It's about time, says Republican U.S. House candidate Jonathan Scott, that a "regular guy" brought some perspective to a government laden with millionaires.

"Regular, working folk in Rhode Island have no representation in their government," says Scott, 39, who is in the 1st District GOP primary for the right to take on U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy in November. "We have a political process where it's so expensive to run it shuts out regular working folk.

"If we put lawyers [in Congress], we get laws that favor lawyers. If we put people with oil stock, we get policies that favor big oil. I think we need somebody who understands the way day-to-day living happens in Rhode Island for working folk."

In an election year dominated so far by the multimillion dollar campaigns of U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee and his primary challenger, Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey, Scott and his primary opponent, Edmund Leather, have been waging a low-budget battle in the 1st District.

Scott, of Providence, graduated from Moses Brown School and attended the University of Rhode Island. Scott, who is single, has worked as a counselor for a state-contracted group-home provider, and in 1997 adopted a teenager, Chris, from a group home he had been running at the time, he said. His son is now 24.

"He was a kid who came from a pretty rough family and just had a little spark," Scott said. "I was telling people, 'If everybody took personal responsibility for one kid, we could end the need for group home programs.' So I anted up and took a kid I had a real personal connection with and dedicated my time to changing this kid's life. I'm happy I did it for all the trials and tribulations."

Scott is the Republican Party's endorsed candidate for the GOP primary on Sept. 12.

Part of the attraction of the race was the challenge of taking on a well-financed incumbent with a famous last name, he said. "I wanted to show everybody in Rhode Island who ever thought about running for any seat that it was possible," he said.

"If you're going to put a spotlight on the fact that the common man can run for a seat, you pick the one that has the biggest spotlight and the biggest separation gap between political earning power and the status of the common man. The Kennedy race just screams that. You're talking about one of the strongest political machines in the country."

Still, this is not a run for vanity, he says, insisting he "absolutely" can beat Kennedy.

"I think that people believe it's time for a change," he said. "I understand that in a perfect world it would be some kind of big-name candidate going against Patrick Kennedy. But there are two ways you can run a race, one is with star power, the other is the ground game and by talking about the ideas. We're doing that. It takes a lot of shoe leather and time. Getting the name out there is tough and overcoming the Kennedy name is even tougher. But I wouldn't have gotten into this to lose."

He says voters tell him they are most concerned with taxes and wasteful spending, energy costs and gas prices, and the war.

Scott supports the tax cuts pushed by President Bush in his first term and has pledged to keep taxes down. "If we ever do raise taxes in one place, we [must] make sure we lower them someplace else. We need to keep money in the pockets of the people of Rhode Island."

He declines to say how he would have voted on the resolution to authorize the Iraq war. (Kennedy voted in favor; when no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, he acknowledged that he wished he had voted the other way.)

"I wasn't part of the Congress," Scott said. "I want to be insistent that people don't judge me on a vote I didn't have to make."

It's too soon to tell whether the war has been worth the cost, he said. "Time will tell. Has it to this point? No. But time will tell. We don't know until the end, and we're not at the end.

"I think cut and run is a bad idea," he said. "I'm certainly happy we're fighting terrorists abroad and not in the United States, but that said, we need to figure out how to extricate ourselves. It needs to be done when we can turn over the safety and security of a fledgling democracy to an indigenous security force.

"I don't think we should be there forever but I don't think we should leave tomorrow, either," he said.

marsenau@projo.com / (401) 277-7231