LDS Republican Candidate Andy Goss Running For Arizona's U.S. House District 8 Seat, Wants To Send Democrat Gabrielle Giffords Packing

Update August 24th: Effective July 8th, 2010, Andy Goss withdrew from the Arizona CD8 race against Gabrielle Giffords. He endorsed fellow conservative Jesse Kelly, saying that Kelly represents the best chance to defeat Giffords and he encouraged all of his supporters to follow suit.


Andy Goss is one of four Republican candidates seeking the honor of displacing Democratic incumbent Gabrielle Giffords from her seat as the Representative from U.S. House District 8 in Arizona, and he is identified as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in this profile published May 19th, 2010 in the Tucson Citizen.

Goss doesn't spend much time discussing his LDS affiliation, except to say that his moral compass is calibrated by his faith. He also pays tribute to his wife, saying “She is so much a better person than I, she really keeps me grounded. It would make me physically ill if I ever failed her or my children.”

He does spend much more time addressing why is he running for Congress, billing himself as "the guy who will break things". In a nutshell, he believes in limited government, low taxes, and the free market system. He believes in personal liberty and with that personal responsibility and accountability. Specific interests:

-- Flat tax, not a Fair Tax. Start at 15% and adjust down every year for ten years.
-- Cut corporate taxes to 15% to reduce offshoring.
-- Let states define marriage.
-- Extend the Castle Doctrine in Arizona to include property and livestock.
-- Build more nuclear power plants and increase refinery capacity.
-- Militarize our border; place an active combat brigade at the border with Special Kill Teams also known as SKTs (Goss was a U.S. Army sergeant in Iraq).

Find out more about Goss' platform at Gossforcongress.com. Goss also sums up his Republican opponents briefly:

-- Jonathan Paton: Accomplished and a veteran, but his weakness is his associations; he can be perceived as elitist.
-- Jesse Kelly: A decent guy, but his youth is his weakness.
-- Brian Miller: Not really a conservative as Goss would define conservatism, more Libertarian than Republican; he is a Fair Tax guy. Goss also disagrees with Miller's characterization of our Afghanistan involvement as "nation-building".

In the final analysis, Goss says that all four are good candidates and asserts he can beat Gabrielle Giffords. It sounds like Jonathan Paton may be the favorite among the Republicans at this point. They will settle the issue in the August 24th primary election; see complete list of all officially-filed Arizona candidates HERE.