Newly-elected Congressman Gary Palmer pays a visit to Fultondale's Best Buy store

Gary Palmer at Best Buy

Congressman Gary Palmer, center, visits Best Buy in Fultondale recently during a swing through his district. Palmer recently replaced 11-term Congressman Spencer Bachus as the Sixth District representative in the U.S. House.

The man looked like pretty much any other customer browsing the aisles at Fultondale's Best Buy store, looking over all sorts of high-tech gadgets — except he was maybe a bit better-dressed than most. But like many customers, he was hoping to find a good deal.

"Fiscal conservative, you know," he said.

That philosophy has a lot to do with how he got his latest job — as the representative of Alabama's Sixth District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Republican Congressman Gary Palmer visited the electronics and appliance store in Fultondale's Promenade Shopping Center recently, as part of a swing through his district. He spent several days making speeches to civic, business and political groups, in one of his first big local tours since being sworn into office in January.

The freshman representative beat out a field of seven GOP contenders last year, including former State Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale, to become the party's nominee to replace Rep. Spencer Bachus after 11 terms in Washington. Palmer then easily handled token Democrat and Libertarian opposition in the general election.

Palmer was best known in political circles for founding the Alabama Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. Now he's in a position to help put some of the policies he's proposed into law. Already he's been placed by House leadership on two important committees: the Budget Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

That's kept him very busy, "but I asked to be on those committees," Palmer said. "A lot of people thought I wouldn't get those [assignments] because I voted against the speaker."

Palmer was one of about two dozen Republicans who voted against returning Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) to that post at the start of the new session. Palmer told Boehner that he would stick to the promise he made during his campaign.

"I think what the leadership has found is that they can trust me, and that I do what I say I'm going to do," he said.

Palmer's visit to Best Buy was at the invitation of the company. A spokesman said the chain frequently invites Congressional representatives to visit local stores when they come back home to their districts. It's not solely a welcoming party, though; part of the visit is usually spent in a closed-door conference with the representative, doing a bit of grass-roots lobbying.

The spokesman declined to comment on the substance of that meeting, though Best Buy is known to be pushing legislation that would enforce so-called "tax parity" on online retailers such as Amazon.com. Brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy are often at a disadvantage to online sellers, who are not required to charge sales tax. In Alabama, that means as much as a 10-percent discount for online sales, even if the base price is the same.

(Palmer will be the subject of a story in the upcoming edition of The North Jefferson News' Vision Magazine.)