First-time candidate John Brunner has been learning the hard lessons of campaigning but never wants to forget the lessons of a manufacturing floor.
The St. Louis businessman counts his work experience as essential to his run for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Missouri.
In particular, Mr. Brunner says he can identify with companies feeling what he calls an excessive, and expensive, oversight by the federal government.
“The incessant regulations are an attack on the middle class and the small business people and the small farmers,” he said Tuesday.
Mr. Brunner made his remarks while meeting with the News-Press editorial board. He discussed his three decades working with his family’s business, Vi-Jon Corp., maker of numerous personal care products, most notably Germ-X hand sanitizer.
Several federal agencies watched the operation of this company, where Mr. Brunner served as chief executive until 2009. The candidate said, in the beginning, he valued the standards put in place.
“It was good business to follow good regulations, and good regulations supported good business,” he said.
But regulations in all areas of business, industry and farming grew in what he came to regard as a “self-serving” bureaucracy. In fact, he said, the regulations became a competitive advantage for large corporations that could afford the compliance costs.
Such a business environment, he added, chokes innovation and its subsequent job growth.
“These new entrepreneurs have such huge hurdles to meet, and regulatory issues to meet, that they’re going to have a difficult, if not impossible, time going forward with some of their great ideas,” the candidate said.
In the Senate, where he hopes to replace Democrat Claire McCaskill after the November election, Mr. Brunner would push for laws injecting “common-sense elements” into the regulatory process.
He also would advocate legislation that capitalizes on U.S. energy resources, such as coal, natural gas extracted from shale and oil drilled onshore and off.
Gaining energy independence, the Republican said, would bring jobs back to American factories and make farmers more competitive with exports because of lowered production costs.
“I really believe 100 years from now, people will look back at America and say, “Didn’t these guys know what they were standing on?’” he said.
With his largely self-funded campaign, Mr. Brunner hopes to impress Missouri voters with “hard work and a clear message.”
Announced candidates for the GOP nomination include St. Louis-area Congressman Todd Akin and former Missouri treasurer Sarah Steelman. Mr. Brunner wants his outsider status to be an asset.
“The right attitude is, this isn’t the height and pinnacle of a career. This is a service, this is an obligation, this is a responsibility to get in there and do something,” he said. “You need different kind of people going up there.”
Ken Newton can be reached at ken.newton@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @SJNPNewton.
