Local GOP candidates square off

Five Republican candidates battled it out Thursday night as the race to the Aug. 3 primary election comes to a close.

Crawford County Commission candidates Mike Bicknell, Karen Van Leeuwen and Tom Hayes debated against each other. Bicknell and Hays are fighting for the Republican nod in District 3 against Democrat Ralph McGeorge, while Van Leeuwen is vying for the District 1 nod against GOP incumbent Bob Kmiec, who had a prior commitment and could not attend the debate.

Later in the forum, Terry Calloway and Chad Titterington fought to represent the GOP against incumbent Democrat Julie Menghini as the state Representative for the third district.

County Commission Debate

The county commission candidates tended to repeat some of the same points and themes, but each also seemed to take one particular issue as his or her own.

Each of the candidates agreed that the budget was a major issue and would have to be carefully examined.

For Mike Bicknell, that issue was business and leadership. Bicknell argued that Crawford County should be a leader among other counties, rather than following the best practices. He also said the county needed to be more attractive to businesses.

“I don’t want to bring in an outside business to come here to employ 200 people there because of a tax break,” Bicknell said. “Once that tax break runs out, those jobs are gone. The only thing worse than bringing in a company and having them leave is seeing people lose their job because that business leaves.”

Van Leeuwen focused on economic development, as well as the need to create an environment more conducive to small businesses.

“Economc development is the only thing that will get us back on track with the budget,” she said. “The budget is important, but we need to create more tax base, more jobs and more opportunity for our taxpayers. Economic development is my first priority.”

Finally, Hayes described himself as a “solutionist” rather than a Democrat or Republican. Some of his solutions involved a zero-balance budget analysis and coordinating county processes.

“Rather than ask for a wish list, I want to start at zero, and ask what employees they need to have rather than start at last year’s budget numbers,” Hayes said. “We need to start with zero first. We have a division in our county departments where we’re not utilizing our full resources... We’re all in this together. We do this as a team.”

Third District state Rep.

The debate between Chad Titterington and Terry Calloway had clearly developed themes as well.

From Titterington’s opening statement, he made his theme clear and repeated it in nearly every answer: job creation.

You can talk budgets, you can talk sales tax. But unless you deal with job creation, you have major issues,” Titterington said. “You can’t fund education, you can’t fund sewers or electricity without jobs.”

His GOP opponent, Terry Calloway repeated the idea of a fiscally responsible government on several occasions, noting that the state had a budget surplus six years ago and has been forced to make cuts in order to make budget since then.

“Now is the time when Republicans must choose the person to be the candidate in this, the election of elections,” Calloway said. “When you’re looking for the candidate with the most experience, I’ve had a lot more experience with loss, failure and recovery and operating fiscally responsible than my opponent.”

Titterington presented a few ideas in his time in the debate, including an 18-month grace period for new businesses in southeast Kansas during which they would not have to pay taxes in order to get their business started.

“Jobs are the crux of the issue,” Titterington said. “There’s one way to get new jobs, and that’s all economic development. The number one way to do that is to slash the tax rate, dramatically. The difference is if you only do that for the short term, the companies will bail out of town when the rate goes back up.”
Calloway agreed that the number one issue in the election is jobs and the economy, but said that local organizations should work together in order to promote job creation.

“I’m a strong believer in jobs, having employed more than 250 people through my business,” he said. “There’s more to creating jobs than creating at the legislative level. You need to cooperate with agencies within Pittsburg and southeast Kansas.”

Andrew Nash can be reached at andrew.nash@morningsun.net or by calling 231-2600 ext. 132.