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Eastern Jackson County, MO —
Voters in Missouri’s newly redrawn 5th Congressional District have candidates with contrasting styles and positions to choose among next Tuesday.
Emanuel Cleaver II, a Democrat from Kansas City, is seeking a fifth two-year term. He is challenged by Republican Jacob Turk of Lee’s Summit and Libertarian Randy Langkraehr of rural Warrensburg.
Redistricting following the 2010 census puts the most of Eastern Jackson County in the 5th District, as well as Kansas City, some suburbs north of the river and three counties to the east. Previously, the district was substantially Kansas City, Independence and Lee’s Summit.
“I could jog around the district in one day,” Cleaver joked.
Now the district is more of a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas.
“In some ways, I think it’s healthy for an urban representative to have some rural part to a congressional district,” Cleaver said. He said he’s been to every city in the district, has been well received and has even impressed some farmers with a knowledge of agriculture gained in part by growing up in a farming family.
Rural and urban areas, he said, depend on each other and are connected in many ways. For example, the current farm bill includes a $16 billion cut in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called SNAP, which he said would hurt not only the poor and the elderly but farmers, too.
Turk, an engineer and businessman running against Cleaver for the fourth time, sees a more conservative district and what he called “a surge of interest from volunteers.”
He’s taking on an incumbent who has more campaign money to spend, he said.
“It’s the classic big machine versus grass roots,” Turk said.
Turk stressed the role of small business in creating jobs and said government regulations, though needed to protect people and the environment, have gone too far and are hurting business.
He pointed to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and rules under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as business owners’ chief concerns.
“They’re absolutely scared right now. ... Let’s give them a stable business environment,” he said.
Washington’s approach needs to change, he said.
“It needs to be a friendlier business environment that recognizes that business is not the enemy,” he said.
Cleaver said he shares those frustrations, such a with Labor Department proposal that he called wrongheaded that would have restricted the ability of farmers to have their own children work on the farm.
Voters in Missouri’s newly redrawn 5th Congressional District have candidates with contrasting styles and positions to choose among next Tuesday.
Emanuel Cleaver II, a Democrat from Kansas City, is seeking a fifth two-year term. He is challenged by Republican Jacob Turk of Lee’s Summit and Libertarian Randy Langkraehr of rural Warrensburg.
Redistricting following the 2010 census puts the most of Eastern Jackson County in the 5th District, as well as Kansas City, some suburbs north of the river and three counties to the east. Previously, the district was substantially Kansas City, Independence and Lee’s Summit.
“I could jog around the district in one day,” Cleaver joked.
Now the district is more of a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas.
“In some ways, I think it’s healthy for an urban representative to have some rural part to a congressional district,” Cleaver said. He said he’s been to every city in the district, has been well received and has even impressed some farmers with a knowledge of agriculture gained in part by growing up in a farming family.
Rural and urban areas, he said, depend on each other and are connected in many ways. For example, the current farm bill includes a $16 billion cut in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called SNAP, which he said would hurt not only the poor and the elderly but farmers, too.
Turk, an engineer and businessman running against Cleaver for the fourth time, sees a more conservative district and what he called “a surge of interest from volunteers.”
He’s taking on an incumbent who has more campaign money to spend, he said.
“It’s the classic big machine versus grass roots,” Turk said.
Turk stressed the role of small business in creating jobs and said government regulations, though needed to protect people and the environment, have gone too far and are hurting business.
He pointed to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and rules under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as business owners’ chief concerns.
“They’re absolutely scared right now. ... Let’s give them a stable business environment,” he said.
Washington’s approach needs to change, he said.
“It needs to be a friendlier business environment that recognizes that business is not the enemy,” he said.
Cleaver said he shares those frustrations, such a with Labor Department proposal that he called wrongheaded that would have restricted the ability of farmers to have their own children work on the farm.
“We successfully fought that back,” he said.
Congress passes the policy framework, he pointed out, but individual agencies then write the rules under those laws and sometimes go too far.
“It’s an issue we have to push back against,” he said.
For example, he said, there are parts of both the health care law and the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that need to be fixed, he said, but he adds that Republicans control the House of Representatives and that the Financial Services Committee – he’s a member – hasn’t taken up legislation to do any of that.
“All I’m saying is that the facts are clear,” he said.
Turk said the economy is doing badly and Congress needs to address fiscal policies. He said spending has increased under both parties through the years, and that’s where change has to start.
“Let’s do the cuts first, in good faith” before considering higher taxes, he said.
Cleaver, a Methodist minister and former mayor of Kansas City, has made a public push for more civility in Congress, despite the partisan hard lines that often dominate debate there. He said that division has grown worse in the last generation and the harsh rhetoric that comes with it has spread to the country as a whole.
He said he won’t give up.
“I’m not going to discontinue my efforts, because I actually believe the future of our republic depends on whether we can alter the political discourse in politics,” Cleaver said, adding, “I want the world to understand that without civility, nothing will get done.”
Congress will be back in session after the election to deal with a variety of issues, including the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts at the end of the year and pending across-the-board spending cuts, a scenario called “the fiscal cliff” in Washington and called a “pending financial Armageddon” by Cleaver. He said he earnestly hopes people are telling their elected leaders to work things out.
The challenges are significant, as he laid them out:
n Protecting those who make less than $250,000 should the Bush tax cuts expire.
n Heading off a 27 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
n Dealing with the reduction in payroll taxes, set to expire, put into effect to help end the 2008-09 recession. “If we don’t extend that, some economists believe it will contribute to the continuation of the recession,” he said.
n Getting close enough to the fiscal cliff that Moody’s will follow through on a threat to downgrade the nation’s creditworthiness, just as one of the other three major credit-rating agencies did last year in a similar political standoff in Congress.
“I’m hoping – and I’m using that word strategically – that good sense will prevail,” Cleaver said.
Langkraehr, a real-estate broker and accountant, is running for a third time against Cleaver and Turk. He said he’s spent most of his energy trying to help other Libertarian candidates.
“I don’t have a realistic expectation of winning, but I’m trying to get our party’s message out there,” he said.
He said the nation needs to get its debt under control and that his party favors leaving more issues to state and local government.
“We do need government. We do need roads. We do need an army,” he said.
He said he gets a good reception from voters.
“Once people hear there’s another solution, they’re very excited,” he said.
The district now includes Independence, much of Blue Springs and most of Grain Valley. It includes most of Kansas City as well as several suburbs north of the river such as Gladstone and North Kansas City. It reaches east into Sugar Creek and Independence generally west of the Little Blue River. It dips south to Lee’s Summit, then east to Lake Lotawana and back up to Blue Springs, taking in everything east of Missouri 7 plus the part of the city south of Interstate 70, east of Woods Chapel Road and north of Clark Road. The district also includes Grain Valley and Oak Grove south of I-70, plus Lafayette, Ray and Saline counties.
