MOUNT VERNON — U.S. Senate hopeful Scott Rupert mingled with Knox County residents Monday night to introduce himself and explain how he would like to make a difference for Ohio.
Rupert is running as an unaffiliated candidate since Ohio law does not recognize an independent party. He faces incumbents Sherrod Brown (D) and Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel (R).
He lived most of his life in Ohio and was raised in Sheffield Lake on Lake Erie in Lorain County. Currently he lives in Mechanicsburg and is married and has four children.
When he was younger he worked in construction and then followed his father into the car-hauling facet of the trucking industry, eventually purchasing his own truck.
“In 2008,” he said, “I was driving down the road and listening to candidates compete with campaign ads. They run against each other but they don’t run for anything.”
Rupert decided he wanted to make a difference and see a constitutional government put back into the hands of the people.
“Those of us who know how hard it is to earn the money our politicians are spending must get involved” is something he emphasizes on his website, www.scottrupert.com.
Rupert calls himself a problem solver and he sees the Senate as broken, an entity that is not protecting the sovereignty of the states or the people.
“The U.S. Senate, of all of our branches of government, from the local on up, is the weakest of all of the branches constitutionally,” he explained. “The Senate has no voice of its own. The will of the Senate is to be the voice of the state legislatures, to protect the state. But today, the Senate is a rubber stamp on the House of Representatives.”
He used Obamacare as an example, noting that it passed in the Senate despite rejection by the number of states that said they didn’t want it. “If the states were doing their jobs,” he said, “the Senate would have shot down Obamacare.”
“We have the best health care system in the world,” stated Rupert. “If you go to the hospital and you don’t have insurance and can pay cash, you can actually pay less for medical care.”
