Gary Palmer seeks sixth two-year term in Congress

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Congressman Gary Palmer, who represents Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District, has been taking a lot of criticism for reneging on his promise not to stay in office for more than 10 years.

But Palmer, a 69-year-old Republican from Hoover, said he put a lot of prayer into the decision and sought a lot of advice before deciding to run for a sixth two-year term.

“If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have said it,” Palmer said of his 10-year promise.

But he has since come to realize that it takes a while to learn how the process works in Washington. Certain rules have to be followed, and Congressmen have to work through committees and pay dues to get things done, he said.

Early on in his tenure, he spent four years on the House Budget Committee, and now he’s on the House Energy & Commerce Committee. There has not been a Republican from Alabama on that committee in 30 to 40 years, he said.

Palmer is the third most senior Republican in the Alabama delegation, and, depending on who you ask, he is fifth or sixth in leadership in the House, he said.

Palmer said there has been a huge turnover among Republicans in Congress in recent years, and “we’re hemorrhaging in experience and institutional knowledge. … We’re having a hard time passing anything right now.”

As chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a former member of the House Budget Committee, he believes his experience and background in policy matters, the budget and Congressional procedure will be needed.

He said the country has been headed in the wrong direction under President Biden’s administration, and if Donald Trump is elected as the next president, “we’ve got a chance to really fix some things.”

It’s easy for his opponents to criticize his votes on certain things, but “they don’t know how things work,” Palmer said.

Palmer’s opponents in the March 5 Republican primary are Ken McFeeters of north Shelby County and Gerrick Wilkins of Vestavia Hills. Read more about McFeeters here and more about Wilkins here.

Palmer said the two most important issues to him right now are border security and the cost of living.

Nearly 7 million people have entered the country illegally since Biden came into office, and there have been 345 U.S. Border Patrol encounters with known or suspected terrorists or potential threats between U.S. ports of entry since that time, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It’s a threat to national security when you don’t know who is crossing the borders, Palmer said.

Trump’s “return to Mexico” policy needs to be reinstated as a law, as well as a requirement that people not be allowed in the country until it is verified they are not carrying viruses, Palmer said.

Pressure must be put on Mexico through trade agreements, and the United States must build a wall on its southern border and pay for better surveillance technology, including technology that better detects fentanyl, he said.

The people pushing fentanyl into the country aren’t doing it just for the money either, Palmer said. They’re lacing other drugs with lethal doses of fentanyl in an attempt to kill people, he said. More than 110,000 people in the United States died of drug overdoses last year, and that number is probably 10 to 15% underreported, he said.

The government also has to get control of inflation, Palmer said. Under the Biden administration, inflation soared over 9%, and the cumulative impact of inflation was as high as 17%, based on the Consumer Price Index, he said. A family with a median household income had $12,000 less buying power because of the high inflation, and 64% of the increase in fuel costs in the last two years was due to higher energy costs, Palmer said.

Palmer also wants to reverse Biden’s energy policies. Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline that would have brought in 835,000 barrels of Canadian oil per day, and he put a pause on new liquified natural gas facilities and a 2% tax on LNG at the wellhead, he said.

The Biden administration also has put limits on the mining of critical minerals in most places in the country, making the United States more reliant on imported minerals, Palmer said.

All of these decisions also are increasing energy costs, which boosts inflation, he said.

Palmer said he is fighting to keep people secure — by increasing border security and addressing issues that drain people’s pocketbooks. “I want people to be able to provide for their families, and I want them to be able to live well,” he said.

Before getting elected to Congress, Palmer served as president of the Alabama Policy Institute for 24 years. He also worked in engineering and with the Colorado-based Focus on the Family organization.

He is a member of the Rotary Club of Birmingham and Briarwood Presbyterian Church, and he has a bachelor’s degree in operations management from the University of Alabama.

For more information about Palmer, go to palmerforalabama.com.

The winner of the March 5 Republican primary will face Democrat Elizabeth Anderson in the Nov. 5 general election.

District 6 includes Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Trussville, Clay, parts of Homewood and Hoover, the northeastern part of Jefferson County, a small part of Talladega County and all of Shelby, Bibb, Chilton, Coosa, Autauga and Elmore counties.