In what can be described only as voter apathy, just a handful of residents attended Saturday morning’s candidate forum.
Candidates or their entourage far outnumbered those they came to sway. The four-hour forum at the Iola High School lecture hall was organized by Darrell Monfort and Debbie Bearden of the Allen County Farm Bureau.
Of local interest, were Raymond “Bud” Sifers and incumbent Rep. Bill Otto, Republicans vying for the 9th District nomination.
“I’m a 10th Amendment kind of guy,” said Sifers, referring to states’ rights. “We need to position ourselves to safeguard ourselves from federal mandates.”
He said he was against the recently passed 1 cent sales tax increase.
“It makes it very difficult for low-income families,” amounting to as much as $200-$300 a year in extra spending, he said.
He said he didn’t have an answer as to how to fund state obligations other than, “We need to make more money by working harder or to do without. It’s not business as usual. We need to tighten our belts.”
Raising taxes is not an answer, he said.
As for putting the money toward education, he said it could be justified if the results were evident. As is, quality outcomes of education remain at “a flat line, while the spending is at a 45-degree angle.”
“If they were equal, then people would be willing to spend money for it,” he said.
Sifers said he is pro-life and pro-gun and against granting rights to illegal immigrants. “Illegal is illegal,” he said.
BILL OTTO said he supported the 1 cent sales tax increase, though unhappily.
He would rather have cut pay to state employees — including legislators — by 10 percent, he said, which he proposed.
He also would like to have a leveling of property taxes to fund the state so county mill levies are more in line.
He decried the ballooning of state government in all facets. “We need to elimate every blue ribbon commission,” he said, citing those formed to aid blacks and Hispanics.
He was also critical of KPERS, the retirement programfor government employees, and how it allows “double-dipping.” This format allows a retired teacher or administrator to draw retirement benefits and then go back to work in another school job.
The problem also is that the Legislature doesn’t fully fund the KPERS system some years.
Otto said the 1 cent increase in sales tax would make it unnecessary to cut Medicaid by 10 percent. Cutting the Medicaid budget eventually would have resulted in closing “all the rest homes,” in Kansas. The extra funding provided by the sales tax increase also helps keep schools and prisons open, he said.
THREE OF NINE candidates for U.S. Senate nominations, including Republicans Jerry Moran and Tom Little, were here for the forum. Patrick Wiesner, Lawrence, was the only of five Democrat candidates who showed up.
Moran, who campaigned in this area Thursday through today, said among his more difficult chores was explaining to those who seldom venture beyond the Beltway in Washington, D.C. of how Kansans believe living meaningful lives.
“Almost no one in Washington appreciates or understands rural America,” he said.
Agriculture in particular is a foreign concept to many there, who must think food miraculously appears in grocery stores. He recalled hosting a New Jersey Senator in Kansas, who was amazed at what was done on a typical farm.
The recession occurred, Moran said, because “we lived beyond our means,” and that he was quick on the trigger to vote against tax increases and the stimulus and bailout packages.
“It is immoral to put the financial burden of the deficits on our children and grandchildren,” he said. “The long-term view in Washington is three months from now, how to be re-elected.”
Moran, a Hays resident who grew up on a farm, said his efforts to win the GOP senatorial nomination and then be elected Nov. 2 was “to put myself in position to make more of a difference. In the House I am one of 425. In the Senate I would be one of 100.”
He was elected to his first of eight two-year terms in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996. Senate terms are for six years.
LITTLE of Mound City is given little chance of winning the nomination. The race for the GOP nomination is between Rep. Moran and Rep. Todd Tiahrt.
Little, a public accountant and real estate agent, said he strongly favored states’ rights and small government.
He would give taxing responsibility to the states, with each paying a percentage to fund the federal budget; permit insurance companies free rein throughout the 50 states, which, he contends, would lead to lower premiums; and take the federal government out of education “and give our classrooms back to our local teachers.”
Little thinks a 2 percent national sales tax would be sufficient to fund government at both state and federal levels, while paying down the federal debt and keeping Social Security solvent.
He wants to crack down on illegal aliens — “illegal is the operative word” — and remove troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He also wants a tariff on imported goods to make their cost coincide with those produced in the United States.
WIESNER grew up on a farm near Ellis and today has a law practice in Overland Park. He is a major in the Army Reserve and was deployed twice to Iraq, in 2006-07 and for a year ending earlier this year.
“As a senator, I would make sure we get out of Iraq,” Wiesner said, where he said the United States is spending $80 billion a year to prop up an economy with a gross product of $50 billion.
Wiesner supports building an imposing fence of concrete re-enforced with steel between the United States and Mexico to stop illegals from entering the country, including those intent on drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
“And it’s not just Latinos,” he said. “There also are Ethiopians, Chinese and Arabs coming across the border.”
When questioned about the magnitude of his proposed fence, Wiesner said there were sufficient resources and manpower in the various branches of the military to construct one that would be impregnable.
Finally, Wiesner noted that the U.S. budget of $3.7 trillion was supported by an annual revenue of $2.4 trillion. He would align income and outgo by making deep cuts to federal programs, 20 percent to defense and much more to others.
MANY candidates invited to the forum had conflicts that kept them away.
Derek Schmidt, seeking the Republican nomination for Kansas attorney general, had Iolan Mandy Miller speak to attendees. Lynn Jenkins, Republican seeking re-election to the U.S. House, was represented by Shelia Lampe, Piqua. Lampe is on Rep. Jenkins Kansas staff.
Dave Powell, insurance commissioner candidate, Ralph De Zago, attorney general candidate, and Ron Estes, state treasurer candidate, were on hand. All are Republicans.
Powell touted his candidacy by citing his experience in the insurance industry, noting he had been a licensed agent for 32 years and had worked with legislators, agents and carriers to provide innovations in insurance coverage.
“Experience matters,” De Zago said, and that it was the attorney general’s job to enforce laws written by legislators. He has been a criminal trial and appellate counsel for 29 years. Currently a full-time prosecutor for Junction City, De Zago observed he spent three and a half years as an assistant attorney general.
Estes, Sedgwick County treasurer since 2005, said he would “bring a conservative management approach to the state treasurer’s office. I have had a record of reducing waste and increasing efficiencies as the current Sedgwick County treasurer.”
CHERYL HUDSPETH, a Democrat from Girard, gave a strong showing in her bid for the 2nd Congressional seat. She is running against Thomas Koch, Leavenworth, and Sean Tevis, Olathe, for the Democratic nomination. The winner will run against the Republican nominee, either Lynn Jenkins, incumbent, or Dennis Pyle.
As a former loan officer, Hudspeth said she looks at issues with a “cost benefit analysis,” as to whether they are economically viable, “something Congress hasn’t done very well lately.”
Being in Congress, Hudspeth said dealing with the problem of illegal immigrants will be at the forefront.
Building a wall along the 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico isn’t cost effective, she said, saying its construction and continual maintenance will require more than $1 trillion, and “that’s not even including buying the land right of way from private property holders.”
“While it may be very emotionally satisifying to say let’s build a fence,” it’s not the most effective, she said.
Going after employers would be, she said. If there are no jobs available, immigrants won’t come. The U.S. Government’s E-Verify system is a better approach to finding illegal immigrants, Hudspeth said. This Internet-based system is a nationwide database that can verify two forms of identification submitted by employees.
“It costs pennies compared to the fence,” she said.
Hudspeth attended the University of Texas at El Paso and saw the ineffectiveness of a border fence firsthand.
“There were two fences on either side of the highway along the Rio Grande,” she said. “They didn’t do a thing,” to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border.
In their presentations, both Hudspeth and Koch, defended the financial bailout enacted by Congress in 2009.
Declaring two wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — early in the George W. Bush administration without funding them in the budget was unconscionable, Hudspeth said.
“Never have we engaged in a foreign war without asking U.S. citizens to pay for it,” Hudspeth said.
The results have been a ballooning deficit.
The federal stimulus money has been essential to Kansas’ survival, Hudspeth said.
For the Kansas economy, “$1 of every $4 comes through the federal government,” she said. The majority of federal funds come into Kansas in Social Security pensions and the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Allen County directed benefited by $4.5 million in federal funds in 2009, she said.
Of the recent stimulus funds, the majority went to fund education. Because the federal government did not re-up stimulus funding, the 1 cent sales tax increase was necessary to fill the gap, she said.
When met with disgruntlement from the audience about the sales tax increase, Hudspeth said the alternative would be to consolidate school districts.
“What’s wrong with that?” someone piped up.
Hudspeth said, “Nothing. If you want your town to die,” explaining that for many small communities the loss of their school signals an eventual demise of the town.
“If we don’t want to pay the 1 cent sales tax, then we have some really hard decisions to make,” she said.
Hudspeth also defended health care reform, saying for most families health insurance premiums and their deductibles take a huge chunk out of their paychecks.
Of her family’s household income, more than one-third goes to health insurance premiums, she said.
KOCH said even Republicans are not “well-served by Republican policies,” which overwhelmingly favor the rich.
“Prosperity has not been created for everyone,” by the tax cuts, Koch said, but instead benefit the country’s top 1 percent of wage-earners, or those who make more than $388,000 a year.
From 1986 to 2006, “$1.4 trillion in tax cuts were given to the wealthy,” he said, citing Congresswoman Jenkins’ vote for the tax cuts.
Koch then attacked Jenkins’ lack of support for U.S. veterans.
“She voted to cut veterans’ benefits by 5 percent to reduce the deficit,” he said. “‘Veterans can take the hit,’ she reasoned.”
“I’m on the side of the veterans, not the country’s rich,” he said.
In his defense of the federal stimulus funding, Koch said before it went into effect the country was hemorrhaging jobs. “We were losing 500,000 jobs a month.”
The economy still has a ways to go to repair itself, Koch said. A change in policies is necessary to “get us out of this bad economy,” he said.
