> For that matter, do they run a good honest business (there are lots of businesses) that I can check out locally and thus I want to risk them.

It's always funny to me how much people hand wring over politicians and then they somehow believe that putting someone who currently and actively has large personal interests and incentives to make government worse for people for their own gain is somehow a good thing

If you think politicians doing things to affect their bottom line through stocks is bad, surely you recognize how crystal clear and more direct the incentive is to do that kind of thing when your "asset" is your own business that can't be easily pivoted and depends on labor being cheap and desperate?

Nevermind that those kind of people just usually have radically different worldviews about what a government SHOULD do, and that worldview almost never allows for government preventing them from harming people for profit