Shaughnessy Naughton is a first-time political candidate seeking to capture the Democratic nomination in a competitive primary and defeat an experienced incumbent.

She’s a businesswoman and chemist who is running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s Eighth District. Her opponent in the Democratic primary is Iraq and Afghan war veteran Kevin Strouse and they are aiming to unseat GOP Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick.

We were able to sit down with Naughton for an exclusive interview where we asked her about her motivations to run, her differences with Strouse and Fitzpatrick and some of the most discussed policy issues of the day.

Motivations and Differences with Strouse

It felt appropriate to start with the question every congressional candidate gets right off the bat from every reporter, citizen, and family family member they talk to; Why do you want to run for Congress.

“I am tired of nothing getting done in Washington and the effect that is having on middle-class families and small business in the district,” she explained. “People are really tired of nothing getting done. The instability and gridlock that we see and the only way we’re going to change that is we need to change the people representing us. So let’s start with Mike Fitzpatrick!”

Naughton also spoke about her business experience and how she believes it will help her if she wins entry to the people’s house.

“The skills that you learn ,and one of the most important things I think that I bring with me from running a business, is the importance of balancing short-term sacrifice with long-term gain and growth,” asserted Naughton, who has run her family’s publishing company for over a decade.

“We don’t have enough long-term thinking in Washington today and we move from crisis to crisis with nothing getting done to actually move the country forward. I don’t think government should be run like a business, but I think there are skills from the private sector that can be applied and should be applied.”

Concerning her primary opponent Kevin Strouse, Naughton refrained from any direct shots yet made sure to still hit all her campaign’s her points. First, that unlike the Delaware County native, she was born in Bucks. Second that has private sector experience and third that she’ll fight more strongly for women’s issues.

“I was born and raised in Bucks County. My family’s from here and my business is here,” she stated proudly. “We’ve [the business] been located in the Eighth District for over thirty years. I have private sector experience, I think that that’s an advantage going into November but I think it’s also a different perspective we need in Washington. I’m a scientist by training and a small business owner. Those are two skill sets we don’t see often there.”

“To unseat an incumbent you have to present a stark contrast and my background as a scientist and a small business owner and a woman does that,” she continued. “I think too often as Democrats we ceed the issue of jobs and the economy to Republicans as if they’re the only ones who care about jobs and the economy. Frankly, I’m the only one in this race to work in the private sector and create jobs and run a business.

Fracking and the Environment

Naughton also talked about her call for a permanent ban on fracking and the recent efforts to ban the practice in the Delaware River basin.

“This isn’t little company ‘mom-and-pop’ drillers, this is huge corporations that are pumping chemicals down into these wells. We don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen there but there’s a good indication that its not a wise thing to bring into a densely populated area like the Delaware River basin.”

“We’ve seen studies, this latest one was out of Princeton University, that show infants born within I think it was a one mile radius of drill sites, have higher rates of low birth weight and lower Apgar scores. Why do we bring that into an area as densely populated as this?”

Referring to Governor Corbett’s claims about drilling creating jobs, Naughton compared the 28,000 jobs created statewide by drilling to the 12,000 jobs in the state’s tourism industry. The point being that the amount of jobs being created wasn’t worth the environmental costs. She also expressed worries about the methane and carbon emissions that result from the use of oil and natural gas.

Health care

With Republicans seemingly gearing up to make the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, a major issue for the third straight election cycle we asked Naughton for her thoughts on the law.

“I think it’s a good first step, it’s not perfect, and if we had a reasonable Congress we would be working on the adjustments right now instead of voting fifty times to take away mandatory mammogram coverage for women, which is what Fitzpatrick has done,” she stated before transitioning into a defense of several of the law’s provisions.

“You can no longer lose your health insurance because you had the misfortune of getting sick, before you could. As a small business owner and entrepreneur, I like the fact it untethered people from their employers to have access to affordable healthcare, that encourages entrepreneurship.”

Later, Naughton stated that she still wanted to address the rising costs of health care but noted that her own premiums had gone down since the law was passed. She also drew a comparison to Social Security and Medicaid, mentioning that those programs weren’t initially perfect either.

Economy: Jobs and Debt

Of course, the most preeminent issue in the country is still the economy. We asked the candidate about the jobs and the deficit/debt and which should take priority.

“As a small business owner I definitely appreciate budgets and balancing them,” Naughton said. “But I also understand that we can’t cut our way to prosperity and sometimes we have to run short-term deficits to have long-term gain and growth. A perfect example would be investing in infrastructure, not just because I’m sicking of hitting potholes, but having a strategic long-term plan for our national infrastructure and investing in it.”

“Even if we had to borrow it now to fund these projects, we would create millions of jobs and over the long-term we would get back more than it would cost us in the short-term,” she asserted. “I do think that the deficit is something we have to be concerned about but I think the best way of addressing is we need to get people back to work and get the economy going again.”

She then addressed the country’s unemployment problem and her ideas about tax reform.

“We have a major problem with unemployment in this country and underemployment and a lot that is caused by Congress not doing its job and creating a secure business environment. Having a sensible tax policy, which we do not have right now, right now we basically encourage large corporations to keep profits overseas rather than investing them here and investing in growth here in the United States.”

Additionally, she expressed an openness to dropping the corporate tax rate while increasing the capital gains rate, noting the success the economy had in the 1990’s with higher capital gains rates.

Fitzpatrick

Finally, we asked the candidate about PA-8’s incumbent Congressman and how she can convince voters to throw out Mike Fitzpatrick, who served from 2005 to 2007 and from 2011 to the present.

“Let’s see what his experience has caused for us?” Naughton proposed. “He was on the finance committee, what did he do? Our economy went off a cliff in 2008 and those policies were set in place prior to 2008. I saw it in the real estate world in 2006. Now, I’m not a regulator but I would’ve expected that someone sitting in the Finance Committee would’ve been looking out for what was going on.”

“What has his experience brought to Bucks County? The plant in Newtown closing because of sequester cuts?” she posited. “That’s a failure, that we haven’t gotten people back to work. He hasn’t taken leadership on anything. I think his record is pretty dismal. The fact he’s already said he’s not going to run again in 2016 should give the people of this district pause. What is his priority going to be for his last two years in Congress if he’s already said he’s not running again?

Misc.

She chose Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) as a congressional role model, citing the fact that he is a fellow scientist and his work on scientific funding, climate change and civil liberties. She also identified the House Science, Education and Financial Services committees as bodies she would ideally like to sit on.

When asked about making her voice heard in a body of 435 members she mentioned her scientific background (only four members of the House have science or engineering degrees) and her unique understanding of the role government funding has on research.

In summing up what she would bring to the table Naughton said, “A fresh voice, new ideas and being willing to put your neck out there.”