If the 1900s was a century of rapid middle-class growth and an explosion in small businesses, then the 2000s has been an era of big influence. We have time to change this, but we need leaders who will fight to make it happen.

It’s easy to look at the economy and realize that something has gone horribly wrong.

Working people, the middle class, and small businesses have been losing ground over the past 20 years. The goose that lays the golden eggs for our country has been kicked around and squeezed to the point where laying more golden eggs is almost impossible.

My pledge is not to accept one penny of corporate PAC money. We currently have too many politicians who rail against the big entities and experts that got us into this mess but turn around and vacuum up corporate donations for their campaigns. My opponent Susie Lee is one of the largest recipients of corporate PAC money in all of government.

Today, the big entities in our country, whether it be big government, big corporate executives, big union bosses, big tech, big pharma, big media, big whatever—they are doing just fine. They have the power, they have the access and influence, they have the politicians.

The people I care about are those who wake up every morning and put in a hard day’s work but still struggle to stay above water.

They don’t have a lobbyist, they don’t have a PAC, but they’ll have a Congressman if I’m elected.

We have a government pushing the wrong priorities and a culture that mocks the beliefs, the values, and the people who built this country.

Most Americans aren’t afraid to work to provide for their families. Values like self-sacrifice, faith, integrity, fidelity, and valor are simply part of who we are. We live these values not because the government tells us to but because we know it’s the right thing to do. Moral obligations are freely chosen, not mandated by government.

Our sad reality is that many children in our country are suffering. Years of ridiculing and demeaning “family values” have taken a toll. Our society’s strength, fundamentally linked to the vitality of the family structure, has been eroded, and children are the casualties.

Mandated in our constitution as a duty of our federal government is securing our border. Right now, this is an epic failure. Millions of people come in without accounting for who they are, what they intend to do, or what (or who) they bring with them. And they’re being given access to all sorts of benefits at our expense.

At a minimum, the federal government and the state governments should be working together to enforce existing laws and secure the border. Seeing our government at war with itself is unacceptable.

Ultimately, we must enforce existing laws and build what is needed to ensure we have proper control over our border, and we must aggressively target the exploitation of migrants and drug and people trafficking into our country.