Chris Carney Interviewed by Politico
Chris Carney was interviewed for the Politico article “When one vote costs everything.” The article looks at how a vote by a member of Congress on a controversial bill can have a decided impact on the member’s tenure in Congress — and uses the passage of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” (The OBBB Act) as an entry point. For the article, Chris — the 2007-2011 representative for Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District — discusses how his vote for the ACA in 2010 impacted his reelection run in his district and cautioned that Republicans may have cause for concern next year.
Chris said, “I took that vote knowing I was going to lose [the next election]. But to be a good member of Congress, you have to be willing to lose your seat for things that are important. And the Republicans who voted for the BBB probably understood that they run the risk of losing their seat by voting for it.”
He added, “Both the ACA and the BBB were organizing principles for the opposition party. The Tea Party movement used Obamacare as a way to rally forces against Democrats who voted for it, and, in fact, against Democrats who didn’t vote for it. Democrats this time will use the BBB probably in the same way… The real question is: How well can Democrats message against it, and how well can Republicans defend it? Back in 2010, I don’t think we were given exactly the tools we needed to defend decisions to vote for [ACA].”
In addition to representing Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, Chris also served as a tenured professor of political science specializing in international relations at Penn State University. Prior to running for Congress, he worked at the Pentagon for four years on strategic analysis of the global terrorist threat, ran the Department of Defense’s Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and was the “Special Projects” intelligence officer for two tours during Operation Southern Watch. Chris received a Presidential appointment as a Commissioner on the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission (MCRMC) and served as a Senior Intelligence Specialist for the National Aviation Intelligence Integration Office (NAI2O).
