U.S. Navy veteran Chris Lewis will face U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-5th, in the March 2020 Republican primary.

Editor’s note: The following is a profile on Chris Lewis, Republican candidate for the Fifth Congressional District seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-5th. The News Courier is pleased to run candidate profiles leading up to the March 2020 primaries and November 2020 general election.

U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-5th, was first elected to Congress in 2010, and he’s faced Republican primary opponents and Democratic general election opponents every two years.

None of those opponents have had the name recognition or campaign budget to match Brooks, who currently serves on the Strategic Forces, Readiness and Space subcommittees and on 48 caucuses. In 2020, however, Florence native Chris Lewis believes he’s in a good position to beat Brooks in the Republican primary with a pretty simple approach.

“We have to get back to the point where we can sit and communicate with each other and we’re open to doing that,” he said. “We’re all going to have our extreme opinions, no doubt, but our society cannot survive on the extreme.”

In a recent interview, Lewis explained why he was the best person to represent the Tennessee Valley in Washington. He said he’s not necessarily trying to challenge what Brooks has done but believes a change is needed.

Lewis retired from the U.S. Navy after a 23-year career. He also served as a strategic analyst for NATO and has more than a decade of experience in defense acquisition. Lewis and his wife, Keri, have two sons — Alexander and Jacob.

Lewis said because he’s also a voter, he’s encountered frustrations similar to those of other North Alabama voters: career politicians who aren’t willing to listen and who have no positive solutions to complex issues. He explained North Alabama voters have input on four positions in Washington: the president, two U.S. Senate seats and one congressional seat.

“Let’s start here,” he said of the congressional race. “Let’s start with ensuring we have representation that is willing to listen to the constituency in North Alabama. We also need someone who will let people know what North Alabama will do for the country and not be on CNN and Fox News and grandstand and beat their chest about how important they are.”

Platform

Lewis was asked about several hot button issues that will likely be important to North Alabama voters in the 2020 election cycle. Here are his responses:

Immigration

“Any time a life is at risk, that’s a concern, and it should be for anybody. The U.S. is going to deal with humanitarian issues here or from afar. If you look at Venezuela, you have a country that a decade ago was the third-wealthiest economy in the world, and today, it’s broken. Venezuela has water, and it has oil. There’s nothing wrong with it other than the political environment there. When Venezuela crumbled, 3 million people fled, and 300,000 are in the U.S.

“Border security is greater than immigration. Border security is, ‘Is there a threat entering our country that we need to be aware of and we need to address?’ Everybody wants a wall, and a physical structure is ideal, but border security consists of a multitude of aspects. It’s like with our military — we don’t just have airplanes. We have ground forces, and it’s a layered defense.

“There are other countries that have solved this problem and have a flourishing immigration population and migrant worker population. They have structured those (processes) appropriately to allow for success.”

The importance of Redstone, NASA in Huntsville

“What we need to be doing is selling what we are in this area and what we have the ability to provide to the country. We have a location abundant in resources, both employee- and education-wise, and with an amazingly low cost of living in an area that is very progressive.

“Huntsville is looking at the moon and going to Mars. I think one of the ways to bring our country back together is to find something to rally about, and we rally about something like the space program. We need a footprint in space, and we’ll want to be on the forefront of that.

“I’ve had 12 years of defense acquisition experience, so I’m extremely knowledgeable about contracts and the government side. I’ve been the guy in the green suit who’s tested (equipment) and the guy who’s had equipment fail. I’ve had a good understanding of (government contracting) and what it brings.”

Agriculture, tariffs

“Farming and agriculture is what has made us an amazing country. I’ve spoken to a lot of farmers who are upset by the tariffs. Any time you deal with foreign politics, you walk a fine line, and it’s a challenging fine line.

“Any time you deal with tariffs or international relations, those impacts are going to happen, but we need to limit the impact to our farmers to ensure we don’t push people out of the business and create an undue burden where one was never intended. We need a methodology to remedy that quickly.”

Term limits

“The founding fathers did not intend to have a career path for politicians. Their intent was for good people to step away from their own lives, manage what needed to be managed at the federal level and go home. We have to address the career politician.

“Term limits are critical in getting us away from the environments we’ve created, where people are continually campaigning. An incumbent being challenged is someone who is sitting on a pot of money or who has the ability to turn resources quickly.

“The challenger, unless they are independently wealthy, has to turn against (the incumbent) by collecting pennies. That’s a broken system.”