By LISA BOWERS

Journal Ishpeming Bureau

MARQUETTE — Retired Marine Lt. Col. Matt Morgan thinks setting priorities that help people is the key to good governance.

Morgan sat down for an interview at The Mining Journal Thursday to talk about his bid for the 1st District U.S. House seat currently occupied by Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet. He will likely face fellow Democrat Dwight Brady in the primary election.

Morgan, who lives in Traverse City with his wife and two young sons, said he had never considered going into politics. But following the 2016 election, both he and his wife joined a group of people who were actively looking for a new candidate to run for office.

“I retired and I was done with my service, and I was doing this consulting thing, and living in this beautiful place and enjoying spending time with my kids, and then after November 2016 elections I was — we were — distraught,” Morgan said. “We tried to figure out what we could do, because we felt that when we went into the voting booth, we weren’t happy with our choices. We wanted to find someone who lived local, who had a family here, who really lived in the district for part of their life and had friends and family and roots here.”

Morgan considers wages and job security to be a major element of his platform.

“We were just at Forward Action U.P. talking to a representative there who looks to attract businesses to the Upper Peninsula. I asked her what the No. 1 issue (she) faces,” he said. “Talent — it’s finding the talent. So one of the committees I would seek to sit on is education in the workforce, because those two things are inextricably linked and the quality of education specifically in the U.P. and the northern lower (Peninsula) is Career Tech Education, is where the high-quality jobs are.”

Morgan said the tax cuts Congress passed recently will ultimately cause a loss of revenue.

“Then they are going looking for where they are going to cut,” he said. “This is where it comes down to priorities and we have to be articulating exactly what we are doing … We’ve got 46,000 people in this district alone that are covered under the Healthy Michigan Plan. Any cuts to Medicaid would deeply impact the ability of those folks to have health coverage,” he said. “And there are additional effects. You look at many of the rural hospitals in the district, 60 percent or more of their live births are medicaid, or under Healthy Michigan. So if you cut that funding and those hospitals are not getting reimbursed under those programs, then they may not be able to provide those services any more.”

Funding for Environmental Protection Agency programs like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative as well as its Superfund and Brownfield programs are also a must, Morgan said.

“On Jan. 3, (2017) when Congress was sworn in, they immediately began enacting legislation to dismember the EPA,” Morgan said. “It was clear what they were going to continue to do — that they have every intent of cutting EPA funding, which can have a direct negative impact on key things that affect the health of the Great Lakes. So we absolutely have to stand our ground on that along with the infrastructure projects that directly impact the Great Lakes, water infrastructure, navigable infrastructure.”

That infrastructure has been on the minds Michiganders for a long time, Morgan said.

“Congressman Bergman, for example has voted for billions of dollars of appropriations to, of course, homeland security and defense and a bunch of other programs in other line items in the federal budget, but they haven’t pushed anything in terms of infrastructure, which is absolutely critical to what we are doing,” Morgan said. “When I talk about priorities, a good example is, how many decades have we been talking about the Soo Locks? Yet, we are doing things like moving an embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is a billion dollar construction project and that is not creating a single American job in the process. So, it’s priorities.”

Morgan said the race for the 1st District is relatively unique because he is a marine running against another marine in Bergman.

“People ask often ‘How do you differentiate yourself,'” Morgan said. “I am not going to articulate what Jack’s service was, he can do that for himself, but for me, one of the big discrepancies in our whole world view is, as a post-911 combat veteran and a father, I am looking at the fact that we are continuing to deploy our sons and daughters overseas under an authorization of use of military force that was passed in 2001 after the 911 attacks. That was four years before my oldest son was born. The last time I deployed to Iraq in 2007 and 2008 he was 2. He was 13 this summer, I cannot understand or accept why Congress continues to give the president of the United States effectively unlimited authority to send our sons and daughters overseas to fight wars without coming to the American people and justifying doing that, sending our blood and treasure overseas. You know, if you are going to run on your military credentials, you need to be a vocal advocate of putting Congress in front of that decision-making process instead of giving a blank check to the Pentagon to continue.”

Lisa Bowers can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 242. Her email address is lbowers@miningjournal.net.