Denton Lee
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Denton Lee (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent North Carolina's 13th Congressional District. He lost in the Democratic primary on May 17, 2022.
Lee completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Denton Lee was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. Lee earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Mount Olive in 1999 and a graduate degree from East Carolina University in 2013. His career experience includes working as a teacher, as an entrepreneur, and in banking.[1]
Elections
2022
See also: North Carolina's 13th Congressional District election, 2022
North Carolina's 13th Congressional District election, 2022 (May 17 Republican primary)
North Carolina's 13th Congressional District election, 2022 (May 17 Democratic primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House North Carolina District 13
Wiley Nickel defeated Bo Hines in the general election for U.S. House North Carolina District 13 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Wiley Nickel (D) | 51.6 | 143,090 |
 | Bo Hines (R)  | 48.4 | 134,256 | |
| Total votes: 277,346 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Calvin Thomas (Independent)
- Steve Holland (Independent)
- Jacques Youngblood (Independent)
- Scott Blake (Independent)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 13
Wiley Nickel defeated Sam Searcy, Jamie Campbell Bowles, Nathan Click, and Denton Lee in the Democratic primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 13 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Wiley Nickel | 51.6 | 23,155 |
 | Sam Searcy | 22.9 | 10,284 | |
 | Jamie Campbell Bowles | 9.4 | 4,217 | |
 | Nathan Click | 8.6 | 3,866 | |
 | Denton Lee | 7.4 | 3,311 | |
| Total votes: 44,833 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Josh Remillard (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 13
The following candidates ran in the Republican primary for U.S. House North Carolina District 13 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Bo Hines | 32.1 | 17,602 |
 | DeVan Barbour IV | 22.6 | 12,426 | |
 | Kelly Daughtry | 16.9 | 9,300 | |
 | Kent Keirsey | 11.3 | 6,223 | |
 | Renee Ellmers | 9.4 | 5,176 | |
 | Chad Slotta | 5.6 | 3,074 | |
 | Jessica Morel | 1.3 | 738 | |
 | Kevin Alan Wolff | 0.6 | 344 | |
| Total votes: 54,883 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Bill Brewster (R)
- Karen Bentley (R)
- Grayson Haff (R)
- John Aneralla (R)
2020
See also: North Carolina House of Representatives elections, 2020
General election
General election for North Carolina House of Representatives District 26
Incumbent Donna McDowell White defeated Linda Bennett and Denton Lee in the general election for North Carolina House of Representatives District 26 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Donna McDowell White (R) | 53.7 | 33,495 |
 | Linda Bennett (D) | 34.8 | 21,689 | |
| Denton Lee (Independent) | 11.6 | 7,227 | |
| Total votes: 62,411 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
The Democratic primary election was canceled. Linda Bennett advanced from the Democratic primary for North Carolina House of Representatives District 26.
Republican primary election
Republican primary for North Carolina House of Representatives District 26
Incumbent Donna McDowell White defeated Justin Tate in the Republican primary for North Carolina House of Representatives District 26 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Donna McDowell White | 72.5 | 7,110 |
| Justin Tate | 27.5 | 2,695 | ||
| Total votes: 9,805 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2022
Video for Ballotpedia
| Video submitted to Ballotpedia Released July 8, 2021 |
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Denton Lee completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Lee's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am a high school special education teacher from Johnston County, North Carolina. The 2021-22 school year will be my ninth year teaching, all at a high poverty Title 1 public high school called Smithfield-Selma High School. I am a lifelong resident of North Carolina and currently live less than a mile from where I grew up. In 2020, I was the only unaffiliated General Assembly candidate in the state to qualify for ballot access. I wanted to run unaffiliated in my first campaign to take a stand against the toxic partisanship and to be a voice for the political middle who want to see a more civil government with elected officials more concerned with coexistence and collaboration than they are with propaganda, fearmongering, and extremism. I lost as an unaffiliated candidate, of course, but I didn't do it to win. I did it to prove that most Americans just want functioning government with representatives who truly represent every constituent in their region or district, regardless of party. On a personal note, I've been married to my wife, Megan, for seven years, and we have three kids.
- I'm a realist fighting to change the culture of politics.
- I will have the most rational, realistic, honest, and transparent platform in the country, because I'm supposed to.
- I'm running because our kids deserve limitless opportunity and a peaceful world in which to pursue it.
As a teacher and a father of young children, I am obviously passionate about education. As a person who realizes my time on this Earth is but a blip in the annals of history, I would like to be a part of the generation that decides that if we are doing something harmful to the planet, we should make every effort to stop doing that. I don't want to leave my children a mess to clean up. I think the issue that bothers me the most on that topic is the vast overuse of plastics. Finally, I find dozens of other issues interesting simply because I'm excited to see what might happen to them when our representatives decide that the American people can be trusted with honest debate that doesn't result in bullying, misinformation, half-truths, propaganda, and indecency. Whether we're talking about the potential insolvency of our entitlement programs or immigration or prison reform or universal healthcare, they're all interesting and important topics that need civil, honest, fair representatives debating solutions that benefit the majority of Americans. I invite you to please visit my website at dentonleenc.com to see my thoughts on every major issue we face. My website is as transparent and complete as any you will ever find, because I wanted anyone who wanted to know anything about me to be able to go there and find out exactly who I am.
I don't know that I have any famous or historical figures that I look up to. I do, however, look up to everyday people who face extraordinary challenges but do so with grace and positivity and humility. For instance, one of our best couple friends has a son with cerebral palsy, and to watch them deal with that challenge every day is inspiring to me in ways that are hard to fully explain. They don't want pity for their challenges or for their son, they just seem to want to be and do better today than they did yesterday, to be as normal as possible, and they want him to be as loved and accepted as is possible. They don't seem to want or expect any special treatment or attention either. I've often found myself in awe of their contentment - and their commitment - over the years.
Other than people like that, there is one man who I think about every single day that I do not want to disappoint. That man is the vision of who I think I should be, because I spent a lot of years being embarrassed by the real me. I have been sober (double cold turkey of alcohol and tobacco) for over four years now after nearly two decades of progressively worsening alcoholism, and I spend time every single day thinking about who I am and how I can be better today than I was yesterday. So I look up to the man I expect myself to be because I failed in doing that for many years.
Honesty is number one. Always. You can number the rest any way you like. They are: transparency, compromise, civility, decency, creativity, open-mindedness, listening, respectfulness, communication, tolerance, and persistence. In principle, an elected official does NOT represent their political party. They represent the people that trusted them to lead. They also do not represent only those citizens who belong to their political party. They represent ALL of them and should consider every side to every issue, because I guarantee you every side exists within their constituency.
I believe I'm the most unique candidate in the nation simply because I could care less about political parties. Yes, I joined one so that I could compete (there is no other option if you want to compete,) but I ran for state legislature last year as an unaffiliated candidate because I believe political parties have left at least 40% of the population behind. The political middle has no home. But the unique thing about the political middle is that we have a knack for going out of our way to understand whatever side(s) of whatever argument we might disagree with. Disagreeing with something doesn't mean you can't understand it and try to compromise with it. That's who I am as a candidate.
I'm also very creative, I think outside-the-box with much more excitement than I do inside-the-box, I go out of my way to understand and respect stances I may not fully grasp, I admit I'm wrong when I'm wrong, I admit I don't know when I don't know, and I have always had a gift of communication. My jokes might not land sometimes, I often wear my heart on my sleeve, and I can be awkward at times, but I've learned to appreciate who I am, and that comfort level gives me the confidence to know I am the kind of representative the people of North Carolina need in Washington.
I was at home sick with bronchitis at nine years old, and I was sitting on the floor in front of the television watching a shuttle launch. My mom was in the kitchen, and I remember like it was yesterday saying, "Mama, the shuttle blew up." It was the Challenger, of course, and it was most definitely the first major memory I have of a major historical event.
When I was 14, I started working summers and Christmas vacations at a plant nursery, mostly taking small one gallon plants and repotting them into two and three gallons pots to encourage their continued growth. I also put out pine straw, covered plants in the winter before frosts, and loaded trucks after larger plant sales. I did that for two years until I got my first job picking golf balls off of the driving range at a golf course. Over the next five years, through both high school and college, I worked at golf courses in a variety of positions, from washing carts and picking the driving range to working in the golf shop.
My favorite book would probably be "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving. It's a strange book in that the two other people in my life that I've had conversations with about the book had totally different impressions of what its major themes or lessons might be. But that also means it's a deep, meaningful book.
To me, it was important for me to fall in love with an almost unlikeable character, but he wasn't unlikeable because of anything he could control, and it taught me so much about people. The title character, Owen, is quite simply what most would consider "different." He's tiny with a high-pitched voice and he has a strange and often absent sense of humor, and his behavior in social situations is sometimes cringeworthy, but something about him just makes you fall in love with him and root for him. I've thought about that book many times in my life, and it has always led me to view people the way I think we all should. We're all different, we're all a little weird, we all do stupid stuff, we all make mistakes, we all have something ugly about us, and we all have our embarrassments. But we're all still beautiful in some way. And we're all equal and worthy of our fellow man's respect, always.
This is one of those questions that you could answer a hundred different ways. Experience is absolutely beneficial in almost every aspect of American life, but politics are one area where that experience can begin to taint the person that began their service for all the right reasons. But when you have a good, fresh mix of old and new, you get a group of people who can bring creative innovation and new perspectives to a group of people with the experience to know what to do with those new ideas.
I do not like what has become of leadership on either side, especially the side that offers nothing but a desire to stop the other side from doing anything, even if the restriction is done in a less than ethical manner. It's one reason I believe so strongly in term limits. When people have been in Washington 30+ years, they can say they understand the common man all they want. It doesn't make it true. Twenty years in Washington is long enough for anybody. Public office is a public service, but it's one that comes with far too much power. We have to restrict the time they are allowed to wield it.
This is the easiest question on this questionnaire. The greatest challenges are self-inflicted. I think most Americans would be stunned at the renewed strength, energy, and unity of our country if our elected officials simply decided that lies, misinformation, dissension, and propaganda no longer had a place in American politics. If politicians decided to lead with tolerance and harmony instead of partisanship and animosity, it is difficult to make a rational argument that we would not be in a better place or not be set up for a more civil future. It has been proven beyond any logical dispute that Americans follow the examples set by our leaders, and that means that there will be a toxic "us versus them" element to American politics for what will probably be the rest of time.
And as much as I try to defend the media's right to cover whatever stories they want to cover, I often wish they would recognize those figures who just want attention and fame but offer no substance other than the ability to make headlines, and once they've been pinpointed, I wish the media would just stop covering them. It would also certainly help if we had more media that chose to cover both sides of our issues, as well as the forgotten middle.
And yes, I'm well aware that I did not mention a single outside challenge that the US faces over the next decade. I don't think any outside challenge has a prayer of destroying the United States if we face those challenges together, and in a country of over 300 million people, you are NOT going to get your way even half the time. You in fact may NEVER get your way if your way is extreme. It will require some kind of concessions and compromise and a little give-and-take, but that's required of all of us to live in a country like this that guarantees as much freedom as we are guaranteed.
The American people deserve honest dialogue about revenue. The truth is that we do not exist as a country without taxes, so all of the people shouting taxation is theft" are quite simply just wrong. No dialogue about revenue is going to advance past anger if Americans refuse to acknowledge that. But it is the job of legislators to ensure that taxes have a fairly defined purpose. They are to be used only for those things that every taxpayer needs but can't supply on their own. Most taxpayers agree with everything I just wrote.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Lee's campaign website stated the following:
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Education There is a lot of talk about “School Choice,” and with good reason. Over the years, legislatures all over the country have stripped money and resources away from public schools while adding useless hurdles that suppress positive data in an effort to make public schools look responsible for our worsening education system. It has worked beautifully. I’m a teacher; I’ve seen it firsthand. And now we’re 21st in the world in education. Here’s my take. I’m completely open to a conversation about “school choice” as soon as every student in America has essentially the same choices. And if legislators keep stripping money and resources away from public schools until not even the most devout teacher wants to work there anymore, well, that makes public school a pretty bad “choice” for students and parents, now doesn’t it? Can you guess which segments of our population will be left with that “choice?” Teachers are leaving the profession in droves. They’ve been beaten down by years of disrespect, lack of funding, raises that don’t come close to matching inflation, and an unfair rap that all the problems in education are their fault. I have been doing it for eight years. Our legislators are the ones systematically destroying public education, not the teachers. And the crazy part is that every parent I’ve ever met on both sides of the political aisle agrees that schools are underfunded, teachers are underpaid, class sizes are too big, and students are asked to take too many standardized tests. No matter the political affiliation, parents want good schools and good teachers. So I say we make it less political and find a way to do right by our children. It’s them we’re hurting most of all.
Gerrymandering is cheating. Simple as that. I don’t really care for cheaters, and I’m well aware that both parties have done it. I don’t excuse it for either. Every district that can be made fair should be made fair. If a state has ten districts and redistricting can get 8 of them as close to 50-50 as possible, they should do that. If they don’t, it is legislators who are picking your representatives, not the voters. I simply prefer to let the voters decide who represents them. Lastly, why in the world are legislators in charge of drawing the maps? They are, in many cases, drawing themselves a job for the next decade. An independent commission should be charged with this job.
I will be the first to admit that I do not have all the answers to our healthcare crisis. And yes, I consider it a crisis. More than solutions, I have lots of questions, and I would love to be in a “think tank” with a diverse group of people to help find answers to them. Here’s a sampling: Why are we so focused on the solution to healthcare when we spend so little time working on why so much healthcare is needed? Why are we the 32nd healthiest country in the world but we lead the world in per capita healthcare spending at over $12,000 per year per person, 42% higher than the next highest country? Why are we blaming people for their own obesity and subsequent health problems when processed foods are so much cheaper than healthy foods? Why are we feeding our students such horrible school lunches and letting them wash it down with a cookie? Why are drugs so expensive, especially when they have vastly different prices in other countries? Why must a family with three kids have to spend every extra cent on medicine for their one sick child? What good is health insurance when it doesn’t adequately protect us from a medical catastrophe being the cause of financial ruin? Why is our health insurance tied to our employment? If you have a pre-existing condition, you may be forced to stay in a job you dislike simply because of the insurance. Not much freedom in that. I have to admit that the more I learn about universal health care, the more I like the idea of it. But it’s not been presented well. Not enough Americans have been shown exactly how much less they might pay for health insurance. They don’t understand that health insurance won’t force you to stay in a job you hate. They don’t understand that it gives people the opportunity to take a risk on leaving a job in order to start their own business, without worrying about leaving their healthcare. They don’t know that many small businesses could hire more people if they didn’t have such a gigantic burden of supplying health insurance. There’s a fair way to get there. It WILL require bipartisan effort. Until civil, compromising dialogue can happen in regards to healthcare, nothing will get better. I’d like things to get better. As a state employee with a pre-existing condition who’s a little scared to leave my health insurance (I have a heart condition,) the freedom of universal healthcare is appealing to me. I think both parties owe it to the American people to have a civil conversation about it. We are, after all, the only developed nation in the world without it.
The Earth is billions of years old. In those billions of years, the Earth created fossil fuels. Within 300 years of the Industrial Revolution, we are on pace to use up nearly all of what the Earth created over those billions of years. That’s staggering to consider. I would like to spend my climate fight on two inarguable points, because if we get these two points right, we solve so much of what we are doing to harm the planet. And we ARE harming the planet. When we use all of its resources and create products that have only a planet-harming life after consumption, we are at fault and must work to correct our mistakes. So here’s what I’d focus on:
Since when is it bad to care about the planet? Why is it such a political no-no to want the things that are harming the planet to change? I’m not going to feel bad for caring about the planet I leave my children and grandchildren. It’s just not happening. And I will trust the science on all of this, by the way, not a guy on Facebook that read an article.
Yes, only 17% of current elected officials in Washington have been there more than 20 years, and yes, some of them are so well liked by their respective states or districts that they might deserve to still be there, but this issue is not about the “pro” arguments. It’s about the people’s argument, and about 80% of all voters believe we need term limits. That means we need term limits. The people have already spoken. Here’s a few more arguments for them:
No matter the issue, 50-50 topics cannot legislatively go fully right or left. Those topics must reach compromise. This is the most highly prominent 50-50 topic we have in the United States, and it is not a topic on which either party should ever be able to claim total victory. That’s not the way a democracy should ever work. We can, however, find a place of common ground upon which to fight, and I believe I know where it is. No matter the status of abortion, there is a huge demand for it. Nearly 1 in 4 women in the United States will have an abortion in their lifetimes. That is our common ground. Together, we can attempt to reduce the demand. Continuing to fight as we have for so long – with the exact same regurgitated arguments – will not reduce the demand, no matter the legality of the procedure. Working together, instead of seething with anger at our differences, we can reduce the demand. I fail to see how that would not be a positive outcome for all of us.
On the “Main Objectives” page of this site, I referenced the 2020 US Senate race in North Carolina. In that race – the most expensive US Senate race of all time – $282 million was spent on an office that will only earn $174,000 a year. The question for me instantly became, “Why have our legislative seats in Washington become so valuable?” Of the $282 million number above, only $76 million was raised by the two candidates. That means outside groups – those political action committees that are almost completely unregulated – spent $206 million on that US Senate race. My problem is this: As a voter, my voice is my vote, and it is equal to every other United States citizen with the power to vote. I don’t think it is in the best interest of our citizenry to have so much less a voice than corporations and political action committees whose gigantic wallets, combined with the gerrymandering tendencies of BOTH parties, have created a huge swath of voters who are so disenfranchised with the system that they don’t even bother to vote because they realize how small their voice truly is. Somehow, some way, that needs to change. Because those disenfranchised voters are not wrong.
I can’t say anything in this space that others have not – on both sides – but as with abortion, this is a 50-50 topic. The Second Amendment is not going away, nor is gun ownership, so where is the common ground? The common ground is in background checks because even rabid gun owners are okay with them, but I think we have an opportunity to make them more meaningful. I think long term, we should view gun ownership in much the same way we view vehicle ownership, complete with a gun license that mirrors a driver’s license. Think about it this way. When becoming a licensed driver, you have to take a classroom course, drive for six hours with a driver’s education instructor, and then you have a probationary period of one year before you get your license. And then, if you don’t mess up too badly, you go to the DMV every few years to renew your license and it’s a relatively painless experience. And here’s the best part. When you want to buy a car, you can do that whenever the heck you want to because you have been a law-abiding citizen. Shouldn’t responsible gun owners be able to do the same thing? The analogy doesn’t necessarily have to end there. For some modes of transportation, you have to get advanced training. You can’t be a pilot or truck driver without a special license, right? If AR-15’s are to have a long, legal life, could the same type of advanced training be required? I’m not suggesting a long, drawn-out course of study, but another layer of licensure between a shotgun or pistol and an AR-15 is a pretty rational and responsible approach.
Prior to becoming a teacher at a high poverty school, I could not sympathize with how cultures based on skin color and class could be so drastically different. It changed when I had an incredible student in my class during his freshman year who I grew to admire far more than I ever thought I could. This young man had four brothers, no father, and a mother who rarely came home. He had been selling drugs to put food on the table since he was ten years old. He was the second oldest. His older brother had been in jail for the majority of those last four years, so it was him raising his three little brothers who were all 2-6 years younger than him. He had been the breadwinner since the age of 10. By dealing drugs. And to this day, I still admire what he did for his brothers. I began to look at our criminal justice system differently, and I realized that many of the people in jail probably aren’t bad people. If anything, some of them are simply survivalists. They do what is necessary to survive. In this case, my student did what he had to do to feed his family. Our criminal justice system has many problems, from the ability to buy your way out of serious crimes to serving life in jail for a marijuana possession. We have felons who pay their debt to society but NEVER actually gain back their freedom. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m also a huge believer that our education system will forever be a forecaster of our problems with crime. If we are soft on discipline and expectations in our schools, we are enabling poor behavior, and that will seep out of our walls and into our communities. We also need to give students far more options than they are currently getting, especially on the high school level. Many students never make a connection to school because there is nothing there with which to make a connection. It’s as if school was designed for other people, not them. We need more pathways to graduation and more programs to help students begin job training while still in high school so that they can leave school and go straight to work if that’s their choice. A good education system will have a positive impact on the criminal justice system. We currently do not have a good education system. And why is that? Because they cost money our legislators are unwilling to give. Instead, some of that money goes to convict, house, and feed inmates.
George Floyd was murdered. It was proven in a court by a jury of Derek Chauvin’s peers. George Floyd is not the only black man or woman killed by police because of the color of their skin, and he won’t be the last. As a society, it was our duty to talk about that and it is our duty to get better. But if I saw a video of a girl about to slash my daughter with a knife, and the cop had a chance to stop her with a bullet but did not, I would be VERY upset at that cop. Protect and serve means sometimes somebody is going to get hurt or killed because a cop was protecting an innocent person. We’ve got to have two concurrent conversations. The first: no black person better die another death because of a power hungry or racist cop. The second: start a dialogue in our communities, schools, and churches, and frame that conversation around how to live another day by not resisting arrest, not attacking cops, not cussing and yelling at cops, etc. I’m not saying that they don’t have a reason to be mad if they feel they have been targeted, but I’d much rather them be alive tomorrow and have a safe place to go report what happened. And yes, I know it’s REALLY easy for a white man to say that. But I would much rather black men and women be pissed off and offended than dead. We can deal with pissed off and offended. 99% of cops are good people doing it for the right reasons, and the whole “defund the police” movement was one of the worst social justice stances you could possibly take. Dissecting the actual message, however, and introducing forms of assistance to cops such as more mental health counselors and getting them more involved in community outreach, are both excellent ideas that cops would probably embrace. And instead of defund the police, let’s pour a little more money in their pots when they are proactive about some social justice advancements that help ALL parties.
As the leader in almost everything in the world, it is a requirement that we have safe, quality roads, bridges, airports, schools, ocean ports, and other forms of infrastructure. Those things cost a LOT of money. We have to pay for them somehow. No matter when you read this, it probably needs to be in the middle of “Infrastructure Week.” That tongue-in-cheek phrase will make sense if you have watched the news the past four years. Recently, Congress passed a $1.2 TRILLION infrastructure bill. If we broke that down to how much it would cost every single American, it would be over $3,636 apiece. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of these gigantic pieces of legislation where our legislators just print money out of thin air. We should be smart enough to understand how proper budgeting for something like this should work, and it should NOT come as one big pile of money. Instead, they should figure up exactly what it would cost PER YEAR – with anticipated new projects – to keep our infrastructure elite in perpetuity. Let’s say they determined that would cost $5 trillion over the next ten years. That means we space out projects annually and budget $500 billion per year over ten years to cover the costs. And then, we adjust our revenue accordingly. That is smart, rational, economical, realistic budgeting, and it’s something this country needs to improve on greatly.
American citizens have the right to vote, and it shouldn’t take more than hour of their time. And voting should be heavily encouraged, especially in a time of such disenfranchisement among voters. I’m not really sure how to expound upon this topic more than that. Let people vote, let them vote quickly, and encourage them to vote. That’s not hard. Also, depending on what biased source you believe, somewhere between 3% and 11% of Americans don’t have a government issued photo ID. If we can spend millions on Space Force, we can hire a few people in every state to work on eliminating the ID problem. When it’s no longer an issue, there will no longer be an issue with showing ID to vote. But there will still be a LOT of people who like to vote by mail, thus making an ID relatively pointless. And mail-in voting will still have negligible fraud and it will still be a huge lie if politicians say otherwise.
I heard an argument FOR the national debt recently, and that argument made some sense. Basically, it said that spending more than you take in can often boost the economy, thus producing more revenue on the backend. That would be a great argument during a recession after several years of balanced budgets and a manageable national debt, but we’ve been running national deficits for 21 straight years, our debt is now more than our annual GDP, and we’re spending about 20% of our revenue paying for the interest on our massive debt. In other words, as a country, we need two things. First, we need to realize that 330,000,000 people have the responsibility – just as a family does – of budgeting our money in such a way that we create a perfectly balanced budget. Secondly, we have to make a plan for paying off our debt. I’m no fool to think our debt will ever be paid off, but yearly deficits of $500 billion to $2 trillion are just not sustainable and provide no ability to pay down our debt. Our children do not deserve what we are leaving them, and we deserve every bad word they say about us if our debt eventually cripples us.
You know what I would like for every single person in this country to do? I would like for them to live the life they would like to live. I have absolutely no opinion on what that life should look like for any of them. Love who you love, do what you love to do, eat what you love to eat, sing what you love to sing, and do your damnedest to be happy about all of it. That’s what liberty and freedom look like, and I’ll fight for that.
I understand the argument for a $15 minimum wage, but I can’t defend it on a national level. For starters, the cost of living in New York and Arkansas are VASTLY different. Heck, the cost of living in New York City and Albany are vastly different. This is a state issue, but I could understand the federal government putting a floor of $10 to $12 on it. That’s about as high as I could defend. Another side of that argument is that I am a teacher, and I probably speak for ALL state employees in North Carolina when I wonder what a 107% increase to my salary would look like. That’s what $7.25 to $15 is, you know. It’s a 107% increase. Can I tell you what a starting teacher in North Carolina has enjoyed over the last twelve years since the minimum wage hit $7.25? Their salary has increased 15%. Someone with 30 years experience? 0.9% increase. I could keep going with a lot more numbers, and I completely understand why a worker needs $15 an hour to beat poverty, but until we find a way to let state employees keep up with inflation (at the very least,) I can’t defend a percentage increase in ANYTHING that is 7 times bigger than the largest teacher increase over the same time period.
I think 9 is the right number. It was never supposed to be tied to population, it was supposed to be a group of people who used the Constitution – along with years of experience – to decide really difficult cases. That’s the way I view the Supreme Court and always will. I do, however, think it needs two changes. First, it never needs to be more than a 5-4 balance in either direction because anything other than that does not reflect the beliefs of our country. The only reason it is so off-balance now is because of nothing but luck, and we’re too advanced a society to base something so important on luck. Second, it is possible for a justice to stay on the court for half a century if they are seated early enough in their lives. That’s just too long. I’m in favor of term limits at all levels of elected office, and that goes for judicial appointments, as well. Twenty years is enough.
I will forever admit when I do not know enough about a topic, and this is one of them. I understand most of it, but no matter the research I do, I don’t understand one part that has always baffled me. I understand WHY people want to come here. I understand why they feel the need to come illegally. I understand why it angers so many people. I understand why some people want to make the process for citizenship so much easier while some people want to make it impossible. I understand why some people want a wall and why others don’t. What I do NOT understand is why immigration costs our taxpayers so much money every year and why we can apparently do nothing about that. In the past three years, we have placed sanctions and tariffs on countries all over the world for being less than adequate world partners for various reasons. We placed them on Russia a couple of years ago, for instance, for its cyber attacks and election meddling. We just placed them on Russia again for attacking the Ukraine. Can we not find a way for these sanctions to have a financial impact that would benefit the United States in order to lessen our burden on immigration? So if we can do that to Russia and China, can we not do that to the countries from where most of our immigrants are coming? Can we not essentially reimburse ourselves for them not treating their own citizens well enough to have them not flee? If we send them money every year as part of our “let’s pay to protect the entire world” fund, can we not send a little less next year to reimburse ourselves for what we have spent on their citizens coming to our country? If they are trade partners with us, can we make this part of our trade agreements? These are all very real questions I have, because one thing I do know is that it’s not fair to American citizens for us to spend so many of our tax dollars on this increasingly costly problem.
I’m sorry, but it is not the job of tens of millions of taxpayers to pay the debts of other people. I’m sorry if they got in over their heads or a college used deceptive practices to “trick” somebody into attending their school, but that is not the fault of a kid that went straight to work as a diesel mechanic after high school and made a good life for himself. It’s not the fault of a fifty year old attorney who went to Harvard and paid off all of his loans when he was in his early 40’s. Here’s what I would support. I would support the government subsidizing an elimination of all college loan interest on existing loans. At an average annual rate of about 5% per loan, that would save – and thus stimulate the economy with – about $100 billion a year. I would also very much support our education system covering more options for high school students or recent high school graduates. I don’t want to specifically say that the answer to that is free community college (as is being discussed now) because we lose far too many students well before high school graduation. I see kids every day that have just enough motivation to cheat or half-ass their way through high school, but they’ve never been given any reason to care about it because we give them so few options during their high school experience. Free community college for two years is fine, but high schoolers need more trade / occupation / graduation pathways, as well.
We have just spent four years watching a living documentary of how to deliver political propaganda. It was done through gaslighting, outright lies, misleading “facts,” deflection, blame, verbal attacks, appeals to perceived prejudices, and an ocean full of fearmongering. I cannot begin to express how much I detest political propaganda. I care about honesty and decency and empathy and service and transparency. It is one of the main reasons I am running for office, because I do not believe a single word most of my elected officials tell me, and in a free democratic republic, that is incredibly wrong. It is also incredibly dangerous to the health of our republic, and I refuse to sit back and watch men and women so concerned with the power of their party – and so blasé about their own constituents – that they would rather lie, blame, scare, cheat, and deflect than concede political defeat or compromise. It’s time that crap ended, and I’ll call it out every time I see it.
I don’t care what religion the forefathers claimed, I don’t care what version of what god they worshiped, I don’t care what verses they cherry-picked, I don’t even care if they helped translate the Bible. What I do care about are the religion clauses in the First Amendment, and nowhere do they say that the United States of America is a “Christian Nation” as so many people claim. Just because you might say we are a Christian nation does not mean we actually are. But the First Amendment – the very first one – says we are free to worship as we please, and that includes the complete absence of religion if that is the personal route chosen. Many people claim that the only way we found a way to define right from wrong, good from bad, and legal from illegal was from biblical teachings, and because of that, we must use the Bible’s vast list of sins and often antiquated dogma in our legislation. Only we have never done that and never will. Regardless, at this point in humanity’s trek through this galaxy, we’ve been able to discern a pretty good idea of right and wrong, good and bad, legal and illegal, and because of that First Amendment we discussed earlier, using ANY religious text in defense of future legislation is unconstitutional. But I WILL fight for you to be able to go to church wherever you want whenever you want until the day you die. I will fight for your right to preach on street corners if you want. And I will most definitely fight for your children’s right to be able to bow their head in school or get down on their knees or face the holy land or whatever is necessary to pray to or worship their god. But you need to understand that prayer will NEVER return to public schools in an official capacity. Why? Well, case in point: I’m a teacher. Based on my open-minded, fair, inclusive, and Constitutional viewpoint expressed in this section, do you want me teaching your kids about ALL the religions? Or just my interpretation of yours? I hear a lot of talk about teachers indoctrinating students (99% of which is political fearmongering,) but if you truly want to see true indoctrination in public schools, force teachers to teach from the Bible. You better be absolutely certain about your intentions if you force Christianity into public schools. I doubt you would be thrilled with the results. Lastly, somebody will read all of that and still scream, “But they took prayer out of schools.” No “they” did not. Little Johnny can pray whenever he wants in school. I promise. Amen.[2] |
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| —Denton Lee's campaign website (2022)[3] | ||
2020
Denton Lee did not complete Ballotpedia's 2020 Candidate Connection survey.
See also
2022 Elections
External links
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Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on July 8, 2021
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Denton Lee, “Platform,” accessed April 12, 2022
