Name: Glen Bradley
Party: Republican
Occupation: Representative for NC House District 49. Self-employed field service technician for network computers.
Years in District: 24 years
Endorsements: The Independents Caucus, The Republican Liberty Caucus, B.J. Lawson
Amendment 1: Against. “It’s rife with unintended consequences. Although I believe in marriage between a man and a woman, I think the amendment is a bad idea for a lot of reasons.”
What do you think is the central issue for this election?
The central issue of this election especially for me is restoring the constitution. The very survival of our nation hinges on government restoring the constitutional order. The only way we’re going to do that is by electing constitutionalists. Behind that of course there’s jobs. We have to have someone that actually pays attention to the job issue and works out that problem in a proper manner that actually creates jobs.
What are the central issues in your district?
Of course, Franklin County has a much larger job problem than Wake County does. There’s a big issue in Franklin County with transparency in government. We’ve gone through a series of recent crises with the sheriff, the appointment of elected officials. Right now the people of Franklin County are tired of corrupt government. They just want people they can trust in office and transparency in their government. They deserve that. People deserve to have some faith in their government. That’s a big issue. I say what I mean. I mean what I say. I’m not really a politician. I think that I meet that need very well as a member of the state senate.
In Wake County of course even though they have less unemployment, we’re still looking at regulatory reform and how we can increase job growth, because we need to get this economy moving again.
Why should your constituents elect you?
The biggest reason — and I recognize that this is not as popular in the electorate as I wish it was — but the biggest reason is because I’m a strict constitutionalist. Having been a strict constitutionalist all my life, I hated both parties, because neither of them really followed the constitution. But our nation and by extension the state of North Carolina, we face an existential battle for our survival. The only way to survive that crisis is to restore the constitution to order. As much as there’s jobs and transparency, there’s bigger issues at hand. Even if there’s only a few of us that recognize it, those bigger issues are that we have to restore the constitution. I was the only one in the state house that was talking about those issues. I’m the one that has the courage of conviction to stand up to my own caucus when they walk away from the constitution.
What do you think the biggest accomplishments and biggest failures are during the past two years in the N.C. legislature?
We had some pretty significant accomplishments. We passed regulatory reform, which was huge. Even though it wasn’t nearly as good as I would have liked for it to have been. We also did annexation reform, which was really huge. There were too many people out there being unfairly annexed by municipalities without any input of their own. We also did House Bill 650, where we modernized and repaired the gun laws, such as concealed carry [and] castle doctrine. That’s something that especially conservatives had been wanting in North Carolina for the longest time is real castle doctrine. So these are all really spectacular accomplishments.
In terms of the biggest mistakes we’ve made—when I ran for office I said Republicans were going into office change the way government does business. And then when I get there and we start having these midnight sessions and these weird parliamentary procedures, the Republicans stand up and they look at the Democrats and say ‘five years ago you did such and so and we’re doing it now.’ That’s not what we were elected to do.
Another big disappointment was redistricting. I also ran on the fact that we would do a constitutional redistricting for the first time in a century. You know, ‘we’re going to do redistricting right.’ Of course that didn’t happen. We gerrymandered it pretty badly ourselves and that really disturbed me. I was one of the only Republicans to vote against the redistricting plan. I went to Franklin County and fought against it. I brought Democrats together to fight against it. They’re splitting counties and precincts like never before and they are trying to use the Voter Rights Act to do it but that’s just something to give themselves cover. They’re just trying to gerrymander the lean towards Republicans as bad as the Democrats gerrymandered the lean towards Democrats and that’s not what we need in the state of North Carolina, because any safe district is a corrupt district. I don’t care what party it is. If someone doesn’t have to campaign to stay in office, they are going to become corrupt. That’s just a fact of life. You can’t have safe districts. You can’t have a safe majority, because that destroys your state no matter what party you are.
What is your guilty pleasure?
Coffee. I am a coffee nut. I buy my beans from a roaster. I used distilled water. I brew it one cup at a time in this little thing. Coffee. I love really good coffee.
