Article originally from the Decatur Daily

An inattentive listener might think Taze Shepard is campaigning to be a tightrope walker rather than a 5th District congressman.

The word “balance” comes up a lot.

The Huntsville Democrat, a lawyer and bankruptcy trustee, said former Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, had balance. He said incumbent Parker Griffith, who switched to the Republican Party in December, does not.

As with the other three Democrats in the race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Griffith’s switch was central to Shepard’s decision to run.

“It was the party switch, but it was the party switch combined with the results of the party switch, that mattered to me,” Shepard, 56, said Wednesday in an interview. “His loss of important committee assignments, his inability to get the kind of funds and programs for the district that he should be able to get, were also part of it.

“If he had switched parties but been incredibly productive, I would have no reason to run. The fact that the district is suffering under the current congressman was a big factor.”

Those are harsh words from someone who contributed to Griffith’s campaign in 2008.

“I thought he would be a good congressman,” Shepard said. “I’ve known Parker for a long time. I thought he would carry on the same kind of work that Bud Cramer had done. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out that way.”

Name recognition

Much of Shepard’s name recognition comes from the fact he is the grandson of former U.S. Sen. John Sparkman, D-Huntsville. The son of a Navy admiral, Shepard spent much of his youth, including his high school years, in Washington, D.C.

After a year in England as an exchange student, he obtained a bachelor’s in history at Dartmouth University and a law degree from The University of Alabama. He has practiced law in Huntsville for 31 years, beginning in Sparkman’s law firm.

“He probably did most of the thinking, and I did most of the legwork,” Shepard laughed.

For the last eight years, Shepard has been a partner in the Huntsville law firm of Sparkman, Shepard & Morris.

Shepard decries the histrionics of the far left and far right. Balance is what the 5th District needs from its congressman, he said.

“We need to elect someone who cares more about public service than personal advancement or publicity. Public service does not mean you have to get on the evening news all the time. You certainly don’t need to create controversy,” Shepard said.

Shepard said polling paid for by his campaign showed him as the frontrunner as of Tuesday, but he mentions Democrat opponent Steve Raby with some frequency. A recent rainstorm left his law office and campaign headquarters flooded.

“We came in Monday and asked, ‘How did Raby do this?’ It was awfully suspicious timing,” Shepard joked.

Shepard is far behind Raby in fundraising. Most of the funds he has come from family members. He loaned his campaign $100,000 in personal funds.

While Shepard said President Obama has done a good job in dealing with the issues he inherited, he disagrees with the president’s decision to reduce NASA’s role in human space flight.

“The Ares-Constellation cut is important, but there’s an even bigger issue,” Shepard said. “The Obama administration has shifted a lot of the funding for the future into earth sciences and other areas that are not so strong in this region. That helps states like Maryland more than it helps Alabama. Also, they’ve declined to set specific milestones for five years.

“The bright young people we have working at Marshall, and even some of the subcontractors in Morgan and Madison counties, don’t have specific goals to excite them and keep them going. I fear we may lose some of that talent.”

BRAC

Shepard said he also fears incursions into Redstone Arsenal’s successes in Base Realignment and Closure.

“There are other states that would love to have what we’ve been accomplishing here for years. If we don’t have a strong congressman to at least protect that, those other states will find a way to pull off a piece here and a piece there.”

After an unsuccessful run for the state Legislature in 1990, Shepard won a seat on the State Board of Education in the early 1990s. He has stepchildren who graduated from Austin and Decatur high schools, and his own children graduated from a magnet school in Huntsville.

“The federal government should do more funding and less managing from the top down in education,” Shepard said. “We have a history of the federal government imposing mandates but not funding them. That’s a bad way to run the education system if you’re looking for quality. We trust our children to our local school system. I think we can trust them to use the federal dollars in the right way.”

He said changes in federal funding of the No Child Left Behind Act make him worry that the poorer parts of the 5th District will suffer.

“It has in the past been on a per capita basis. They’re moving over to a grant-writing basis,” Shepard said. “That’s a real issue for the less affluent school systems. Huntsville and Decatur may have grant writers on staff, but I’m not sure that Lawrence County or Colbert County and others that really need the money have the same grant-writing expertise. It could result in a situation where the rich get richer and the ones that need it go without.”

When it comes to higher education, Shepard said he is worried about the predicament of graduates with bachelor’s degrees, student loans and — because of the recession — no jobs. He thinks a delay in loan repayment obligations would be appropriate.

Drilling

He believes the federal government needs to re-evaluate drilling safeguards because of the ongoing BP oil spill, and he is adamant that the $75 million cap on oil company liability should be repealed.

“I don’t think you can totally abandon offshore drilling, because then we’d be that much more dependent on foreign oil,” Shepard said. “We need more safeguards to make sure this kind of disaster does not happen again.”

Shepard’s interest in the Internet comes out both in his campaign strategy and in his platform. Type “Steve Raby” into Google, and the first entry you will see is Shepard’s Web site. His son, a law student, is coordinating his Google and Facebook ads.

Internet, economy

The Internet, he said, is an important vehicle for economic development in the 5th District.

“We really need to get some of the money that’s been set aside for Internet in the federal budget to make broadband Internet available in every corner of the 5th District,” he said.

Shepard said he also is looking for ways to reduce burdens on small business. In addition to his law practice, he has ownership interests in a climate-controlled storage facility, a house-rental company and a Huntsville radio station, WQSB.

His wife, Pamela Lang Shepard, owned Pam’s Gift Tree in Decatur. His wife’s family owns Lang’s Sporting Goods.

Shepard said whether or not he is elected, the 5th District would be better off with a Democrat. A recent pledge by Republican congressmen to stop inserting earmarks into bills would be a disaster for the 5th District, he said.

“If you now need $40 million to fix Gate 9 at Redstone Arsenal, where a lot of people from Morgan as well as Madison County go to work, Republicans can’t allocate it. They can try to give some money to the general transportation fund of the state, but then you’re at the mercy of the governor and the highway director as to whether he’d rather send that money to Mobile,” Shepard said.

“That is a reason it’s important for the 5th District to elect a Democrat who isn’t tied by that pledge. If I’m doing a bad job with my earmarking, the people can turn me out. I have no hesitation in saying that obtaining earmarks is one of the functions of a congressman.”

Article source – Eric Fleischauer at http://www.decaturdaily.com/detail/59815.html?content_source=&category_id=&search_filter=&event_mode=&event_ts_from=&list_type=&order_by=&order_sort=&content_class=&sub_type=stories&town_id=