Boulder Colorado Internet Entrepreneur Bill Hammons in the News
Colorado Daily Profile of Boulder Internet Entrepreneur Bill Hammons
Hammons, Unity in CD2 race
By RICHARD VALENTY Colorado Daily Staff Writer
Thursday, December 6, 2007 10:28 PM MST
An actual non-Democrat, Bill Hammons, has announced his candidacy for Colorado's 2nd Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Local and statewide media covering the 2nd CD race will probably devote the heaviest near-term ink to a three-way battle for the Democratic Party nomination between Will Shafroth, Jared Polis and Joan Fitz-Gerald - and a Republican candidate or two will almost certainly make formal announcements in early 2008.
But Hammons said he and his relatively new Unity Party of America (UPA) can offer alternatives to the current two-party political system.
“I'm running because I don't see the change in Washington that we need, and we really do need change,” said Hammons. “I have experience, and I have a strong interest in world affairs and what's going on in the nation. The House position appealed to me and I think I can bring a lot to the seat, so I'm running.”
Hammons co-founded the UPA on Nov. 4, 2004 - just after the last presidential election - and he said the party has members in 23 U.S. states.
The party platform can be found at www.unityparty.us, but in part, it includes a call for a balanced budget amendment; elimination of income tax on the first $30,000 of income but a 30 percent tax on all income above $30,000; a carbon-revenue measure on fossil fuels; and support for affirmative action based on economic status as opposed to skin color.
Hammons majored in English and American Literature at New York University (NYU), and eventually became the Rights and Permissions Manager for Newsweek magazine in Manhattan. Part of his job description included granting or denying the use of Newsweek content and negotiating contracts for the use of content.
He is also a self-published novelist, and said on his Web site that his search for literary agents helped him realize the need for a Web-based list of agents and the books the agents have represented. He launched the Web site www.wrhammons.com, which includes information on distance running, Colorado's fourteeners and Colorado real estate as well as on literary agents.
Hammons moved to Boulder in 2005, partially because of its natural beauty and its reputation as a “Mecca” for distance running.
As a candidate, Hammons' personal platform includes support for a peaceful partition of Iraq, as opposed to attempting to hold a nation that faces a potential civil war together. He said Iraq was created after World War I from provinces of the old Ottoman Empire as a “completely artificial country” because the British wanted a “coherent unit” to control the area's oil.
Today, Hammons said the Shiites in southern Iraq have the oil money, while the Kurds in northern Iraq are an independent nation “in everything but name.” He also said on his Web site that he would propose asking the inhabitants of the “resource-poor” Sunni region of Iraq if they would wish to be joined with Jordan or Saudi Arabia.
“The only question is how it's going to break apart,” said Hammons. “Will it be like Yugoslavia, where you had ethnic cleansing and fighting between the factions, or like Czechoslovakia which peacefully agreed to break apart and go separate ways? Hopefully, the latter model will eventually prevail in Iraq.”
On the domestic front, Hammons and UPA support a balanced budget amendment - in part because information found on the National Debt Clock Web site, www.brillig.com/debt_clock, says the debt as of Dec. 7, 2007 stood at $9,165,045,761,411.68 and counting.
“Part of the reason for our falling dollar is that you have this incredible national debt,” said Hammons. “There's no good reason for it, and the only people getting anything from the debt are the bond traders in Manhattan. If we don't do something, interest payments will continue to grow, and with the Baby Boomers retiring, our obligations to boomers are going to grow. It's a looming crisis.”
But Hammons favors using federal spending to help reduce interest rates on student loans. He said he graduated from NYU with about $20,000 in student loan debt, and said the Clinton administration helped him out by reducing rates in the early 1990s.
“I think we should encourage people to go out and get a college education,” said Hammons. “I don't think government spending is 100 percent bad - for example, the G.I. Bill helped pay for young veterans' tuition and for cheap mortgages. The country wound up making the money back several times over, and the same principle applies to student loan rates - keep them low and eventually we'll make our money back.”
Hammons said he favors securing the nation's southern border with Mexico in part to prevent terrorists from entering the U.S., but also supports some form of guest worker program so immigrants can do the jobs that many Americans won't do.
“Our economy depends on immigrant labor, and it has since the days of Ellis Island,” said Hammons. “But I don't support rewarding people who come here illegally with U.S. citizenship. I support allowing guest workers into the country, knowing who they are and knowing how many are here. We need to know who is crossing the border, for our own security if for nothing else.”
But Hammons didn't deny Thursday that he faces an uphill battle in a Democrat-dominated district. He said the major parties can offer candidates the benefits of well-established party machinery - including donor networks and consultants - but said he believes his small-business and Internet experience will help him establish a viable campaign.
He campaigned on Main Street in Breckenridge last Sunday, and will hold an official campaign kick-off party on Wednesday, Dec. 12, at the Lazy Dog Sports Bar and Grill, 1346 Pearl Street in Boulder, beginning at 7 p.m.
Also, he plans to hold the first UPA convention in Boulder or possibly Broomfield on Aug. 22-23, 2008 - just before the Democratic National Convention is held in Denver on Aug. 25-28.
“We're looking at having 538 delegates here, and we hope to piggyback on some of the media that will be in the metro area that weekend,” said Hammons. “There is a need for a strong third party in this country, and we're not exploding - but we're heading in the right direction.”
Contact Richard Valenty about this story at (303) 443-6272 ext. 126, or at valenty@coloradodaily.com.
