The new congressman from Georgia’s 7th District is Republican Rob Woodall, who succeeded the retiring Rep. John Linder after working for Linder as an aide for 16 years. Read More

The new congressman from Georgia’s 7th District is Republican Rob Woodall, who succeeded the retiring Rep. John Linder after working for Linder as an aide for 16 years.

Woodall was born in Athens, Ga., the college town where his parents were finishing their studies at the University of Georgia. The family later moved to Avondale, Ga. His father was an entomologist who would take Rob and his older sister on expeditions to collect bugs in swampy areas. His parents now own his grandparents’ farm, where they raise organic beef. Woodall calls his father a “rock” who still “throws hay and wrestles goats.” The family was of modest means, shopped at Goodwill stores, and drove used cars. “Nobody squeezes a nickel harder than I do,” Woodall said. He went to college on a ROTC scholarship and worked summers to pay his expenses, including a stint on the assembly line at an RC Cola bottling plant. While in law school, he clerked for a firm in Washington, where he worked on issues related to President Clinton’s energy policy and then first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care initiative. He fell in love with being on the frontlines of national policymaking, and worked out a deal with the dean of the University of Georgia School of Law to allow him to finish his degree in Washington. In 1994, Woodall left his job at the law firm and took a 50% pay cut to go to work as a legislative aide for Linder. He rose to chief of staff in 2000.

He became a candidate for the House after Linder announced his retirement in February 2010 after 18 years of service. Eight candidates entered the GOP primary in July. Woodall and radio talk-show host Jody Hice received the most votes, but neither attained the 50% threshold necessary to avoid a runoff.

In the runoff campaign, Hice was able to self-fund his campaign and had more money to spend than Woodall. Both candidates courted support from tea party groups. Woodall embraced the tea party movement’s principles of limited government, strict constitutional constructionism and fiscal responsibility. “Uniting around those three principles so appeals to me,” he said, adding that adherents get a bum rap for being uncaring. “Just because we don’t want the government to do something doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done,” he said. He also advocated shifting some of the federal government’s powers to the states, repealing President Obama’s health care overhaul and creating tougher measures to deal with immigration, including “sealing” the border with Mexico to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs. Yet, he didn’t get endorsements from most of the local tea party groups. They backed Hice after he bought billboards sporting a Soviet-era hammer and sickle and depicting Obama as a socialist. Woodall was endorsed by Linder and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

He won the August runoff election, 56% to 44%. In the general election, he had little trouble dispatching his Democratic opponent, financial services manager Douglas Heckman. Woodall won, 67% to 33%.

Like Linder, Woodall’s main issue is the current tax code. He calls it “a monstrosity” that should be done away with and replaced with a national sales tax, which conservatives refer to as the “fair tax.” Woodall contributed to the book that Linder and Neal Boortz published called The FairTax Book, which was a New York Times’ best seller in 2005. Woodall said that the tax code punishes productivity and encourages debt, and that a national sales tax would boost the rate of personal savings and shift the country from its position as the largest consumer in the world to the largest producer in the world. Studies show that a national sales tax would have to be around 23% to produce the same revenue as current federal taxes.