PA Senate Candidate Tom Smith Speaks With Mallory Factor at TheBlaze

Casey is a name that has been familiar with Pennsylvania voters for decades. Tom Smith is new to politics but unintimidated by the name recognition of Democratic U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Bob Casey Jr., as he is set to challenge Casey this November for a seat once held by high-profile Republican legislators like Rick Santorum, John Heinz and Hugh Scott.

"My opponent Senator Bob Casey is a nice guy, not a leader" Smith told TheBlaze during an interview with senior contributor Mallory Factor last week. Smith is running on a campaign focused on getting the economy back on track by reforming regulations and the tax code to get rid of loopholes in addition to overbearing legislation and spending that harms American economic competitiveness.

"Our future generations, we cannot turn this amount of debt and deficit spending over to them," Smith says in TheBlaze New York City Newsroom. "My father passed away when I was 20 so that's when he turned this country over to me and it was in far better shape then than it is today. So I sold my major companies and I decided we're going to try to make a difference, be a citizen candidate..."

Smith is a former coal industry executive from Western Pennsylvania that entered the mines after once working as a school bus driver but then going on to own several companies with more than 100 employees that he sold in 2010. Smith tells TheBlaze that he was motivated to run for statewide office after witnessing candidates like Ron Johnson of Wisconsin run in 2010--businessmen and family men who ran for office with an "enough is enough" attitude.

If elected, Smith tells TheBlaze he would work to create jobs by getting government out of the way. Smith points to the Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley Acts as legislation that he would seek to repeal or reform to get the economy back on track.

"Ninety-eight, ninety-nine percent of businesses and people want to do things the right way, the moral way, the correct way" Smith tells TheBlaze. "It's that one or two percent--that's why laws are there. They will break the laws. But what they(the government) did with Sarbanes-Oxley is just throw another layer and another layer of regulations on the ninety-eight percent that were doing it right. And its continued with Dodd-Frank."

"We need reasonable regulations, everywhere, and in business," Smith went on to tell Factor when asked about the need for government regulations to protect people. "What we have today is not reasonable, it is suffocating businesses."

Smith and his campaign have put forth a "Restoring The American Dream" proposal which outlines his goals to simplify the tax code by instituting a flat tax and closing special interest loopholes; reduce annual spending to 20 percent of GDP by permanently ending earmarks, freezing non-defense hiring to the federal workforce, and controlling the expansion of federal programs; in addition to growing American jobs in the energy sector by removing restrictions and protecting energy protection without the use of government subsidies or directives.

Watch Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania Tom Smith's full interview with Mallory Factor below: