Prescott doctor, Democrat Brill to challenge for Rep. Gosar’s seat
Prescott’s Dr. David Brill is running for Congress as a Democrat from Congressional District 4, part of a wave of candidates getting into position to ensure there is someone from the party running in every congressional and legislative district across the state.
Republicans outnumber Democrats by 100,000 in the district, which includes eastern Yuma, the Foothills, Wellton, and communities to the east and north, but Brill believes he has more than a prayer of capturing the seat now held by GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, also from Prescott.
“Republicans, independents are mad, with the chaos. They want it to end. And Libertarians, Greens, Democrats, all of us are frustrated” with the federal government under the current president and Congress, he said during an interview at the Yuma Sun.
“So in this election year, I anticipate that we’re going to be able to talk to, again, good Republicans, independents, Libertarians, Greens and Democrats, and work with that and build a coalition.”
Since he joined the race Jan. 1, he has collected enough signatures to be on the ballot and is gunning for more, and his fundraising activities have been progressing well, with more than $30,000 as he works toward the Aug. 28 primary election.
He is one of six Democrats who have started an account under which they could be collecting nominating signatures, according to a list provided by Arizona Secretary of State spokesman Matt Roberts. Gosar and another Republican have also started accounts, along with two Libertarians, two Green Party members and four “others.”
The list had no information on how many are actively collecting signatures. The deadline is May 30.
Brill is a physician and has never held an elected office outside of professional associations. He has been the corporate medical director for Michelin Tires, started three healthrelated small businesses, and worked for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs for a decade, where he was Northern Arizona manager of primary care services.
He took the lead in setting up a remote-access network for providers and patients. “We put in a TeleHealth system for the Southwest, so that any clinic could do two simultaneous TeleHealth sessions at the same time. And we were able to take services out to some really remote areas where there was no way we could afford to put a doctor out there,” he said.
Naturally, health care and insurance tops his platform, along with education and student-loan reform.
“I really am running out of gratitude, because I’ve had a fabulous career, lots of entrepreneurship, lots of working in the public sector -- it’s been diverse,” he said. “But for me, I could have a good career by working for two years and paying for school. Now it takes kids 20 years.”
He said the student-loan system needs to be reformed, getting the highpriced, low-quality campuses out of business and controlling costs for other kinds of schools.
We’ve got to revamp the system and focus on the community colleges as places where young students can get a good education and stay in their area, instead of seeking opportunities in the big city. That also means they need infrastructure, broadband, to stay in their communities instead of heading to Phoenix,” he said.
One example of making this happen, he said, comes from Prescott, where a startup company told city officials it was “going to have to move, unless we can get people trained, quickly. And we already have contracts with Walmart and Costco,” Brill said.
The kiosk manufacturer needed 100 people qualified to build machines with robotics equipment, “so (officials) went quickly to the community college, the community college put together a training program in less than 30 days, with the company and other specialists, and this started in December and started training in January. When these young people come out of the program, they’re going to have jobs starting at $25 an hour. That’s a good wage, in our area,” he said.
He said he favors universal, affordable health care, either through expanding Medicare to the entire population or allowing employers to provide additional benefits on top of a nationwide base level of care.
“But the thing I am interested in, as a former Fortune 500 medical director and the owner of three small businesses, is to get as much of health care out of business and employment as possible, because that’s when people really need their safety net,” he said. “When people lose their job that’s when you need your insurance, you need your safety net, not to lose it.”
Border issues and justice are also priorities, and he said the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana could have an effect on both matters.
“We could secure our border a whole lot better with the narcotraficantes, if we legalized or decriminalized marijuana in this country. That would be a wonderful thing for our country. And also, I have seen minor offenses of marijuana criminalize and ruin lives, and I think we need to end that war on marijuana,” he said.
He also wants to reduce the influence of lobbyists and “dark money” and supports a statewide effort, “Outlaw Dirty Money,” to gather enough signatures to get a constitutional amendment onto the fall ballot that would require donors to disclose the original source of single campaign donations over $2,500 and total donations over $10,000.
He said he opposes the “small government” ideology of Gosar and others on the conservative end of the political spectrum. “Part of the mandate of the Constitution is to promote the general welfare. I believe it has been ignored in our district. We have a representative who is more interested in shrinking the government and, as some would say, ‘strangling it in the bathtub,’” he said.
He added that despite having strong opinions on a multitude of problems, he’s ready to work with people who don’t agree with all of his positions, as someone who’s been an independent voter most of his life.
“I emphatically will represent people who don’t agree with me, that’s fine. It’s my job to represent them. If I’m talking to a Republican who wants something, it’s my job to go to bat for something that works out for everybody. But yes, I’m going to listen and advocate, but I’m not just going to advocate for people that agree with me,” he said.
His March 2 stop in Yuma was near the beginning of a districtwide string of campaign appearances in CD4, which covers most of the western half of the state, plus Payson and the eastern fringe of the Phoenix metro area. He said he spoke to a number of “wonderfully diverse small businesses” while in Yuma and intends to come more often during his campaign.