If elected to the state Senate, Republican Jim Davis said his top priority would be protecting North Carolinians from being forced to purchase health insurance.

Senate Republicans plan to reintroduce legislation in the 2011 General Assembly that would exempt individuals and employers in the state from the federal mandate that will soon force them to buy health insurance.

“If I were elected, I’d vote for that the first day,” Davis said.

Davis, an orthodontist and Macon County Commissioner, is running against Democrat John Snow for the North Carolina Senate District 50 seat.

The mandate is unconstitutional, Davis says.

“I can’t understand for the life of me why people think the Constitution was written so only constitutional scholars could understand it,” he said. “The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written so that average people like me, that can read, could understand what they were saying.”

In Davis’ understanding of the document, “there is no authority given to the federal government to force us to buy anything including health insurance.”

Davis said he supports health care reform, but that it should take the the form of less government intervention, not more. Government shouldn’t be in the health insurance business, period, he said.

“Why in the world would we trust the government to take care of the rest of our healthcare when the place where they already have inserted themselves [Medicare and Medicaid] is bankrupt?”

Snow did not respond to three telephone calls or an e-mail asking him to be interviewed for this story, but a page on his campaign website suggests he supports more government involvement in health care.

According to the Web page, his health care plan would:

• Incentivize employers to provide health insurance
• Expand Medicaid
• Ensure equal access to all

“We must make sure that every citizen has access to quality health care,” Snow writes.

Snow also mentions the “progress” the state has made in the area of mental health care, noting that he helped secure nearly $110 million to treat the mentally ill.

He sponsored a bill raising tobacco taxes by 6 cents per cigarette to fund mental health care treatment.

Other health-related bills Snow sponsored include one screening school children for body mass index and another banning whole fat milk and sugary drinks in public and private preschools in an effort to reduce childhood obesity.

Snow also sponsored a bill that would have forced a divorced spouse paying child support to pay three additional years if a child attended college.

Davis, who says he’s endorsed by his local Tea Party, said North Carolina needs to return to a government that intervenes less in our personal lives and has more respect for “individual freedom and responsibility.”

“I’m a Republican because I believe in less government,” Davis said.

He also noted that state spending has gone up nearly 50 percent during the three terms Snow has served as Senator.

District 50 stats
In 2008, 37.8 percent of voters in the district were registered Democrat, 35.4 percent Republican and 26.8 percent unaffiliated. The North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation classifies it as a “leaning Republican” swing district.

As of June, Snow had $134,000 on hand Davis had $52,000. As of October, Davis had a 19-point lead over Snow, 55 percent to 36 percent, according to a Civitas poll.

Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.