By WILLIAM H. WHITTEN
SPECIAL TO BEAUFORT TODAY

The Democratic Party says it has Lotz to offer in a candidate to oppose incumbent Republican Rep. Joe Wilson in this Second Congressional District.
He is Blaine Lotz.

The Hilton Head resident, together with family and friends, came to Ridgeland Tuesday to meet and speak with local Democrats as part of a two-day 10-county announcement sweep of the district from Lexington to Hampton, Jasper and Beaufort counties.

“(President) Bush and Wilson have been leading this country in the wrong direction for seven years,” said Lotz, a retired Air Force colonel and former commander of the Air Force Intelligence Agency.

“We went into Iraq for no good reason … We should have kept our resources in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that the “$2 trillion” spent on the Iraq war has drained the nation’s resources and will be a financial burden of the coming generation of Americans.

“Joe Wilson is a follower. He checks with the White House on how he should vote,” said Lotz.

But he noted that defeating the Republican incumbent will not be easy.

“He has raised more than $280,000…. In the last election he gave away $250,000 to other Republican congressional candidates,” he said.

He predicted that this year will see a Democrat elected as president — he didn’t say who — and that that person will need a strong Democratic majority in Congress to help the new president’s proposals.

But he also believes in bipartisan cooperation as he said was the way things got done in Washington when Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, was president and Democrats Lyndon Johnson and Dick Russell were in the Senate.

He called for America to “regain the spirit that made us great “including a beneficial space program.

“Now the war is draining money away from space and other programs. We’ve become the followers. We need to regain our edge as a country,” he said.

In organizing his campaign, Lotz said that voters who participated in recent elections are now part of computer lists available to candidates.

He is looking for volunteers to contact voters and “tell them about Blaine Lotz and why he should be in Congress.”

Lotz and his wife, Lynne, have owned property on Hilton Head since 1974 and moved fulltime there in 2005 after he retired from the Defense Department. He spent 26 years in the Air Force and 13 years as a civilian employee.

He received the Bronze Star for service in Vietnam. In 1998 he was assistant to the secretary of defense for intelligence oversight.

Jasper candidates seek nominations

With more than a week left before the filing deadline ends at noon March 30, contested Democratic Party contests have developed in the House and Jasper County Council races.

Incumbent Rep. Curtis Brantley, seeking reelection, is opposed by former state Rep. Thayer Rivers for the state House 122 seat.

Incumbent Fred Tuten, seeking reelection, is opposed by Jake Rauls for the council’s Pocataligo Township seat.
With incumbent council member Gladys Jones deciding not to seek reelection, three Democrats, Hilda Horton, Samuel Gregory and William Murray, are running for her at-large seat.

The party election is set for June 10.