What is your view regarding the proposed two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians?
You can’t have a two-state solution when one side doesn’t want the other state. The Palestinians have never acknowledged the existence of Israel. The platform of the PLO has always contained this notion that Israel shouldn’t exist.
In Northern Ireland President Clinton was smart enough to realize you have to disarm before you come to the peace table. The reality is that Hamas controls the politics of the PLO and Hamas is a terrorist organization and is not willing to disarm…. Look what happened in Gaza. At what point do we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask if we’re being realistic?
What in your experience as a councilman has prepared you to be a congressman?
My hands-on and real-life experiences. Our constituent services office is the number one constituent services office in the entire city. We hear what’s going on. We know what the pulse of the community is. It’s also my struggle to get to where I am. Nobody paid for my education. I went to law school, got a half scholarship and took out student loans, which I’m still paying off. I bought my house through the sweat of my equity. That’s the American dream. That’s what you want from a representative.
I have no desire to stay in Washington to be a career politician. Career politicians are what’s killing us. We need people to be politicians who have real jobs to get back to, who want to go back to their community. Hopefully that would be something I would bring with me to Washington – that notion of citizen politics.