NEWBERRY — Archie Parnell, Democratic candidate for the South Carolina 5th Congressional District, returned to Newberry last Wednesday to meet with community members and local leaders to address the issues impacting the area and its constituents.
Along with updating the community on current issues, Parnell’s focus during the meet and greet was to inform the community on a poll that was recently released that showed the narrowing of the gap against his Republican opponent.
“If you go back to the 2016 election, you’ll see Mulvaney defeated his Democratic opponent 21 percent. The other thing is that if you look at the part that talks about informed voters, the difference is Norman has 48 percent and we have 45 percent,” said Parnell. “Another part of the poll that wasn’t mentioned in The Washington Post was about informed voters, those voters that knew about the negatives and positives of the candidates.”
Parnell said that the issues he has heard about the most from the community is concerning healthcare, healthcare proposals going through The House and how that will effect the people.
“Sixty-five percent of the people in nursing homes actually use Medicaid, which poses the question of what’s going to happen to those people in nursing homes? Some of them can join their families but in some situations they won’t be able to do that,” said Parnell.
Parnell said that two thirds of seniors in nursing homes have their nursing home stay paid by Medicaid and that if the rules change that the two thirds in nursing homes will no longer be able to receive nursing home care.
“It’s going to be a devastating effect if these healthcare proposals that have passed The House actually become law,” said Parnell.
Another comment that Parnell has heard from community members was in regards to loan forgiveness.
“The budget was just recently released and a teacher who has normal student loans, which would have been forgiven after 10 years of teaching, these were rules that were in place at the time, those rules under the proposal would be changed so the loans would no longer be forgiven,” said Parnell.
Dealing with the issues that Parnell wants to address, he stressed the importance of constituent service, saying there was a dramatic change between John Spratt’s constituent service, the prior incumbent, and Mick Mulvaney’s.
Parnell is running against Ralph Norman to fill the seat vacated by Mick Mulvaney, who now serves as the Trump administration’s Budget Director. The two will face off in a special election that will take place June 20.
