Otto earns spot on ballot

News

August 22, 2014 - 12:00 AM

LE ROY — Bill Otto will be on the general election ballot as an independent candidate for state representative from the 76th District.
He will oppose Peggy Mast, who has been the district’s representative since 1996. She defeated Jeff Freeman in the Republican primary Aug. 4.
Mast, Emporia, defeated Otto in a three-way primary two years ago.
Otto filed as an independent after a petition drive garnered 659 signatures, far more than the 577 necessary for candidacy.
“I was very pleased” with the success of the petition, Otto said. “Hardly anyone said no.”
Otto represented the 9th District, which then included most of Allen County, for eight years before realignment of districts put all of his home county, Coffey, and parts of Lyon and Osage counties in the 76th District.
Otto promised to attack general election campaigning as he has in the past, by going door-to-door. He thinks his chances are enhanced by only about a quarter of Emporia, Mast’s hometown, being in the district, while all of Coffey County is and much of the district is rural in nature. Otto was raised in rural Elsmore, which he thinks gives him a leg up.
“I’ve been really heartened by the responses I’ve had in talking to voters since I decided to run as an independent,” Otto said. If elected, a centerpiece of his legislative efforts would be to “repeal (Gov.) Brownback’s dumb tax cuts.”
It the cuts aren’t reversed, Otto sees no way out of severe cuts being made to services funded by the state, including education and safety net social programs.
Also, he fears if Brownback is re-elected the governor’s only recourse to sufficiently fund obligations would be to eliminate sales tax exemption on farm equipment, which would affect the single largest industry in the 76th District, agriculture.
“They wouldn’t have any other choice,” Otto said, referring to the farm equipment gambit as way of saying they weren’t increasing taxes rather restoring taxes that had been in place previously.

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