Holland's Announcement

Here are some excerpts from Steve Hollan's announcement. The Plantersville Connection has the whole speech.

Well folks, this is not my first rodeo. I've kicked off several campaigns over the years and attended hundreds of others for my friends and colleagues. I have observed one thing: where a man chooses to start his campaign tells a lot about who he is and what he's about. It can literally define the person and the campaign. That's why Gloria, my family and I choose to kick off this campaign for the U. S. Congress right here at the Plantersville School where it all started for me in 48 years ago, in l960.

Carolyn Weeks in the original building across the way taught me first about civics and this state and country; how this state worked and what our responsibility as a citizen was to the propogation of democracy. She also made me write 500 times I will not disparage the President of the United States when I smarted off raunchy comments about then President Lyndon Baines Johnson. What a valuable lesson.

I learned that if you misbehaved, you would get called down ; and if you continued to misbehave, you would have to pay a price. I learned a fundamental lesson; there is a cost to doing wrong.

Let me assure you of my gratitude for electing me 7 times to the Mississippi House of Representatives. I love that public trust and I do not have to surrender that position until I am elected to the U. S. Congress. So, accordingly, I have a present responsibility to you in the Miss. House of Representatives and I will fulfill that to the best of my abilites.

It is New Testament politics which says the government has a role in taking care of the least, last and most vulnerable among us. Good education, decent, accessible and affordable health care for all, a solid transportation system that fosters public safety and economic development, a proper partnership between government and economic development, a strong military and a system that will not turn its back on those men and women who fight for our freedom and great personal and physical peril, a Social Security system that is fiscally healthy and fairly delivered. These, among others are what Steve Holland has always fought for and protected and these are the same positions I will carry with me to Washington as your Congressman.