Florida man who flew a gyrocopter to the U.S. Capitol wants to run for Congress


You may recall spring 2015's thrilling tale of Doug Hughes, the Florida mailman who flew his gyrocopter above the National Mall and landed it on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol building. "The reason I did it, although I brought 535 letters [about campaign finance reform] to Congress, the reason was to get a message to the American people," he said, "not that there's a problem with Congress but that there are solutions to the problem."
Hughes is still interested in making political waves after pleading guilty to a felony charge of operating the craft without an airman's license. He's planning to launch a primary challenge to an unrevealed House of Representatives member somewhere in southern Florida.
The goal, Hughes says, is to target a fellow Democrat who is the "poster child for establishment politics." That could well be Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee and a south Florida representative.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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