Trump-supporting Gulf War veteran Shak Hill is challenging Congresswoman Barbara Comstock in the 2018 Republican primary for Virginia’s 10th District congressional seat.
“There are a huge number of people desperately disappointed with Barbara. She is a creature of the swamp,” Hill told Big League Politics in an exclusive interview. Hill has filed the official paperwork and there will be a formal announcement next week. He announced his entry into the race privately at Thursday night’s Loudon County GOP dinner.
Hill, who previously served as a city councilor and challenged Ed Gillespie for the Senate, is not happy that Comstock’s political career is bankrolled to a large extent by neoconservative Establishment power broker Paul Singer, the hedge fund mogul.
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“Barbara ran as a conservative replacement to longtime Republican Frank Wolf. She used her own words on the Mark Levin Show that she was a Reaganite. Now Mark Levin has railed on her because she is voting like a drunken Democrat. She has sold her voting card to the establishment and it’s clear she’s not representing the people,” Hill said.
“She said she was going to vote to repeal Obamacare, back when everybody knew that Obama was going to veto (any repeal attempt). This year when the vote came up in the House she voted with every single Democrat to oppose the repeal of Obamacare.”
“The military is designed to break things and kill people. I have two boys in the United States Army, enlisted men to serve our country and to protect their way of life. Three days ago my son received orders to go to Afghanistan. Instead of utilizing the limited resources available to the Department of Defense to buy more kevlar vests and armored vehicles, Barbara voted with every single Democrat to allow elective surgeries for those who are not stable in their own gender identity,” Hill said.
“I flew in Desert Storm One. I slept on a cot on the desert floor. My brother Chris was in the disputed territory between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and he slept on the desert. Mission readiness and cohesion and knowing that you have each other’s back is the most important thing,” Hill said. “My wife is a very healthy cancer survivor. Through the course of her surgeries that we had through the military there was a need to have a plastic surgeon to repair skin in her left leg. That was denied. Plastic surgery is not covered by the Tricare system. Well, transgender surgery is 100 percent elective.”
“We can go to the omnibus bill, to the fact that she isn’t supporting President Trump on anything. She publicly returned his campaign donation. She has a knee-jerk reaction against the President. On a lot of policy decisions if you’re anti-Trump you’re anti-American.”
“At the Loudon County meeting last night I had a third of the room whisper to me that they’re all in,” Hill said. “There are people who want to see the success and abandon the politics of Comstock. They are searching for somebody who believes in liberty and American exceptionalism. They are hoping that they’ve found that with me. They have.”
“We have a finance committee that is already shaping up. We have national conservative attention watching our race and have expressed interest in our race in the last 48 hours and we haven’t even announced.”
“I’m a reluctant politician. I think the people of America want representatives to be real. I think they used to think you have to have some experience in Washington. This was the prevailing thought. We accepted politics as usual. Trump has showed us that it is anything but. The people want REAL representation.”
Hill, who grew up “solid lower middle-class,” and his wife were foster parents for 16 years beginning in 1997 and fostered 46 children of different races.
“We can cut through this Democrat crap, oh you’re a rich white guy and you hate the blacks. No. cut it out, just cut it out,” Hill said.
Hill is not impressed by the opposition research that Comstock’s team, he claims, is digging up on him.
“Barbara is throwing mud that I have a Senate campaign debt. This is true, but it’s my personal debt that I put into the campaign because I paid everyone else off. I have no outstanding debts from the general public,” Hill said.
“The struggle of the human race is power against individual liberty. We know in 1776 that the King represented power. That’s the way the world worked back then, it was a king, it was a potentate. Our founders realized the genius of the American individual. Today we have the same exact struggle, power versus individual liberty. We don’t have delineated tug of war ropes, it’s not Republican vs. Democrat. It’s power versus individual liberty. Barbara has sold her vote in Congress for power.”
Comstock’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
