Republican Candidates in Fourth Congressional District

Mary Beth Buchanan and Keith Rothfus will be squaring off in the fourth congressional district race for the Republican nomination in Tuesday's primary.

The district includes several suburbs of Pittsburgh such as Plum and Murraysville and parts of Beaver County, Lawrence County, and Mercer County. The winner of the primary will go up against democratic incumbent Jason Altmire.

Keith Rothfus has spent most of his career as an attorney in the private sector, working with businesses. From 2005 to 2007, as a federal employee, he worked with faith-based organizations to provide natural disaster relief.

Mary Beth Buchanan was Western Pennsylvania’s U.S. Attorney for eight years.

Both candidates have similar stances on many issues.

In terms of the economy, Buchanan says she is worried about job loss in the region and says government has placed too many regulations on industry, not allowing businesses to operate to their full capacity. Rothfus says he will work to build more partnerships with the private sector.

In terms of taxes, Buchanan says, "the tax structure that we have is extremely complicated and onerous on both individuals and businesses, we need to work to simplify the tax structure to reduce both the level of taxes and the level of regulation that have been implemented."

Both candidates believe in utilizing a mixture of all resources to obtain energy such as drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale, mining and using solar energy.

"We need to have a comprehensive energy policy that looks at all of the resources we have. And we have to make sure that we use our resources and are prudent to the environment," says Rothfus.

Both candidates are anti-abortion, believe in the right to bear arms and are not supportive of the recently passed health care legislation.