MANSFIELD — Republican Jim Jordan, from Champaign County, the incumbent candidate to represent Ohio’s 4th District in the United States House of Representatives, spoke with Richland Source reporters Oct. 16 about his campaign.
Jordan is running against Democrat Tamie Wilson to represent Ohio’s 4th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district includes Richland and Ashland counties. An invitation for the same kind of interview has been extended to Wilson, as she did in 2022.
The 20-minute phone interview was conducted with Richland Source City Editor Carl Hunnell and Shelby/North County reporter Hayden Gray. Below is the balance of that conversation, which has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Our discussion with Jordan touched on a variety of issues — using some of the questions developed by author and reporter Amanda Ripley as a way of cutting through conflict with questions that “complicate the narrative.”
Ripley’s work is aimed at helping reporters and editors dig beneath people’s positions and get to their motivations, to cover conflict more thoughtfully, to “revive complexity in a time of false simplicity.”
Jordan previously participated in the same style of interview in October of 2022 when he stopped in Mansfield at the Richland Source newsroom.
Listen: Richland Source interview with Jim Jordan
Read: A conversation about Jordan’s campaign for the U.S. House
Richland Source: What issues do you think divide Ohioans the most these days?
Jordan: The key issues are the cost of inflation and just the cost of groceries, the cost of gas, the cost of everything that is hurting families.
That’s why I’m campaigning all over the state, campaigning all over the country. We’ve got to win as Republicans — win the White House, win back the Senate and keep the House.
If we do that, I think the first three things that we work on are one, the tax cuts that were put in place seven years ago are up for reauthorization. We’ve got to reauthorize the tax cuts. That’ll be good for our economy.
Democrats are talking about raising taxes. They’re talking about something as crazy as taxing unrealized gains, which is one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard, so reauthorize the tax cuts.
Second, secure the border and then third, we’ve got to get back to common-sense energy policy. Those three things I think will create the right kind of economic environment for growth and more importantly, bring down this inflationary cost that’s hurting Americans so much.
Richland Source: Are there any answers that you think are being suggested by national politicians or elected officials from both sides of the aisle that are oversimplified or answers that sound really good, but they’re really oversimplified?
Jordan: One of the other big issues of course is this unsecured border we have under the Biden/Harris administration. One of the answers or responses you get from Vice President Harris is there was this bipartisan bill that would’ve solved the problem.
Well the truth is it wouldn’t. The reason we were against that bill and it passed our own bill, a bill earlier that actually would secure the border, the reason we were against the so called bipartisan border security bill is because it didn’t secure the border.
It said there was a quota of people who could come in every day, several thousand a day who could cross our southern border, and then and only then could you potentially put in some of the restraints on this unlimited migration that we’ve seen over the last three and a half years.
That’s certainly one of the statements coming from the Harris campaign that I just think is just not accurate and the country understands it I think. When you let in over 10 million migrants in a three and a half year time period — 99 of those who were on the terrorist watch list who were released into the country, hundreds of thousands of children that they’ve lost track of — Americans know it’s a problem.
The real answer is you’ve got to go back to the policies that work, which is build the wall, go back to the “Remain in Mexico” policy while we evaluate, so people claiming asylum they wait in Mexico while their claim is evaluated. And then of course, people who do come to the border aren’t just released, they’re actually detained. Those policies worked under President Trump and that’s what we’ve got to get back to.
Richland Source: Policies aside, it just seems clear that Ohio voters and voters around the country are more divided than ever on just some fundamental cultural principles. So where does all this distrust come from and how do we fix that?
Jordan: Just go back to common sense. The Republican party is now the party of common sense.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Governor of Arkansas) said it best a year and a half ago when she gave the response to President Biden’s State of the Union. She said, ‘The divide in America today is normal vs. crazy.’
You can go down the list of all the crazy policies that the left has now adopted. It’s crazy to defund the police, it’s crazy not to have a border, it’s crazy to let non-citizens participate in our election process, it is crazy to say men should compete against women in sports, it is crazy to tax unrealized gains, it is crazy to let a Chinese spy balloon fly clear across the country and then shoot it down.
I mean, you can just keep going.
So, the way to get back is just common-sense policies is the key, versus this radical positions that the left has now taken. I think if we just focus on common sense, you can reach some common ground.
Certainly we are seeing a new coalition come together when it comes to our liberties (and) protecting our liberties. I said this yesterday when I was giving a speech, I said ‘Did you ever think you would see Donald Trump, Elon Musk, RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard on the same team?’
But they’re on the same team because they all understand that the left is threatening first amendment free speech rights and this censorship effort out there, what some have called the “censorship industrial complex” where big government and big tech work to censor people, is just wrong.
I think the real thing that could bring us together and stop some of this division is just getting back to common sense and getting back to just protecting the fundamental liberties we enjoy under our constitution.
Richland Source: Is there any common ground to be found today between Republicans and Democrats? What is it going to take to get back to a time in Congress when political opposites could be friends and even work together?
Jordan: I think the best example is moving to civil liberties. I mentioned President Trump, Elon Musk, RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard coming together around protecting free speech rights and stopping this censorship.
We saw it some this Congress where there were 150, I forget the exact number, 150 Republicans and like 60 Democrats working together, and this was in the same area, saying when we were reauthorizing part of the FISA law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that we pushed hard for an amendment to that bill which would say if you’re going to search this giant database of information and you’re going to use (Richland Source city editor) Carl Hunnell’s email address, phone number or name to search that, you’ve got to go get a warrant.
That’s how it works in our system and we got bipartisan support for that. Unfortunately, we lost on a vote 212 to 212. Lost on a tie vote, which was just so frustrating because we had spent a boatload of time working.
This is one of the issues where Jerry Nadler (D-New York) and Jim Jordan were on the same team. Because we both understand, like Dennis (Kucinich) and I would work together when he was in Congress, when it comes to civil liberties we should work together.
Unfortunately, we had Republicans and a bunch of Democrats go 212 on the other side and we lost that vote. So, I wish we could get more of that, but I think you’re seeing it on this First Amendment.
I would just say this, too. We had RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard in as witnesses. I probably invited more Democrats in to testify than probably any chairman in Congress … I’m confident in that.
RFK Jr., two weeks ago when he endorsed President Trump, we had a laugh about it because I said, ‘You know when I invited you (RFK Jr.) in, I took some heat for that. People were like what is Jordan doing bringing in a Democrat running for President?’
We look like geniuses now because this new coalition is coming together. It was interesting in that hearing, the Democrats are the ones who changed because the Democrats, Debbie Wasserman Schultz made a motion to go to executive session in our committee hearing, which obviously means you kick everyone out. No press, no American citizen can sit there and watch it, no one can see what RFK Jr. is going to say in a hearing about censorship.
That’s how crazy it’s gotten. But I told RFK Jr. on that phone call, ‘You said something in that hearing that you also said when you gave your speech endorsing President Trump that I’ve never forgotten.’
You (RFK Jr.) said, ‘When you look at history, it is never the good guys who are for censorship. It’s always the bad guys.’
This is an issue where I think we can work together and protect fundamental liberties that Americans enjoy under our Constitution.
Richland Source: What would you want Democrats in the district to know about you that they may not know today?
Jordan: I’d like to say that the work we’ve done on the Judiciary Committee, exposing the “censorship industrial complex,” is part of the reason why this coalition is coming together.
Like I said, we had Tulsi (Gabbard) come in and testify. We had RFK Jr. testify … We had an amazing journalist from Canada who came and testified about what’s going on up there and the suppression of free speech that’s happening in our neighbor to the north.
I would want Democrats to understand that there is no one I think fighting harder to protect the liberties we enjoy under the First Amendment, all five of them; our right to practice our faith, our right to assemble, our right to petition the government, free press and free speech — fundamental liberties.
The most important of those five is the last one, the right to speak. We got the Disinformation Governance Board that they were trying to form at the Department of Homeland Security. Because of, I think, our work and a lot of other people around the country, there is no longer that entity, that board in operation. They disbanded that.
The IRS used to make unannounced visits to American citizens’ homes. The IRS is no longer doing that. Their commissioner said, ‘Well, we were concerned about our agents being out and about and doing that.’ Bologna, the reason they stopped is we caught them knocking on Matt Taibbi’s door the very moment, the very time he was testifying in front of our committee.
This organization, Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which was censoring how advertising dollars are spent, encouraging companies not to advertise on certain websites, certain platforms like Twitter when (Elon) Musk had it, The Federalist, the Fox website, Breitbart or The Daily Caller.
That entity is no longer in operation because of the work I think our committee did in exposing just how much censorship they were involved in. So, those are the kind of things, protecting Americans’ rights and the citizens I get the privilege of serving in the 4th District … that’s something I would want Democrats in our district to understand.
Richland Source: Are there any issues where you and Tamie Wilson see eye-to-eye? Is there anything you think she gets right?
Jordan: I don’t know where she’s (Wilson) at, to be honest Carl (Hunnell). I don’t know her positions on anything. But there’s obviously a lot of things we disagree on with Democrats.
The Democrats have been clear they’re for raising taxes. We’re not. The Democrats have been clear they’re for this open border policy we have. I’m not. But I don’t know her specific positions.
But I assume she’s in line with the left which now controls their party.
Richland Source: What’s one thing that nobody’s asked you about or something that needs to be addressed that needs more light?
Jordan: One issue that’s front and center on my mind, because we just had a conference call on this issue … Iran hacked the Trump campaign and then that information is given to the Biden/Harris campaign and some of that information then winds up in the press and basically we hear nothing about it.
The information that was hacked was a 100-and-some page dossier on J.D. Vance that the Trump campaign was putting together when they were making their decision on who was going to be the VP candidate.
If that were reversed, just imagine if Iran hacked the Harris campaign, gave information then to the Trump campaign about Tim Walz and then that information winds up in the press. There would already be a special counsel for goodness sake.
That’s just one issue which came to mind right away. You just don’t see many people talking about it because the press isn’t really covering it.
Richland Source: What are kind of the primary or early life events for you that helped to shape your views today?
Jordan: My dad was a union worker at General Motors. My mom cleaned houses. My dad worked third-shift, worked overtime whenever he could to take care of his family.
I guess there’s a work ethic you just sort of get when you grow up in that environment and I think that work ethic was then reinforced with my involvement in the sport of wrestling.
I guess I’m a conservative because we grew up in a Christian home and back in high school, I still remember our high school government and economics teacher, when you take that your senior year, I remember him showing the film about Milton Friedman, the great economist from the University of Chicago.
I remember him walking through like just basic economic principles and it made sense to me. And so I was sort of always I guess with that conservative mindset. I would say those are the things that sort of influence you.
Certainly my dad, my dad was just a hard-working kind of old school kind of guy. He coached us in baseball (and) started the kids wrestling program at our school. My brother and I always talk about all our buddies thought my dad was like the toughest guy around and they were all afraid of him. But they would all sell out for him because they knew he cared for them when he coached them.
I think all those things probably had an influence.
Richland Source: What do you think the (national) media does wrong when it labels candidates ultra conservative or ultra liberal?
Jordan: Well, I don’t know if they label many people ultra-liberal. The national media is just left-wing. The mainstream media, it’s not even the mainstream media, it’s just legacy media is just by and large, they’re just a part of the Democratic party.
They’re not in any way a referee, they’re partisan. They’re part of the Democrat team. We understand that. You can see what CBS did … you can see what 60 Minutes, which is part of CBS, did. You watch MSNBC or CNN you know where they’re coming from, so there’s just like this left-wing bias in the vast majority of press.
That vast majority of national press, they always criticize the handful of kind of conservative-leaning, Republican-leaning outlets and they attack them all the time.
Just go on your news app on your phone and scroll through the stories. Ninety-some-percent of them are negative towards Conservatives and Republicans, certainly to President Trump and what he’s had to live through is unbelievable.
But I think the American people are smart, they have common sense, they see through it and in spite of the press being on the Democrat team the American people still figure it all out and get to the truth.
Richland Source: In this age of misinformation and disinformation, how do you decide which information to trust?
Jordan: I would want to put that in the context of what we talked about earlier, the First Amendment. I think the best way to combat any misinformation or any false statements is for more information and not this censorship effort.
Even some of the great cases in front of the Supreme Court in support of the First Amendment, I forget which Justice said it, but the best way to combat false information is more information …
That’s the beauty of the First Amendment and it’s frightening to see what the left has now embraced in how they’re trying to restrict speech; restrict what we say, what we tweet, what we post, what we read. It’s truly frightening where they’re trying to go.
The other thing interesting is the people on the left, so many of the things they tell us are misinformation and the things they tell us from the government, well they get it wrong.
And the best example is (Anthony) Fauci. Fauci told us so many things. He told us that the virus didn’t come from a lab in China. He told us it wasn’t our tax money used at the lab in China. He told us it wasn’t gain of function being studied and done at the lab at China. All those statements are false.
He told us that the vaccinated couldn’t get it, the vaccinated couldn’t transmit it. He told us that masks work. He told us that six-feet social distancing was based on science and he told us for the first time in history we have a virus where there’s no such thing as natural immunity.
Fauci was 0 for 8. This is so much of the stuff that they were censoring at the time, that anyone who disagreed with those positions that the government was taking, you were misinformation, you were disinformation, you were labeled as that.
Well, it turned out that they were wrong about almost everything. That’s the other concern that goes along with this, but the main thing is we have a First Amendment so that government can’t tell you what to think and do some of the crazy things they’re doing.
That’s how I think is the best way to combat it, is have more information.