14th District GOP candidates agree: conservatives under attack

YORKVILLE – There were no disagreements on questions of public policy among three Republican candidates for Congress at a debate sponsored by a local conservative political action committee.

James Marter of Oswego, Jack Lombardi of Manhattan and Michael Koolidge of Rochelle took questions from the Stamp Act PAC on April 20 before a crowd of about 110 people at the Whitetail Ridge Golf Club in rural Yorkville.

The three are competing for the Republican nomination for the 14th Congressional District seat and the opportunity to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Naperville.

Kendall County Board Chairman Scott Gryder of Oswego and Jaime Milton of Fox River Grove, also candidates for the GOP nod in the June 28 primary, did not attend the debate.

Among the trio who fielded questions posed by moderator Andy Shaw of Yorkville, one of the Stamp Act PAC leaders, all three presented an almost uniform view of the problems facing the nation and what needs to be done.

They described conservatives as being victimized and under relentless attack by social media and the news media, federal agencies and the Democratic Party.

All three of the candidates called for shrinking the federal government, securing the border with Mexico, making the United States energy independent, tackling inflation and instituting voter identification laws to ensure election integrity.

“America First” was the common refrain among the congressional hopefuls.

Underwood, now seeking a third term in a redrawn 14th District, was the frequent target of the candidates’ ire.

“She relentlessly attacks our values. She won’t defend America or the border,” said Marter, the Kendall County GOP chairman. “We need to take America back, dismantle the Biden policies, bring back American energy and stop the mandate madness.”

The candidates never criticized each other, focusing on Underwood, President Biden and the Democratic Party.

“There’s something about the left that bothers me,” Lombardi said. “We need to win this seat. We cannot have a Democrat representing this district in 2023.”

Each candidate presented himself as a fighter who will take on the Democrats as well as establishment Republicans.

“I will always work directly for people of 14th District,” Koolidge said. “The House is going to flip. That’s a guarantee. We are representative of country at-large. We are going to have a block of people in Congress to set the agenda.”

The candidates attacked the mask, vaccine and business shutdown mandates that came about during the pandemic. They said big pharmaceutical companies should be held to account for the vaccines they produced and forced to publicly divulge their formulas.

The group called for use of anti-trust laws to break up social media companies that they said are censoring conservatives.

Marter also said the corporate news media must be held to account.

“The fake news media is the campaign arm of the Democrat Party,” Marter said, describing news coverage favoring progressives as in-kind political campaign contributions.

“We need to fix it in Congress. We need to hold them accountable. They are a wing of the Democrat Party,” Marter said.

While sympathizing with the people of Ukraine, the trio agreed that the United States should not get involved in the war.

“God be with those people but they are not our problem,” Lombardi said.

Koolidge, who sought to distinguish himself as the only military veteran in the group, agreed.

“We absolutely should not send troops or establish a no fly zone,” Koolidge said.

Like his colleagues, Marter said the border with Mexico is the more important foreign policy question.

“The border I’m going to prioritize is our southern border,” Marter said. “We need to finish wall, no catch and release, close loopholes in our immigration policies and enforce our immigration laws,” Marter said.

Koolidge found a similar complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, which he said is using “federal indoctrination” to create another generation of victims. “We can’t afford two more years of Biden progressive policies.”