Candidate first to field radio ads
Mike Stagg challenging for 7th District seat
By
PATRICK COURREGES
Acadiana bureau
Published: Aug 30, 2006
Mike Stagg, the Democratic candidate in Louisiana’s 7th District congressional race, is the first candidate to reach the airwaves, with a quartet of radio ads outlining some of his key campaign issues.
Included in his platform is a plan to create new federal laws holding insurance companies accountable to the promises made to policyholders.candidatefirsttofieldradioads.html
Stagg, a first-time candidate for the office, is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-Lafayette, who is running for a second term.
Boustany and Stagg are the only candidates in the Nov. 7 election.
Stagg, who has said he will disdain money from political action committees, said Tuesday that he has received enough financial support to run radio ads through the full term of the race, and hopes to gain enough support to broaden his campaign to other media.
“What we’re trying to do is let people know that there is a race here,” he said of his quick entry onto the airwaves.
Stagg’s first four ads each deal with a different issue — what he views as an unethical response by insurance companies in the wake of the 2005 hurricane season, the influence of corporations and PACs on the political process, the eroding financial position of the American middle class and the need to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq.
Stagg said Tuesday that, though homeowner’s and other kinds of property insurance are generally regulated by individual states, the federal government can have a role in holding insurance companies accountable.
“They have their way with the states. These are national companies, this is interstate commerce,” he said. “The federal government can step in and should step in.”
Stagg said that, if elected, he would propose a “bad faith” law requiring insurance companies to spell out “in plain English” what they will and will not cover.
“You’re going to have to change the way you write policies or you’re going to have to get out of the insurance business,” he said.
Stagg said that in his travels around the 7th District — hard hit by Hurricane Rita — he has heard time and again how people who believed themselves covered by insurance have felt cheated and abandoned.
“My family was in the insurance business when I grew up. There was a time when insurance companies assessed risk and knew there would come a time when they had to pay out claims,” he said. “Now, they’re just intake valves for financial service companies.”
Another point he raises in the ads is his view that large corporations are waging a “war” on the middle class in the U.S., with the help of the Republican-led federal government.
“We live in a time of record corporate profits, yet wages can’t keep pace with inflation,” Stagg said.
He said he would like to create a more progressive income tax system, in which the wealthier pay a fairer share of taxes.
Stagg said the tax burden on the middle class, combined with quickly increasing costs of fuel and food are hurting workers.
“If we don’t have a middle class, we don’t have America,” he said.
Stagg said he wants to work in Congress to lessen the influence of big-money interests.
He notes in his ad on the subject that “one man, one vote,” has been replaced by “one dollar, one vote.”
Stagg also said that Congress has not kept up enough oversight on the war in Iraq and action should be taken to start bringing soldiers home.
Story originally published in The Advocate