WASHINGTON -- Dentist Drew Ferguson was sworn in Tuesday as the newest member of Georgia's congressional delegation, taking the West Georgia seat held by fellow Republican Lynn Westmoreland for more than a decade.
Ferguson emerged out of a seven-man primary earlier this spring and consolidated the support of business-oriented Republicans, including the retiring Westmoreland, in an expensive and bitterly-contested GOP runoff against state Sen. Mike Crane that became a proxy battle for control of the party. He cruised to victory against Democrat Angela Pendley in November in the safe Republican 3rd Congressional District, which stretches from Peachtree City to the northern suburbs of Columbus.
The former mayor of West Point, Ferguson used the uplifting story of his hometown’s economic turnaround as a main tenet of his campaign. Ferguson came on board as mayor in 2008, shortly after the ink had dried on a massive deal with Kia that brought thousands of jobs to the area.
“We reunited the community, we reloaded, we rebuilt, and if we can do that here at the local level …. we can take those same leadership skills to Washington,” Ferguson said in an interview last spring.
He's pledged to sign on in support of a constitutional amendment instituting term limits for members of Congress and is supportive of a flat tax system.
Frustration with the sluggish pace of economic recovery and the Obama administration's red tape were some of the reasons why Ferguson said he chose to run for Congress in the first place.
“How did we get to be the bad guys? That dream of working hard, owning your own business, raising your family the right way, buying a home, putting a little bit of money away, meeting our payrolls –- when did that American dream go wrong and when did I and so many others like me get to be the bad guys?” Ferguson previously said.
When it comes to gun rights, national defense and diplomacy, Ferguson largely falls in line with the Republican orthodoxy. He's advocated for stemming the flow of "unvetted refugees" from Syria, bolstering defense spending and rejecting the Iran nuclear deal.
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