Published: September 02, 2008 12:45 pm      

PRIMARY ELECTION 2008: Staying on topic

Davis campaign still rallies ‘round ending free trade

Whatever the topic, all paths lead to trade when you’re talking to Jack Davis.

Worried because Social Security’s not sustainable and employer-funded health insurance is disappearing? Blame it on the wages cut or lost as jobs are shipped overseas.

Going fewer places when gas costs $4 a gallon? You wouldn’t have to stay home if we stopped letting foreign oil drive us.

Afraid you’ll be sick from fresh produce? Stop buying suspect imports and you won’t be.

If Davis heeded the critique of his past campaigns for Congress, that he needed to branch out his platform and try not to sound like a one-noter, it’s difficult to tell.

His third consecutive campaign team has fired off position statements on a number of federal issues, from health and elder care to farm and immigration policy, and invariably Davis offers the same solution in each: End free trade. Replace it with “balanced” trade. Put Americans back to work growing, digging or manufacturing in America, for America, and the problems will solve themselves.

"If we were creating wealth ... we wouldn’t have a Social Security crisis or a health insurance crisis or a housing crisis. People with good-paying jobs can pay the bills,” he says.

All of Davis’ campaign literature, policy statements and strategies are crafted in a sparsely appointed office inside his 44-year-old business, I Squared R Element Company, in Akron.

The massive factory employs 75 people making and selling silicon carbide (ceramic) elements for furnaces, electronic wares and fiber optics networks. Its success is integral to Davis’ take on the U.S. economy and the failures of free trade.

Davis, 75, earned an engineering degree from the University of Buffalo after Korean War-era stints with the Marine Corps Reserves and Coast Guard, and went to work for Carborundum in Niagara Falls.

Davis recalls that a basic design approach used by I Squared R had been known to engineers since the 1930s. He pressed Carborundum management to try it, management declined and their resulting “difference of opinion” inspired him and another engineer to work out the process themselves in Davis’ garage. That’s how his business was born.

Carborundum used to process the silicon that forms the basis of ceramic elements; now the raw ingredient is imported from Norway. Davis gets no satisfaction knowing his old employer is nothing like it used to be — or that I Squared R is the only ceramic element manufacturer left in the United States. His company does a lot of business with Corning Inc., which exports elements to Asia for installation in TVs and phones no longer Made in the USA.

"It’s a shame what’s happened to this country,” Davis says. “There’s not another country that can’t produce it cheaper than we can. What are we going to make? We won’t be making anything unless we do something about it.”

Davis ran for Congress on the same platform in 2004 and 2006. He lost to retiring incumbent Tom Reynolds, R-Clarence, by 12 percent of the vote the first time, 4 percent the second.

If he was betting the trend proved more people “get” his message each time he rolls it out, his hope could be dashed by a raucous Democratic primary.

Davis’ wealth has been fodder for some spectacular sniping between him and party-endorsed candidate Jonathan Powers, and sometimes it seems like Davis inadvertently supplies the ammunition. He’s bragged often of his choice to plow $3 million of his own money into the race and decline all donations, especially from “lobbyists, multinational corporations or political action committees.” Powers and Alice Kryzan suggest it’s easy to do only because he can afford to.

After a recent Davis campaign finance filing showed he’d paid the wives of two Independence Party chairmen $5,000 each, to be “consultants” to his campaign, the Powers camp seized on a party official’s use of the word “bribe” and echoed it repeatedly. Davis initially continued the arrangement because he said there was nothing improper about it, then decided it a “mistake” and said he wouldn’t do it any more. His critics charge it’s evidence of Davis thinking he can “buy” a House seat.

To Davis’ mind, that’s probably the most egregious falsehood spread about him. He’s said repeatedly that he doesn’t “want” to go to Washington, he has to, because only Congress has the power to change trade terms.

“I wouldn’t be doing this unless I really thought our whole country depends on me doing it, because nobody else seems to understand the total problem or be able to do anything about it,” he said. “I have the knowledge, the interest, the desire and the patriotism. I want to do what’s right."

Regardless of the primary outcome, Davis will be on the November ballot. Last month he filed papers with the state to form a self-created ballot line, the Save Jobs and Farms Party.

Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.



The series

The Union-Sun & Journal is profiling Democratic hopefuls for the party line in the race for U.S. House of Representatives, 26th District, the seat currently held by retiring Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds.

The primary election is Sept. 9. Profiles are of:

Today — John R. “Jack” Davis Jr.

Tuesday — Jonathan Powers

Alice J. Kryzan was profiled in Lockport Sunday.