A white box truck with a “Wallace for Congress” banner, a podium, a candidate, a few campaign workers and a reporter made for a low-key campaign kickoff announcement in Rockville Town Center on Thursday for Dave Wallace, a businessman from Carroll County who is seeking the Republican nomination in Maryland’s 8^th Congressional District.

Wallace stood in front of the Social Security Administration office on North Washington Street to highlight what he said is the defunding of Social Security.

“We need to keep promises made by government,” said Wallace, who decried what he called “phony promises” made by U.S. Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Dist. 8) of Kensington that Wallace said included a “phony tax cut” that raided the Social Security Trust Funds.

“We need to reform spending and taxes and end subsidies,” said Wallace, who also called for “American energy independence through all available technologies,” a repeal of the health care reform law passed under President Barack Obama and protection of “Medicare and Social Security for the people who need them most—our senior citizens.”

Wallace, a father of three from Manchester, has owned and operated Chesapeake Kitchen Wholesalers, Inc. in Randallstown for more than 30 years.

As a business owner, Wallace said he knows each one of his employees well.

“I see what families go through with rising food prices, rising gas costs, where they have to go and make decisions,” he said in an interview.

With “$5 a gallon gasoline coming very shortly” the government has no energy plan, Wallace said.

“And if anything we’re restricting the use of our energy day-to-day for the concept that we can go after electric cars that aren’t even ready,” Wallace said. “You see the Chevy Volt, it’s caught on fire from poor manufacture.”

Wallace questioned whether electric car technology is ready.

“And yet because of government interdiction, General Motors is pushing it out whether it’s ready or not,” Wallace said. “And what we need to do is have a real American energy independence solution. And we don’t have that right now.”

Wallace faces three other Republicans in the April 3 primary—Gus Alzona, Shelly Skolnick and Ken Timmerman—but has his focus squarely on Van Hollen, who faces a primary challenge from George English.

George Gluck, a Green Party candidate, also will appear on the ballot for the Nov. 6 general election.

Van Hollen has held the 8^th District seat since defeating Constance A. Morella (R) of Bethesda in 2002.

He has risen through the ranks of Democratic leadership, including a stint as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where he was charged with helping Democratic candidates win election to Congress during the 2008 and 2010 election cycles.

Wallace said he is not discouraged by the challenge of facing a powerful Democratic incumbent in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1.

While the 8^th District from which Van Hollen was first elected comprised the western and southern portions of Montgomery County and a small portion of Prince George’s County, the newly redrawn 8^th District includes a much smaller portion of Montgomery County and large portions of Frederick and Carroll counties.

“This is no longer a county race,” Wallace said. “This is a regional race. This is a race that in 2002, when [Van Hollen] was elected over Connie Morella, there was a difference of a 2.5 percent swing between Democrats and Republicans.”

The newly redrawn district is “much more conservative,” Wallace said.

He predicted that he would “draw the conservative base as well as those people who are moderates and understand that the problems have to be resolved by someone who is willing to take a stand on these issues.”