAL SECURITY
The best way to maintain peace is through a strong military.
Agree
What should the United States do to help eradicate the threat of radical Islamic terrorism?
We cannot really end terrorism of any type in the world. We can only protect ourselves from it. We need strong vetting of those who enter our country. We should avoid attempting to change the social order of other countries. As we interfere with them, we actually encourage these attacks on us.
IMMIGRATION
I am in favor of construction of a wall and other necessary infrastructure on our border that gives complete control over entering and exiting the United States.
Agree
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be abolished.
Strongly Disagree
State and federal funds should be denied to any public or private entity, including but not limited to sanctuary cities, that are not in compliance with immigration laws.
Agree
Employers should be required to use E-verify to confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States.
Agree
Who should be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. and under what circumstances?
Anyone who applies for citizenship and is followed the process should be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. We do have quotas from each of the areas of the world. Preferable, we would like to have the more educated immigrating. But we should still just go by if you follow the rules for immigration we welcome you. We cannot allow uncontrolled immigration.
EDUCATION
Taxpayer-funded public education should be guaranteed through college.
Neutral
VALUES
Judeo-Christian values established a framework of morality which is necessary for our system of limited government.
Agree
I support adding sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression as protected classes in non-discrimination laws.
Disagree
Briefly describe your spiritual beliefs and values.
I am strongly Christian. I am a convert Catholic. I still have and still do attend many other different churches of different denominations. I find value with all of them and find that they are all more similar in fundamental beliefs than different.
ABOUT YOU
When you consider your views on a wide range of issues from economic and social matters to foreign policy and immigration, which of the following best describes you overall?
Somewhat Conservative
Please provide publicly available information validating your answer to the previous question.
This is a very nebulous question. What exactly is conservative? I believe that we need to keep our freedoms and rights and not allow out government to continuously take more and more of them away from us. I believe that we need to reduce the size of our government; it continues to grow and grow, much more than is needed. I believe that we need to reduce how much we are taxed. I believe that this is the only planet we have and we need to work to protect it and reduce how much we pollute it. I believe that we need to help insure that our children can have affordable education. I believe that we need to have affordable quality health care. There are many other policies that I would like to discuss. Am I conservative or liberal?
Have you ever been convicted of a felony or been penalized for sexual misconduct? If so, please explain.
No.
Is there anything else you would like voters to know about you?
My greatest desire is to serve and give back to my community. The greatest blessing that we each have in life is that we get to serve each other. As your representative it is my job to represent you to our federal government. I want to make your voice heard. I support your needs and requests. There are items that I don’t believe are good, but you do. For example, I don’t believe that legalizing Marijuana is good, but the people voted to legalize it in our state, so I will stand behind your decision. By definition the people are always right, it is a country of the people, by the people, for the people. You are the fourth branch of government and it is time that you be heard.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE & PUBLIC SAFETY
Mandatory minimum sentencing should be required and enforced for violent crimes.
Agree
2ND AMENDMENT
What restrictions on gun ownership are needed to protect public safety?
We do not need more federal laws for gun safety. We need few to no restrictions at the federal level for gun ownership. These restrictions should be moved more closely to the states and their local communities. Rural Montana has different gun needs than Los Angeles. LA may have much more restrictive law than Montana. Leave these decisions to the local communities. We do have issues with gun violence in our country. Guns don't kill people, pissed off people with guns kill people.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES
I support BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanction) against Israel if they refuse to allow the creation of a Palestinian state.
Disagree
I support the legalization of recreational marijuana.
Agree
Reparations should be given to people on the basis of race.
Strongly Disagree
The Electoral College should be abolished.
Strongly Disagree
In priority order, what three areas of legislation do you propose to author or sponsor if elected?
Unlike other politicians who are coming to office to make lots of changes to the government according to their thoughts, I see the job is to propose and work on legislation that you request. It is really not my job to force my ideas on you, but to represent you and make your voice hear at the federal level. There are many issues that I would like to see happen, such as term limits on our legislature, reduction of the size of our government, less bureaucracy on our businesses, but your ideas are what a representative takes to congress. I would love to see you the people writing bills for congress so that I can take them and sponsor them in congress. That is what a representative does, represent you.
Is racism a threat to domestic security in the United States? Why or why not?
I don’t think it is. In my district I do not see much racism. People are people and I find people of all ethnicity to be much more similar than different. I believe that much of our TV and other media promotes this issues, but us real people are not as they say we are. We are all brothers and sisters on this planet. We are all related in the past and we will all be related in the future. We are all brothers and sister together on this planet and we need each other. We all know this. I am thankful that we are all different. I don't think I would like it much if everyone in the world was just like me!
