The question posed to Dennis Michael Lynch was simple enough: “What will you do to bring back America as a cohesive unit?”
Explaining that she does minority outreach for the GOP, the woman who asked the question continued: “My cousin and his crony, the president of the United States, my cousin is Eric Holder.” Before she could finish her thought, the room erupted in laughter and Lynch jokingly interjected, “Are you lying to me?”
Despite the lighthearted twist her question had taken, it was a serious one—every issue these days turns into a race issue, and she wanted to know what Lynch would do to overcome that.
Since openly discussing his interest in running for president in 2016, Lynch has been fielding a wide range of questions during his Fighting for America Tour, which concludes next month. So far, the idea of a presidential bid is gaining steam among his supporters—and fast.
“People are very excited about him,” Carol Davis, leader of an independent tea party group in Illinois, told Townhall. But her support for the idea of DML 2016 wasn’t immediate.
“We seemed to have been conditioned by our political system to think that, you know, all of the people who represent us in government have to be lawyers, or something like that, and so I think that might be why I first kind of brushed it off,” she explained. “But then as I got to looking at Dennis’ background, I thought, ‘who better to get in there but a real person with real world experience?’ I think that’s what the tea party movement has been all about—a rejection of the status quo because it hasn’t served us well.”
Aware that declaring his candidacy would be an uphill battle, Lynch is undeterred by suggestions that he’d need prior military or political experience to be a serious contender.
“As long as you have a strong backbone and surround yourself with top brass, I don’t think you need military experience, I think you need leadership experience,” he said. And regarding political experience, Lynch believes having it is a negative at this point.
Lynch may not have walked a typical path to the presidency, but his story truly embodies the American Dream and is one filled with hard work, passion, integrity, and love of country.
A self-made man, the native New Yorker started his own computer repair and recycling business out of his mother’s basement, which eventually grew to become a multi-million dollar company. In 2000, after expanding to five locations across the U.S. and employing 300 people, Ernst and Young selected him as Long Island’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
But running from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 changed his life, he told Townhall earlier this year, which is what led him to filmmaking, something he’d always been passionate about.
With three highly acclaimed documentaries on immigration and liberal media bias under his belt, he’s now looking to brush off the title of filmmaker, which isn’t what he considers himself to be.
“I’m really a CEO who’s dangerous with a camera,” he says with a laugh.
And to a certain degree, he’s right. Each film he’s made has been created with the purpose of A) showing Americans the true nature of the problem at hand, and B) presenting solutions—no matter the issue. And like a CEO would for his company, he’s always done it for the betterment of America.
When he was trying to understand the problem of illegal immigration in his documentaries, for example, he didn’t just call federal agents or ranchers along the border and ask. He went out with the Texas Border Volunteers, at night, without a weapon, to help Border Patrol apprehend large groups of illegal aliens, many of whom were gang members or repeat offenders with dangerous criminal backgrounds.
“These other guys talk," he said. "I do," noting his leadership style compared to other potential candidates.
The idea of running for president, then, has been an offshoot of his desire to solve the problems vexing this nation. “[Barack Obama] has fundamentally transformed this country,” he said, “we’re gonna need somebody fundamentally different to get it back on track.”
And to Davis and so many others, that’s part of the allure about Lynch—he would be a fundamentally different candidate.
“He’s just like one of us, and I think people are hungry for that,” Davis said. “He hasn’t lived in that rarified atmosphere of politics his entire adult life. … He doesn’t pretend to know it all, but he knows [how to be] a good leader because he built a successful business, he knows how to surround himself with excellent people, and that is very appealing.”
“Listen, I’m not in this for the money or the fame. I’m not in this because I want the power. I’m in this for my kids, and for my country—that’s it,” he said.