'Joe the Plumber' rallies for Eagar

"Joe the Plumber" piped up for U.S. Senate candidate Cherilyn Eagar in Utah on Wednesday, while also blasting the "mainstream media," deceptive politicians and any voters who do not research issues themselves.

"I'm here for Cherilyn Eager because she truly wants to be a public servant," Joe Wurzelbacher told a rally of about 100 people at the state Capitol rotunda.

Wurzelbacher became nationally known during last year's presidential campaign when he asked candidate Barack Obama during a visit to his Ohio neighborhood what Obama's tax plans would do to him if he bought a business, and Obama talked about how redistributing wealth from the wealthy to the needy would be good.

Republican nominee John McCain then started talking about how politicians should worry more about "Joe the plumbers," and Wurzelbacher appeared with him several times and said he worried that Obama's tax plans may be socialistic.

Wurzelbacher met Eager recently at national meetings of the conservative Eagle Forum in St. Louis, where they were both on the program.

"We hit it off," he told the Deseret News. "She would answer my questions directly," unlike the dancing around that he said Obama did. "I volunteered to help her."

The Eagar campaign said Wurzelbacher would be paid for his appearance, but declined to say how much.

Wearing a flannel shirt and jeans and looking more like a plumber than the political speaker he has become, Wurzelbacher urged listeners to research stands of politicians themselves and not rely on the "mainstream media."

"For too long now, we as Americans have failed in our responsibility to hold politicians accountable," he said. "You're not going to learn what you need to know in three-second sound bites. No matter how much the mainstream media says you can, you can't."

He added that the media and politicians worry about things that are not necessarily the most important to "real Joes." "That's what the mainstream media does, and that's what our politicians do — they take your eyes off the real issues."

For example, he complained the mainstream media "decided to take an average citizen who asked an elected official questions and tried to discredit him," when some media reported that Wurzelbacher did not have a plumber's license, had some unpaid taxes and questioned whether he ever planned to buy a business as he had told Obama.

He said people should fight for what they care most about, even if it may not be politically correct.

"If we have to torture every terrorist out there to save their (U.S. soldiers') lives, I will every day personally. I'll do it myself."