MAURY COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — Former Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles began the general election for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District saying, “Liberals, we’re coming for you.”

“We have to go back to honoring God and country,” Ogles said during his celebration speech the night of the primary. “Now, instead of talking about educating our children, we are talking about critical race theory [and] transgender nonsense.”

A month later at the Maury County Fair, Ogles spoke to more issues at the center of his campaign. When asked about the main topics of his campaign, he said immigration and the economy are at the top of his list.

“The two things you can do to turn [the economy] around are, one, increase the production of energy, and two, to stimulate the economy with less regulations and tax burdens,” Ogles said.

On the topic of abortion, Ogles’ opponent, former state senator Heidi Campbell, has said if elected, Ogles would pass a national abortion ban. Ogles said that is not true.

“I’m not going to address ridiculous claims by my opponent, but what I will say is what the Supreme Court got right is they referred that issue back to the states,” he said.

He went on to say he is a pro-life candidate and his family has experienced a crisis pregnancy.

“The life of the mom is obviously something that has to be considered. These issues will be decided by the states,” he said.

When pressed on whether he would be open to abortion laws with exceptions for cases of rape or incest, Ogles disputed whether those exceptions should be part of the debate.

“Statistically, those are not even part of the conversation. That is a red herring used by left and radicals to try and taint the conversation,” he said.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1% of women get an abortion because they became pregnant from a rape and 0.5% get an abortion because of incest.

When asked about Jan. 6 in the hours before President Biden gave a speech attacking the “extreme ideology” of former President Trump, Ogles says he believes the U.S. Capitol should be respected, but didn’t say those who went to the Capitol that day should be imprisoned.

“That is a storied institution that should forever and always be respected, and those people are guilty of trespassing. Insurrection? That’s ridiculous. Ultimately, they should be pardoned and the fact that people are being held without due process is criminal in and of itself,” he said.

Ogles added the FBI shouldn’t be defunded as some members of the GOP have said, but instead focused on another federal department.

“If you are going to defund an agency, you are going to defund the Department of Education and let’s give that authority back to the states. So, we have to get the agendas the liberal agendas out of politics out of our schools out of the workplace,” Ogles explained.

Campbell was previously interviewed on “This Week with Bob Mueller” and the can be viewed here.