By Scot Allyn, Staff Reporter
Lisa Wilson-Foley, an entrepreneur from Simsbury, is seeking the Republican nomination for Connecticut’s 5th District seat in the U.S. Congress.
It is the second run for public office for Foley, 52, who sought the Connecticut lieutenant governor’s spot in 2010, but lost in the Republican primary to Mark Boughton, the mayor of Danbury. Still, Wilson-Foley garnered 47.5 percent of the vote, not a bad showing for a newcomer against a popular mayor, veteran and former state representative. Foley has never held elective office.
In 2010, and again this year, the millionaire businesswoman is spending a significant amount of her own money on the campaign.
Political Views
Wilson-Foley is a fiscal conservative, running chiefly on economic issues, and exploits her outsider status and business background whenever possible. She answers questions on social issues but is clearly less comfortable discussing them.
A classic small-government Republican, she said she’s running to promote freedom, opportunity and accountability, while reducing the role of government in citizens’ lives.
“There are three immediate challenges to whether our country will remain the land of opportunity: an immoral level of debt, unacceptably slow business and job growth, and a destructive health care reform law,” she said. She promises to offer common-sense solutions to restore the spirit of free enterprise in the United States.
Wilson-Foley said her top issues in the campaign are job creation, reducing the deficit, healthcare reform (repealing the “worst parts” of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as Obamacare), and entitlement reform (making Social Security and Medicare sustainable).
She also wants to simplify the federal income tax structure, to reduce tax brackets.
Some of Wilson-Foley’s statements at a round-table discussion with voters Jan. 21:
Health Care Reform
“The health care system is messed up,” she said. “It incentivizes more tests. We can’t just keep treating patients if they don’t educate themselves. We pay for drugs and people don’t take them. The government is not responsible for keeping you healthy; you are responsible for keeping you healthy. I’d like to repeal or defund Obamacare.”
Taxes
“I want to tax everyone less,” she said. “The least amount we can get away with would be best. My businesses have been taxed to death and audited to death. I was audited in 2010, when I was running for lieutenant governor, and it was scary and stressful. They sat in my office for eight months, and the government ended up owing me $29,000. For income taxes, I see a two-tier or three-tier system, and get rid of the loopholes. Big companies benefit but small companies don’t.”
