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The stumping of the green: First-time candidate stresses environment in bid to replace Cramer(The Decatur Daily (AL) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 2--David Maker is pressing for a greener America as a key part of his platform in a race for Congress. He practices what he preaches. Maker, 57, of Huntsville, in his first political bid, is making the rounds in a 2000 Honda Insight, a hybrid gasoline-electric car that he said gets up to 100 miles per gallon. "That's if you drive at 45 mph," Maker said. "At 60 mph, you get 60 miles a gallon. Braking charges the batteries. Otherwise, they're charged automatically." Maker is charged, too. The tag he fashioned for the front of the two-seat car, which packs 120 batteries, speaks to the hobby of the Portland, Ore., native. He gives physics lectures across the country for the American Physical Society. Underneath the word "fractal" he explains, is a new generally covariant Dirac-like partial differential equation that has important consequences for the future of theoretical physics. Maker knows he needs select audiences for that kind of talk. But as he powers his campaign into another gear for retiring Democrat Rep. Bud Cramer's 5th District seat, he believes he has a simple, straightforward message easy for all voters to understand. In addition to going as green as possible by encouraging higher mileage vehicles, using solar energy and preserving green urban spaces, he will fight to repeal President Nixon's most favored nation trading status with China. He also wants to repeal the old law that says sport utility vehicles should have the same mileage standards as farm tractors. "Tractors should be allowed to have low mileage for the work they do," he said. "But companies could produce as many (SUVs) as they wanted to. We've had amnesia about the long gas lines and gas boycotts. They forgot about our country." Maker made the comments Thursday during a meeting with The Daily editorial board. He also said he was reluctant to jump into the Democratic primary for Cramer's seat against state Sen. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville. Six are running in the Republican primary. "I saw that no candidate on either side was addressing these issues, which I think are so important," he said. "I called people and encouraged them to run. No one stepped up, so I did. If good people don't get into politics, we're in trouble." He has made speeches across the district since making his first-ever political speech April 10 to the local Democratic Executive Committee in Huntsville. With only a month until the primary election, he is speaking at every opportunity and working the phones during off time. As a government employee, he can't cross the Hatch Act. He came to Decatur on his lunch break to speak and to erect signs. $3,500 to start He began the campaign with his own money. He said his wife, an architect, raised eyebrows over the first $3,500 he spent. "I have gotten name recognition, and I've got to get my Web site set up for donations," he said. "I see expenses on the horizon." He said he isn't conceding anything, noting that none of the other candidates has been a congressman either. "I feel the issues I'm raising are worth it," he said. "I'm not doing any harm. I think I'm doing some good." Maker, who taught college physics for 12 years, moved to Huntsville in 1995 to work at Marshall Space Flight Center on a NASA graduate research fellowship (Ph.D.) dissertation on applied physics. He works on missile defense at the Huntsville division of Photon Research Associates, a NASA contractor. Tale of the tag: Maker's marks Fractal, according to Webster's College Dictionary, means "a geometrical structure that has a regular or an uneven shape repeated over all scales of measurement and that has a dimension determined according to definite rules that is greater than the spatial dimension of the structure." Beneath the word fractal is a new generally covariant Dirac-like partial differential equation that has important consequences for the future of theoretical physics. (We're not making this up.) To see more of The Decatur Daily, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.decaturdaily.com Copyright (c) 2008, The Decatur Daily, Ala. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |