Independent Candidate for TN-5 Congressional Seat Rick Shannon: ‘I Want to Represent Just the People’

 

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed GOP primary candidate for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, Independent Rick Shannon from Williamson County, to the newsmaker line to discuss his reason for running Independent and his top two goals if elected to Congress.

Leahy: We are now on the newsmaker line joined by Rick Shannon, an Independent candidate for the Fifth Congressional District here in Tennessee. Good morning, Rick.

Shannon: Good morning. How are you?

Leahy: Great. So, Rick, how long have you lived in Tennessee?

Shannon: I moved here in December 2007.

Leahy: Tell us about your business. What is your business background?

Shannon: I have a very complex business background. I’ve been pretty much self-employed since 2002. I’ve done many different things. Owned an office coffee distribution company, a healthcare hospitality company, and two restaurants.

Leahy: Have you succeeded in business?

Shannon: Oh, yes. I’ve succeeded in everything I’ve done. And I’m just going through life, checking off a list and seeing how much I can help people and keep moving on and seeing what’s next.

Leahy: Why have you decided to run as an Independent for Congress and not jump into the Republican or Democratic primary?

Shannon: This goes back to when I was a Marine, and you know, I’m born to serve all people. And then if you look at my voting record, you can see that I have voted Republican my entire life. But when I was making the decision last year what to do, and then just watching the country and the way it was dissolving in the political world, I looked at both parties and I’m like, I can’t represent a party. I want to represent just the people. And I made that decision simply because, as a Republican by nature, I can’t just serve a party.

Leahy: Crom Carmichael has a question for you, Rick.

Carmichael: Rick, you just said that part of what motivates you is that you see the country becoming divided. And I would share that point of view.

If you could get to Washington and wave a magic wand on policy, what were the two things that you would do? What would you do in order to shrink the divide?

Shannon: I’ve been in the customer service industry pretty much my entire life. And the one thing that I’ve noticed here lately is that you can’t talk to somebody as a one-party person. As soon as you say, I’m with this party or this is what my belief system is, that automatically puts up a wall these days to somebody else. But when you go in and you say, look, you and I have the same goal in mind. Our same goal is to bring the “United” back to the “States” in this United States of America. That’s the first thing that we’ll all do.

Carmichael: Rick, I asked a very specific question, and I appreciate what you just said, but you didn’t answer my question. If you could accomplish two things by statute, passing a statute saying “we’ll all like each other” is probably an ineffective statute.

So if you could do two things by statute, what would the two things be? The House is a bunch of lawmakers. What would the two things be? What two laws would you like to pass? If you could pass anything that you would want to.

Shannon: The first law that I would love to pass would be term limits. And I already signed a promissory note to have term limits. And that’s simply because we can’t have a society that keeps evolving, and we still are relying on people that have been in politics forever that aren’t evolving with the society.

And we need fresh ideas, fresh people to actually get those ideas passed. So that’s the first thing that I would want to do, is term limits. Second thing that I would want to do is pass a law that all education funding goes to education, because we know that federal funding goes to education but it gets divided out into many different groups.

And the reason why I say that is we need to get a grasp and a hold on our education system, because by the time our children are getting older, they’ve already been indoctrinated.

Leahy: Rick, let me ask you this other question. So you’re running as an Independent. How much money have you raised so far?

Shannon: Oh, I haven’t raised any money.

Leahy: When was the last time anyone was ever elected to the House of Representatives as an Independent?

Shannon: Oh, I have no idea.

Leahy: That would be an answer to a question that you really ought to know, don’t you think? Because here’s the problem, Rick: why is anybody going to take you seriously if you’ve raised no money and you don’t know the last time somebody was elected as an Independent to the House of Representatives?

Shannon: So what you’re asking me are things that are in the current game of politics. I registered back in November, and I’ve been talking to many, many, many people. I don’t know if anybody did any research on me, or find out how many people I talked to or how many people actually know me and the people that I’m going to go to in Tennessee to actually do the true grassroots campaigning, because everybody is saying, go back in politics and what has happened? What has happened, what has happened? That’s part of the problem in our political games. The wheels are still turning in the same direction, and no one is stepping in and saying, look, we’ve got to do something different.

Leahy: Rick, Crom has a question for you.

Carmichael: I don’t know what it means to run. I have a general sense of what it means to run as an Independent. Would that mean that you A) don’t have to run in a primary, and B) you would then run as a write-in candidate in November?

Shannon: No, I don’t believe I’m going to run as a write-in. I’m already slated for November.

Carmichael: So you get your name on the ballot?

Shannon: Yes. I’ve already got my name on the ballot.

Carmichael: How do you get to do that?

Shannon: Well, I follow the same rules in the election as everybody else. I’ve got to get the 25 signatures for 25 people to put my name on the ballot.

Leahy: And how do you show up on the ballot, Rick? Have you identified, when you pull your petitions, when it says party affiliation, what did you say on that document?

Shannon: It simply says, Independent.

Leahy: So you would not be a write-in and you would show up on the ballot as Rick Shannon, Independent. Is that right?

Shannon: Exactly. You’re exactly right. And I’m running for the people.

Leahy: Okay, so let me ask you, you have no money.

Carmichael: That’s interesting.

Leahy: You have no money. You can’t point to anybody who successfully ran as an Independent. Why should people think that you have any prayer of coming close to winning this general election?

Shannon: That is simply because the more people that I talk to out there in the world, and I do talk to a lot of actual people on the ground, everybody is so fed up with party politics. They’re so sick of both sides of things, fighting each other about everything and blaming each other about everything and then talking about all the surface topic things that divide everybody.

They want somebody in the office that is actually going to bring people back together. There are problems that we have to solve. If you go back to May 2010 when we had that big giant flood here in Tennessee, it didn’t matter what your race, religion, color, sexual orientation, financial background, or anything was. We all come together as Americans. And at that time, as Tennesseans.

Carmichael: If you’re an Independent, and I believe you believe that we’re divided, and I agree with that. But if you’re Independent, and you were to win, how would you go about persuading the members of either party to support your ideas?

For example, you mentioned your number one deal would be term limits, but the Supreme Court has already ruled the term limits for Congress that, even if you passed it, are unconstitutional. Courts have already ruled on that.

Shannon: To get that, it has to start with the conversation. We have to be able to talk to other people and say, look, we need to move our country forward. And the only way to move our country forward is to have people that can help with moving our country forward.

Leahy: One last question for you, Rick. How much money are you going to invest in your campaign?

Shannon: Probably me personally, I don’t know. Anywhere between $50 and $70,000.

Leahy: That’s a significant commitment.

Carmichael: That’s meaningful.

Leahy: Rick, thanks so much for joining us, and we really appreciate you coming onto the program today. Rick Shannon, Independent candidate for Congress?

Shannon: Thank you guys very much.

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.