Barry Hess

Barry Hess, vice chairman of the Arizona Libertarian Party, is loathe to run a publicly funded campaign, billing himself as “The Cleaner-est Candidate for Arizona Governor.”
A currency speculator in the foreign exchange market and carpenter by trade, Mr. Hess makes his second run for governor, this time after being courted by Republicans to run on the GOP ticket.
On his campaign Web site, he espouses the Libertarian philosophy: “A single-mindedness of purpose, a clear understanding of our constitutions and some common sense are the only qualifications a candidate would need to get my vote,” he said.
Mr. Hess was interviewed at Arizona Capitol Times and by phone on Aug. 8.
Had the Republicans promised you traditional financial support, would you have switched parties and, if so, would that not have placed you in contempt with Libertarians?
I’m not sure. That wasn’t the only factor. One of the reasons is there was so much baggage on the Republican Party now. It’s not something I would want to be associated with.
What baggage?
George Bush, primarily, and the incredible growth of government spending on what I think are extraordinarily wasteful programs. Libertarians said unanimously, go for it if you think that’s the right thing to do, then do it because our concern is not what label is on the person who brings them back freedom; it’s who brings them back the freedom.
With no primary opposition, you will be on the November general election ballot against the Republican nominee and Governor Napolitano. Let’s take Don Goldwater first. He is for a wall at the border, and you have said you support a physical barrier, but not a wall. As briefly as you can, what are the points you’d like to make on illegal immigration?
It’s the whole NAFTA idea — we’ve got to stop the demand before we can actually shore anything up. Because of NAFTA, agricultural growers, in particular, dumped product on South America so cheaply that it literally put 2 million Mexican farmers out of work, who went to the cities and flooded the job market and lowered the labor costs. American companies have seen this and, by virtue of NAFTA, closed their facilities here, shutting American jobs down, taking their manufacturing facilities over to cheap labor pools. The overflow is headed north in the flood of human migration. I would think a repudiation of NAFTA would not be outrageous; it would be self-protective.
Should American employers be sanctioned for knowingly hiring illegals?
Probably a better plan is to allow employers to hire anybody they want, but if the individual does not produce sufficient documentation that they are legally here, then we should tack on a surcharge of some kind — something around 15 percent of whatever they pay them.
Now to Mr. Munsil, who says God led him to his decision to run. In your biography, you write that you’ve made mistakes along the way, but each served a purpose — quoting here — “like God himself slapping me upside the head to straighten me out.” Is Mr. Munsil’s god any different from yours, and should religion be part of a political campaign?
Religion should not be a part of any political campaign. It’s the job of citizens to populate the government offices with people that share the same values they do.
Any comments about Mike Harris or Gary Tupper?
They seem to be very nice gentlemen. I don’t understand their motivation or even why they’re in the race or what they hope to prove, but God bless them — it’s the American way.
You have said in previous interviews Ms. Napolitano’s administration is incompetent. How so?
Incompetence comes from the education factor. She has taken us from 44th in the nation all the way down to 50th after having made this her center post of the last campaign. She shamelessly only this year—an election year — gave teachers the raise she promised them four years ago. How we educate is a very big deal. You could change it from the top all the way to the bottom, focusing on the progress of these students, rather than preserving the administrative process. I would say education should always be the number one issue, and anyone who can’t get the job done should be gotten out of office immediately.
Vote and elections fraud is a major issue: I have very good reason to believe that there is fraud in regard to unqualified people who are actively voting, primarily perpetrated by the Democrat wing of the Republican-Democrat Party. And I have very good reason to believe that there is election fraud in the count of the votes, primarily perpetrated by the Republican wing of the Republican-Democrat Party. We have finally arrived at a point of competing frauds.
Any person possessing even slight critical thinking skills has to question why lawmakers have made it illegal to compare the paper ballots cast with the computer totals and the odd and statistically impossible number of spending proposals that have 49 to 51 percent. It’s virtually always in favor of more spending and more government growth and impossible to swallow the implied demographics on such a wide variety issues and propositions. Can a rational person actually believe these are real numbers?