I first met Andy Harris in Easton, Maryland in 2010 at an event organized by the then burgeoning “Tea Party” movement. Much maligned and smeared in the subsequent portrayals, the Tea Party was nothing more than a grassroots movement organized around two focal issues: escalating national debt and the passage of Obamacare. The latter effectively nationalized 6% of the GDP and permanently embedded the federal bureaucracy in the sacred doctor-patient relationship.
Contrary to President Obama’s assurances, millions of Americans lost their insurance coverage only to be replaced by inferior policies with deductibles so high that for all intents and purposes made policy holders “uninsured”. Who could afford an $8K annual deductible on their medical policy? It was against this backdrop that Andy Harris won his first election for the Maryland Congressional District One. He defeated the popular incumbent, Queen Anne County Judge Kratovil — who had voted for Obamacare — in a landslide. By electing Andy Harris back in 2010, Eastern shore had spoken and allied itself with the forces of freedom, American traditionalism, and fiscal conservatism. Andy has not failed us and we have stuck with him ever since. He has one of the highest district-wide approval ratings in Congress.
The Tea Party movement represented the second wave of political realignment favoring the Republican Party. The first was in 1980 with Ronald Reagan when millions of working class Americans, the “Blue Democrats” as they became known, joined his movement. This second, the Tea Party wave, was markedly a middle class movement concerned about the fiscal health of the nation — the national debt under Obama eventually doubled during his two terms in office, from $10 trillion in January of 2009 when he took office, to $19 trillion by the end of his second term. That’s a hell of a lot of “quantitative easing”. All the while we were shedding jobs, entire industries, manufacturing base, and individual and corporate tax base along with them, in the name of “globalization”.
Andy Harris points out that Obamacare was not just about “medical coverage”. It represented a fundamental shift in Americans’ self-understanding and their relationship to their government. To conservatives government is not [or it ought not to be], a provider of consumer goods and services. It is to be an arbiter and provide the scaffolding, the structural background, for the free market and civil society to flourish. Obamacare had shifted that line by creating new entitlements and new dependencies. Political philosophy, and political psychology tell us a lot of what happens with “dependent classes”: they become democratic constituencies and remain forever mired in that dependent relationship, but that is a story for another time.
Andy Harris, who is a medical doctor by profession, and continues his practice here on the Eastern shore to this day, took the Hippocratic Oath: “First Do No Harm” — this is the shorthand version of the oath we are all familiar with. Andy Harris extends this “First Do No Harm” oath to his practice of politics. And we, his constituents, are the better for it.
When a mutual friend introduced us back in 2010, at that Tea Party event in Easton, we bonded at a rate of knots over our shared abhorrence of all things socialist, totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial, call it what you may, the outcome is always much the same. Andy, the son of refugees from the former Eastern Europe, had no difficulty in connecting with my reality of having grown up under the horrors of communism. We both understand, and are forever vigilant about the fact that liberty, and liberty alone, stands in opposition to all that — Frederick Hayek, the Nobel prize winning economist, and an indefatigable defender of liberty, put it rather succinctly: “Liberty is the ground of all things”. Andy and I, and many like us, having had first hand experience of the world without liberty, understand the existential threat that these movements pose. To remain a stable, prosperous, Constitutional Republic, the light of liberty must continue to guide the way. It was with that in mind that Andy proudly joined the House Freedom Caucus in 2015.
The election of President Trump in 2016 represents another wave-realignment in the American political landscape. Traditionally democratic “working class” voters migrated over to the Republican Party in support of Mr. Trump’s America First agenda, rejecting the globalist model that had exported American industries and jobs in a wholesale fashion. The promised benefits from this globalization never materialized. Left behind are desolate towns and cities that were once proud centers of American manufacturing and entrepreneurship. One only has to look at Detroit, where boulevards of gracious Victorian villas sit in urban ruin. Uncontrolled immigration was suppressing the wages of the most economically vulnerable among us, yet failing to provide us with the skilled labor that we actually needed. Andy was proud to jump on board with America First policy agenda to protect American markets, American agriculture, energy independence, and the American labor force — Andy is America First!
We are a Constitutional Republic. We elect our representatives and send them to Washington, D.C., to represent our interests. Period. Andy has not lost sight of this basic fact; you will not find Andy in a fancy dress at the Met Gala! Due to his seniority Andy is now the Ranking member of the Agriculture Subcommittee to the Appropriations Committee. He is standing up for all the farmers in our community and he has received the “Friend of the Farmer Award” every term he’s been in office. He has secured funding for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, specifically for the eradication of destructive invasive species. He sponsors Oyster Restoration Language every year to direct NOAA to continue the oyster restoration project in the Chesapeake Bay. He continues to fight for the H2B visas essential for the crab picking industry. Andy is the best friend that our local waterman, small businesses and farmers ever had in the “People’s House”. Andy is very proud of having received honors such as “Guardian of Small Business” and “Hero of Main Street”.
The mid-term election of 2022 truly is an existential election. I will not recount the destructiveness the current Democratic administration has wrought. I don’t have to. We see it, we feel it every time we gas up, every time we do grocery shopping. Sticker shock is an understatement. Home ownership is increasingly out of reach for young families. Suffice it to say that 75% of Americans now say the country is on the wrong track. That is the highest number ever recorded. While there will not be an opportunity to change course in the Executive Branch until 2024, we have to make sure that there is a switch in the balance of power in the Senate and of course, the “People’s House”, the House of Representatives, so that these institutions may act in the manner envisioned by our founding fathers: as a check-and-balance on the power of the Executive.
Andy Harris has been a faithful and an honorable representative for our community and our interests. The oath “First do no harm” that he took as a medical doctor, and that continues to be his guiding light has served him, and consequently all of us, well.
Godspeed.
Tatiana Croissette is the Former Chair of Kent County GOP
Michael McDowell says
Ms. Croissette’s risible defense of irresponsible right wing extremist Andy Harris is easily rebutted.
She begins by saying the Tea Party (which propelled Harris into Congress, on a second try) was based on “escalating national debt.” Hmm, Harris the hypocrite, campaigned for years as a “deficit hawk” until….Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and big business blew the deficit sky high. Then….the usual deafening silence from Harris…until President Biden was convincingly elected and then Harris was back on the “deficit hawk” trail again.
She goes on to say Harris was a great champion against Obamacare. Indeed, he was. But Obamacare is supported, as polls consistently show, by a significant majority of voters. Fact. If Republicans in Congress tried to take Obamacare a way they would suffer a backlash now, and they know it.
And let’s be fair; the shameful O’Malley/Miller gerrymander, cramming a massive majority of Republicans into District 1 is the only reason that Harris has a big majority. Fact.
Harris, who boastfully always insists on adding “M.D” to his title in Congress, this year prescribed the largely animal centered drug Ivermectin! And before that was selling the evidence-free “cure” of hydroxychloroquine medication. He rabble roused along the Shore, months before, criticising Republican Governor Hogan for bringing in safety measures on Covid. Harris, laughingly, compared Maryland to North Korea and Communist China! And why is this cookey doctor earning money doing hospital work? He’s paid handsomely to be a Congressman. That’s his job. But he likes to earn on the side.
Speaking of his 13 year record in Congress: not a single piece of legislation passed in his name. Oh, wait….the naming of a post office. Never a committee or sub-committee chair, ever.
Then he lied about only running for 6 terms. Now he’s running for a seventh. And Harris was the “term limits champion” until….he wasn’t. He even sponsored a term limits bill in the House but he doesn’t mention that any more.
Ms. Croissette writes about Harris’s parents being “refugees from Eastern Europe.” No, tell the whole story, which is all there now on the web. For years, Harris touted his father in glowing terms as some find of freedom seeker fleeing “socialism” (in fact, communism, not democratic socialism which thrives in many countries across the globe, UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, etc). But his father, as a distinguished Yale historian who was a real Hungarian hero found last year, was a member of the Hungarian Nazi Party, the awful Arrow Cross movement which was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Jews.
Now, Harris fans will say, “but you can’t blame the sins of the father on the son.” Oh it is entirely legitimate to force Harris from spreading the lie that Zoltan Harris (just Google “Zoltan Harris and Hungary”), the awful dad, was a democrat (small d). Zoltan Harris fought with the Nazi Army against us and the Allies. Hell, Zoltan Harris, when brought before a Budapest court in 1946, tried to hide his past by joining the Hungarian Communist Party! Fact. And Andy Harris’s claim that the father was in a “Soviet gulag” is too clever by half. He was a legitimate prisoner of war and was in a POW camp. Talk about chutzpah. And then Zoltan Harris skipped Hungary for a displaced person camp in Salzburg, Austria, and then managed to slip into the US.
And who does Harris support financially? Well, from his war chest he funded the initial runs for Congress of “Jewish space lasers/QAnon” fan, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and fellow gun nut, Rep. Lauren Boebert. Talk about extremism.
And beware of Ms. Croissette’s artful use of the telling phrase “Constitutional Republic.” This euphemism is a way of trying to sell the lie that we are not a country where the majority of votes decides on who forms the government in the presidency, or Congress. We are a DEMOCRACY. Some smart alecks like Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah suggest that there is nothing wrong with minority rule. Oh, yes there is.
And of course Harris supports The Big Lie, an utter sycophant of Trump who just loves Harris.
I could go on at length.
But let me finish with this. At the time of writing this response, the appalling Harris has not commented for more than two weeks on the slaughter in Buffalo OR Uvalde. That’s the pattern. Harris waits for the anger against a free-for-all on gun safety neglect before he opines, or just ignores what a true representative would feel the need to answer.
“First, do no harm”, indeed. Not with “Dr. No.” Irredeemable.
Eva M. Smorzaniuk MD says
Thank you Mr. McDowell for shedding a light on Andy Harris and his lackluster career in office. Correct – no committee chairmanships, one sponsored bill passed, and one of the poorest records of working across the aisle in Congress. Apparently, all his supporters expect him to do is show up and vote in lock step with the radical right agenda, and not actually legislate. He professes to abhor fascist and communist regimes, yet he was recently at the CPAC meeting in Hungary where attendees got to hear authoritarian leader Victor Orban give helpful hints on how to control free speech in the media. As the first generation child of a Ukrainian father and a German mother, this sends a chill up my spine. The first district deserves much better – someone who will address issues of rural access to health care, economic growth on the Shore, preservation of our farming and fisheries industries, and educational opportunities to keep people employed on the Shore. I urge voters to look at the records of the candidates, and make a decision based on facts rather than rhetoric.
Sheila Vaughan says
Thank you, Michael McDowell, for your truthful and insightful rebuttal to Ms. Croissette. Let’s not forget that Harris voted against the certification of the 2020 election (in which 50+ court challenges to the claims of fraud were knocked down) and that he carried a gun onto the House floor. Harris is not “honorable;” he is a seditionist.
Brian H. Childs says
I also remember Mr Harris being upset during the orientation to his first term in congress whining that he did not get the blue ribbon health insurance on the the very first day. He practices medicine only enough to keep his license current but I would rather he practice full-time and pass gas that way.
Stephen Schaare says
Hi Tatiana, Put on your helmet and body armor! Good luck.
Eva M. Smorzaniuk MD says
Being armed with facts would be more helpful…..
Mary Jane Svenson says
If Andy Harris is so dedicated to “do no harm” why did he vote against the counting of electors and the peaceful transfer of power in our country. He did plenty of harm. He also tried to take a gun into congress against the rules – and tried to blame it on someone else, is this “do no harm”. To name a few more harmful of his votes: he voted NO on the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act, he voted NO on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, he voted NO on the Access to Baby Formula Act, he voted NO on the Community Services Block Grant Modernization Act of 2022, he voted NO on the Federal Firefighters Fairness Act of 2022, he voted NO on the Ukraine Comprehensive Debt Payment Relief Act of 2022, he voted NO on the Restaurant Revitalization Fund Replenishment Act of 2021 HE DOES PLENTY OF HARM every day he is in Congress. He must be voted out!!!!
James Wilson says
Hmmm. Obviously you know nothing about how immensely successful The Affordable Care Act has been.
Peter Woickje says
Reading Ms.Croissette’s letter I was not quite sure whether it was for real or meant to be a satire.
Stephen Schaare says
Yes, that’s exactly what I wonder every time I read J.E. Dean.
Anne C Stalfort says
Spare me. Andy Hsrris has to go.
Bob Parker says
Several of Ms. Croissette’s comments should be put into context.
1. National Debt and the Tea Party Movement:
FY Debt Debt:GDP Major Events in Presidential Term
($Bn) Ratio
1929 $17 16% Market crash
1930 $16 17% Smoot-Hawley reduced trade
1931 $17 22% Dust Bowl drought raged
1932 $20 34% Hoover raised taxes
1933 $23 40% New Deal increased GDP and debt
1934 $27 40%
1935 $29 39% Social Security
1936 $34 40% Tax hikes renewed depression
1937 $36 39% Third New Deal
1938 $37 42% Dust Bowl ended
1939 $40 51% Depression ended
1940 $43 49% FDR increased spending and raised taxes
1941 $49 44% U.S. entered WWII
1942 $72 48% Defense tripled
1943 $137 70%
1944 $201 91% Bretton Woods
1945 $259 114% WWII ended
1946 $269 119% Truman’s 1st term budgets and recession
1947 $258 103% Cold War
1948 $252 92% Recession
1949 $253 93% Recession
1950 $257 86% Korean War boosted growth and debt
1951 $255 74%
1952 $259 71%
1953 $266 68% Recession when war ended
1954 $271 69% Eisenhower’s budgets and Recession
1955 $274 64%
1956 $273 61%
1957 $271 57% Recession
1958 $276 58% Eisenhower’s 2nd term and recession
1959 $285 55% Fed raised rates
1960 $286 54% Recession
1961 $289 52% Bay of Pigs
1962 $298 50% JFK budgets and Cuban missile crisis
1963 $306 48% U.S. aids Vietnam, JFK killed
1964 $312 46% LBJ’s budgets and war on poverty
1965 $317 43% U.S. entered Vietnam War
1966 $320 40%
1967 $326 40%
1968 $348 39%
1969 $354 36% Nixon took office
1970 $371 35% Recession
1971 $398 35% Wage-price controls
1972 $427 34% Stagflation
1973 $458 33% Nixon ended gold standard and OPEC oil embargo
1974 $475 31% Watergate and budget process created
1975 $533 32% Vietnam War ended
1976 $620 33% Stagflation
1977 $699 34% Stagflation
1978 $772 33% Carter budgets and recession
1979 $827 32%
1980 $908 32% Volcker raised fed rate to 20%
1981 $998 31% Reagan tax cut
1982 $1,142 34% Reagan increased spending
1983 $1,377 37% Jobless rate 10.8%
1984 $1,572 38% Increased defense spending
1985 $1,823 41%
1986 $2,125 46% Reagan lowered taxes
1987 $2,350 48% Market crash
1988 $2,602 50% Fed raised rates
1989 $2,857 51% S&L Crisis
1990 $3,233 54% First Iraq War
1991 $3,665 58% Recession
1992 $4,065 61%
1993 $4,411 63% Omnibus Budget Act
1994 $4,693 64% Clinton budgets
1995 $4,974 64%
1996 $5,225 64% Welfare reform
1997 $5,413 63%
1998 $5,526 60% LTCM crisis and recession
1999 $5,656 58% Glass-Steagall repealed
2000 $5,674 55% Budget surplus
2001 $5,807 55% 9/11 attacks and EGTRRA
2002 $6,228 57% War on Terror
2003 $6,783 59% JGTRRA and Iraq War
2004 $7,379 60% Iraq War
2005 $7,933 61% Bankruptcy Act and Hurricane Katrina.
2006 $8,507 61% Bernanke chaired Fed
2007 $9,008 62% Bank crisis
2008 $10,025 68% Bank bailout and QE
2009 $11,910 82% Bailout cost $250B ARRA added $242B
2010 $13,562 90% ARRA added $400B, payroll tax holiday ended, Obama Tax cuts, ACA, Simpson-Bowles
2011 $14,790 95% Debt crisis, recession and tax cuts reduced revenue
2012 $16,066 99% Fiscal cliff
2013 $16,738 99% Sequester, government shutdown
2014 $17,824 101% QE ended, debt ceiling crisis
2015 $18,151 100% Oil prices fell
2016 $19,573 105% Brexit
2017 $20,245 104% Congress raised the debt ceiling
2018 $21,516 105% Trump tax cuts
2019 $22,719 107% Trade wars
2020 $27,748 129% COVID-19 and 2020 recession
2021 $29,617 124% COVID-19 and American Rescue Plan Act
As one can see, the national debt has essentially increased each year since the Great Depression, but debt as a percentage of GDP remained pretty stable in the low 30% range until the Regan tax cuts (remember “trickle down economics”?) and has essentially remained in the +/- 60% range until the 2008/09 housing bubble and financial crisis with increased gov’t spending to prevent economic collapse. Since then, the GOP has continued policies that have maintained Debt:GDP ratio >90% with support of the Tea Party adherents. It is clear that the Tea Party was not a low National Debt movement but a low tax one.
2. Re: The ACA (aka Obamacare): While the premiums were higher than anticipated, this was due in large part to the participating insurers requesting from state Insurance Commissions waivers of the 80% minimum Medical Loss Ratio (MLR; i.e., the percent of premium paid out for medical services) mandated by the ACA allowing the the insurers to maintain MLR of 60% (or at time lower). Indeed, many subspecialists refuse to contract with insurers and therefore can charge more contributing to medical cost debts incurred by patients (case in point, anesthesiologists are a prime example). A more nuanced discussion of the ACA is beyond the scope of this letter.
My point is “facts” w/o context may merely be expressions of opinion. The reader must be aware.
J. Dean says
Ms. Croissette, let me politely suggest your letter is a potent emetic. I choked reading it but fortunately survived. Andy Handgun Harris has not been a faithful and honorable representative of the first district, at least not to any of us who have reviewed his deplorable record on civil rights, income inequality, and Constitutional government.
I hope you read all of the responses to your letter. Can you rebut the allegation about the Hungarian Nazi party?
Also, are you really comfortable with what Andy Handgun Harris did on January 6?
Thank you in advance for your answers.
Michael McDowell says
Ms. Croissette will NOT be able to refute the facts on Zoltan Harris (then, Haris) by the late Hungarian Yale professor and respected scholar, Dr. Eva Balogh. Here it is: https://hungarianspectrum.org/tag/zoltan-haris/
And as Dr. Balogh writes, and who escaped Hungary in 1956 as a student, after the Soviet army killed many of her generation when they put down the protests:
“Additional information on Zoltán Hariss/Harris, father of Andy Harris
Today I will first return briefly to the topic of Congressman Andy Harris’s Hungarian roots. Such a revisit is especially timely because, on January 29, according to the announcement of the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, he “received the Officer’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit for his tireless support in strengthening the relationship between Hungary and our ally, the United States of America.”
Since the appearance of my article on Andy Harris and his father on January 22, thanks to our wizard of Google Search, Ferenc, additional pieces of information emerged, all of which support my original findings.
The first is a list of physicians in the Budapest Orvostudományi Egyetem Jegyzőkönyvei, 1929-1963 (Minutes of the Budapest Medical School, 1929-1963) “who are all well-known fascists of ultra-right-wing thinking” (p. 439). Zoltán Hariss’s name appears on the list. On p. 440 is a text that reads: “The above-mentioned physicians and medical employees are well-known fascists, who because of their far-right thinking both in words and deeds assisted the rule of an unpatriotic and treasonous political system…. The above-mentioned persons had an unsavory influence on the younger generation, and unfortunately they are still able to continue their propaganda at the bedsides of their patients.”
The second document comes from Magyar Országos Tudósító/MOT (Hungarian National Reporter), a typewritten source of news on actions taken against former Arrow Cross members and others who in one way or another worked with the Germans. MOT basically repeats what I read about Hariss’s conviction in Magyar Nemzet, but it adds a few more specifics. One is that he was a member of the Arrow Cross Party and that, after October 15, 1944, he worked hand in hand with the Keleti Arcvonal Bajtársi Szövetség (Alliance of Eastern Front Comrades) as a doctor. In addition, it gives the name of the prosecutor (Ödön Alexander) and states that the judge (Endre Rácz) considered his high degree of intelligence to be an aggravating circumstance. The judgment was not final.”
John Dean says
Thank you for this detail. I had no idea.
Matt LaMotte says
You need to do more + better fact-checking. Some of your “facts” are quite inaccurate!