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Wlaf1450Rotary scholarship recipient Mac Crumley spoke briefly at weekly luncheon
By Charlotte Underwood
LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- Republican Van Hilleary guest spoke at Tuesday’s Campbell County Rotary Club luncheon at the LaFollette Methodist Church. Hilleary served as the U.S. Representative for Tennessee’s 4th congressional district from 1995 to 2003 and is now running for congress in 2026 for Tennessee’s 6th congressional district to succeed U.S. Representative John Rose, who is running for governor.
Rotarian Brandon Johnson introduced Hilleary, saying it was an honor to have him at Rotary.
“Growing up, in our younger generation, when someone said the name Van Hilleary, it was almost like a celebrity of sorts. You grew up hearing about this statesman who worked so hard in congress for 12 years. Van was first elected to congress in 1994 and served us for 12 years. He was elected after serving a stint in the United States Air Force both in active duty and as a reservist, flying several combat missions as a navigator,” Johnson said.
Hilleary grew up in Rhea County, Tennessee. He went to the University of Tennessee on an Air Force ROTC scholarship “earned his commission as a second lieutenant and went on to fly 24 combat and combat support missions as a C-130 navigator during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.”
“For his service in the Persian Gulf, Van earned two Air Medals, the Aerial Achievement Medal, the National Service Medal, the Kuwaiti Liberation Medal, the Southwest Asia Campaign Medal, and the Outstanding Unit Ribbon. He returned home in 1991. He also holds a law degree from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, which he received in 1990, one day before volunteering for deployment.”
He served most recently as the chief of staff for Congressman John Rose for the past six and a half years before quitting to run for Congress.
Hilleary announced on July 11, 2025, that he would be running for office.
He spoke briefly about his 12 years in congress previously, saying he was “happy to fight for what he felt was the right thing.”
“I had the great honor to represent Campbell County and 21 other counties in congressional district at the time that was called the 4th congressional district that went from Morristown to Mississippi, that’s how crazily drawn it was. I was on the road all the time. I always loved Campbell County. I can think of so many folks that helped me out, like the Stiner Brothers… I had nothing but respect for them and people like Carlock Myers and Hack Ayers, and Tomi his wife, there were just so many people that were so helpful to me,” Hilleary said.
He spoke about his time in the military, as well as his time in Congress. He said his time in the military is what inspired him to not be lawyer and to go into politics. He said he felt that while he was in office, some good things were done for the country’s budget.
“I want to argue that we balanced the budget when I was there, which should be standard operating procedure but it’s not; politicians are pretty bad about over promising and underdelivering that’s really what we do real well, so we never seem to balance the budget because we don’t want to say no to anybody, but we balanced four budgets when I was there, I got on the budget committee for that purpose … we don’t need to pass on a bankrupt country to our grandkids, when we borrow and spend it, they are the ones who have to pay it back, it’s really kind of cowardly, but Congress does it all the time,” Hilleary said.
He said he felt the country was in a “real jam” right now.
“We are seeing things happening now that we have not seen in the history of our country… For example, in the last few years the FBI went to the social media companies and tried to say you can only have certain types of speech, you have to use your algorithms to use certain types of speech, that’s the opposite of what this country is about. This country was founded on having equal access to the town square, when you don’t have equal access to the town square, you know the idea is you thrash it out and people figure out what to do. Social media is the modern town square where you get most of your information and if you don’t have equal access, both sides, all sides don’t have equal access to it, it’s now going to work for very long,” Hilleary said, adding once again that it was the opposite of what the country was founded on.
He also spoke about the country’s budget debt.
“We have allowed the country’s budget debt to zoom up to $40 trillion dollars … and that makes us vulnerable to China and everybody else who buys our treasury bills, there’s nothing good about it, it’s stealing from our grandkids. We’ve got to balance the budget, it’s that simple. I would love to see the budget balanced again,” Hilleary said.
He also said he had always been a big believer in term limits for Congress, for “the level of government that can print money.”
“People use deficit borrowed money to buy votes with it… to stay in office forever. It’s borrowing money from the next generation essentially … Congress needs term limits and it’s a heavy lift because it requires a constitutional amendment and I think we need it and you are requiting people to vote against their longevity in office … I think it ought to be a bipartisan issue and I think a lot of positive will flow from it, we don’t need to use congress as a nursing home,” Hilleary said.
He said, “there are changes that need to be made and they aren’t going to be pretty changes.”
“I do think the president is trying real hard to make some of those changes, the pretty fixes are in the rearview mirror, the country has been in decline so long, the fixes are very difficult, but they must be done.
H said fixing the country would require “all hands-on deck” and that everyone would have to participate in it.
“We are going to have to have a spiritual revival and people are going to have to do the right thing when no one is looking and right now we have too many people doing the wrong thing when people are looking much less when they are not looking…These big things that I want to do require a block of Democrat votes at the end of the day so, we have to figure out a way to stop that this toxicity and work together on some things where we can work together. We aren’t going to agree on everything, but we have to work together on some things,” Hilleary said.
Rotary scholarship recipient Mac Crumley spoke briefly at the Campbell County Rotary Club luncheon on Tuesday, thanking Rotarians for his scholarship and their generosity.
Crumley said his future plans are to get a “business management degree and maybe sone day down the road I will be sitting in one of these seats giving a scholarship to another young man.”
Mac’s parents are Richard and San San Crumley. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-06/10/2026-6AM)