Challenger takes debate request to Goodlatte public
Sixth District Republican congressional-nomination candidate Karen Kwiatkowski has repeatedly asked GOP incumbent Bob Goodlatte to agree to a debate in advance of the June 2012 party nomination.
Not having heard from Goodlatte yet, Kwiatkowski has gone public with her request to try to put pressure on the congressman.
“Now that George Allen has finally agreed to debate his Republican primary challengers, I believe that it is time for you (or your office) to answer the mail,” Kwiatkowski wrote Goodlatte in a letter dated Nov. 16.
“When I personally spoke to you about this on Oct. 18, you were aware of my formal requests, but told me that you thought it was ‘too soon’ for you to commit. After three months and multiple requests, it is certainly not too soon for you to respond to a fellow Republican and Sixth District constituent. I encourage you emulate former Sen. Allen, and engage in a public debate with your political critics on the right,” Kwiatkowski wrote in the letter.
Kwiatkowski: Goodlatte’s days are ‘numbered’
Karen Kwiatkowski voted – twice – to re-elect Sixth District Congressman Bob Goodlatte. She did so for the same reason that she thinks a lot of fellow Republicans in the heavily GOP Sixth support Goodlatte election cycle after election cycle.
“They’ve known him for years, and because they’ve known him for years, they think he’s safe,” said Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force officer and Shenandoah County farmer who is challenging Goodlatte for the Republican nomination.
The problem with Goodlatte to Kwiatkowski is that it seems to her that the congressman takes the same “I’m safe” approach with voters.
“When you’re in office as long as he’s been, 20 years, it’s as much about survival as it is about getting anything done. That’s the problem with the system across the board,” said Kwiatkowski, whose disaffection with Goodlatte dates to her communications with his office over an issue involving a controversial animal-identification program that the libertarian-leaning Kwiatkowski views as a clear intrusion on the private-property rights of farmers.
“Here’s one more way for me to give away my property rights,” Kwiatkowski said of the program, and she raised the issue with Goodlatte, the former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, only to get what she felt were “form letters” from staffers who clearly didn’t understand her objections to how the program was to impact the ag community.
“My assessment was that Goodlatte didn’t understand the problem, and didn’t take the time to educate himself,” said Kwiatkowski, who would “forgive him” for his lack of knowledge on agricultural issues, “but I can’t forgive him for not wanting to understand something affecting so many of his constituents.”
Kwiatkowski, to those who know her, is not one to shy away from a fight – be it an animal-identification program or the drumbeat to war. She says she had a “happy” military career until her final year in the Air Force, when what she saw being done from her job at the Pentagon in the Near East and South Asia directorate made her come to the conclusion that the Bush administration was cherry-picking intelligence to provide a false pretext for going to war in Iraq.
Kwiatkowski, a publisher author who wrote books on U.S. foreign policy during her time in the Air Force, and has written extensively since on topics ranging from the military to neoconservatism, became an outspoken public critic of the war – and as such was a frequent target of prowar supporters. She felt somewhat “vindicated” by the way things turned out in Iraq, but at the same time left the Pentagon disillusioned about what she had seen happen in front of her eyes.
“I got to see a different side of how decisions are made in Washington, D.C., and that has informed my thinking. I can speak to anyone about that. I saw a segment of how we do business, and I can share that with anyone,” said Kwiatkowski, whose thoughts and writing have turned in retirement to include critiques of other areas of government life.
“I don’t think we can afford any of this social-welfare state that we have created for ourselves. We can either just say no, to borrow from Nancy Reagan, or we can go on being fat, dumb and happy and spending ourselves into oblivion. And I think that’s where we’re heading. I believe that we’re headed toward a disaster, but I’m hoping there’s something I can do to get us back on a constitutional path,” Kwiatkowski said.
She admits to not being entirely comfortable with politics. “I’m not a politician,” Kwiatkowski said, and she harbors no illusions about her chances to unseat a 10-term congressman in a party primary.
“He cannot be beaten in the two-party system. He can only be beaten if we articulate real conservatism. And the only way to do that is to have a nomination race. And that’s what we’re doing,” said Kwiatkowski, who takes the long view in thinking that Goodlatte’s days “are numbered.”
“If it’s not this cycle, it’s the next cycle, and if it’s not that one, it’s the one after that,” said Kwiatkowski, who sees Goodlatte’s consistent votes in favor of deficit budgets and increases in the federal debt ceiling as his Achilles heel.
“This last (debt-ceiling vote) was a tradeoff to get a vote on his balanced-budget amendment, which is nothing but kicking the can down the road with the end goal being to make the excuse that, Well, you guys didn’t modify the Constitution, so sorry, but we couldn’t stop ourselves from spending. Sorry, but we don’t get that option in our own households,” Kwiatkowski said.
It doesn’t bother Kwiatkowski at all that she is getting nothing in terms of support from GOP leaders in the Sixth.
“My message is resonating with true conservatives who are upset with the party. That’s more important to me,” Kwiatkowski said.
More on the Kwiatkowski campaign online at www.KarenKForCongress.com.
Karen Kwiatkowski: Yes, Virginia, congressmen lie
Word is, the congressional supercommittee may fail in its quest for $1.5 trillion dollars in federal spending cuts. I don’t know why we are so pessimistic. After all, the task before the Committee of Twelve is actually miniscule. By statute, it must reduce $1.5 trillion in existing and projected deficits over the next 10 years. Accounting for inflation, this means the supercommittee is looking to save $150 billion per year. With inflation, it’s more like $130 billion per year – and the “savings” are non-binding projected savings based on non-binding projected spending!
Twelve esteemed congressmen and women hard at work. Twelve 8-year-olds would be more efficient, more successful, and more honest.
The underperforming supercommittee was made possible in part by Virginia’s Sixth District Republican incumbent, who voted for several trillions more in federal borrowing last July. So-called conservative Bob Goodlatte not only voted for every debt ceiling increase George W. Bush wanted, he did the same when Obama asked! This time, Goodlatte traded his vote to gain the Speaker’s support for Goodlatte’s version of a balanced budget amendment. I guess that makes it all right.
Assuming Congress ever passed such an amendment, expecting three-fourths of state legislatures to support a law that will increase taxation on state citizens while eliminating billions of dollars federal outlays and lending to state treasuries is sheer insanity. Let me rephrase that. It’s just nuts!
But I’m ahead of myself, in calling it a no-go for ratification. The House and Senate still have to accept Goodlatte’s watered-down amendment. And why shouldn’t they? It’s patently easy to violate, will launch a plethora of nice new taxes, offers extremely timid spending reductions and has no federal spending cap. Even if it passed and was ratified, this toothless, tax-hungry proposal simply won’t balance anything. Ever.
Which may be the plan after all. Goodlatte and his cronies would like nothing better than for the whole country to watch the congressional shell game, and forget theirworries. Be happy, America! We promise, really we do! If only we had a ratified constitutional amendment in, say, 2017 – we’ll all grow backbones, gain character, practice ethics, become moral statesmen, stop deficit spending, not bankrupt you, and make serfs of your children, and expatriots of your grandchildren.
The federal government grows under Republicans and Democrats alike because congressmen lie to their constituents, and to themselves. Incidentally, Goodlatte, like many other incumbents, pledged never to vote for increased taxes, courtesy of Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform pledge.
Now, he proudly stands for bold borrowing, bold spending and bold taxation – something he himself acknowledges will not only be possible, but unavoidable.
Yes, Virginia, Congress has been lying for a long, longtime. The Sixth District incumbent in the spotlight today is pushing bad legislation that will force him to publicly break past pledges as a conservative, as a statesman and as a tax-opposer. But don’t be too upset. It’s just politics as usual.
Karen Kwiatkowski is a farmer in Shenandoah County and is challenging Bob Goodlatte in the GOP primary for the Virginia Sixth District congressional seat. More about her campaign online at www.karenkforcongress.com.
Bain: Goodlatte misleads voters with fundraising letter
Sixth District Libertarian congressional candidate Stuart Bain is raising issue with a recent mailer put out by the campaign of incumbent Republican Bob Goodlatte that Bain thinks crossed an ethical line.
“Goodlatte’s efforts to mislead voters are laughable. He is partly to blame for this economic disaster we’re in, and now he claims to fight against it? Too bad his actions to sustain the Washington, D.C., establishment and status quo politics contradict his words. I’m running to give the voters of the Sixth District an opportunity to vote for a true conservative. Not Goodlatte’s watered-down version,” Bain said in a statement released Tuesday.
The mailer in question was a standard campaign letter to supporters. Bain questions the wording wherein Goodlatte asks supporters for campaign contributions to fight the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda with the implication that his two opponents in November, Bain and independent Jeff Vanke, would vote to sustain the efforts of Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Bain, as a Libertarian, is running to the right of Goodlatte on most issues, and Vanke has made a balanced federal budget a centerpiece of his campaign.
Bain also takes issue with the push for the cash-rich Goodlatte campaign to appeal to voters for more money.
“Any politician that sees himself needing in excess of $800,000 for the last 50 days or so of a campaign is questionable, especially given the circumstances of this race we are in,” Bain said. “Bob Goodlatte has professed that he will likely win, and if that is the case, why would he be groveling for more money? Maybe he will use those funds to go into hiding so he can continue to dodge my requests for a debate.”
More detail
Bain’s campaign staff posted copies of Goodlatte’s letter, and a Bain campaign staffer’s personal response, on the campaign website at http://bainforcongress.org/.
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Vanke fights Capitol Hill convention
A question for Jeff Vanke. You’re an independent candidate for Congress. Let’s say you’re elected. Who do you caucus with?
The answer will surprise you.
“I wouldn’t caucus with either party. I would have a vote on the House floor,” said Vanke, a self-described “independent centrist” from Roanoke who is challenging Republican incumbent Bob Goodlatte for the Sixth Distict seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A third candidate in the race is Libertarian Stuart Bain. The Democratic Party is not fielding a candidate in the Sixth after Sam Rasoul ran head-to-head against Goodlatte in 2008 and received just 36 percent of the vote in the two-way contest.
Vanke’s move to say that he wouldn’t caucus with either party if elected is, by his own admission, “a unique situation.”
“But the party system isn’t in the Constitution,” Vanke said. “I’m sure an independent in Congress can work out a fair set of committee assignments appropriate for a freshman. They can’t run a duopoly to the point where somebody comes in and says, I don’t want to be in your clubs, they can just shut you out.”
Vanke has made fixing the federal budget the centerpiece of his campaign. Goodlatte, at first glance, would seem to have as a conservative Republican some political insulation on budget issues, but Vanke points out the congressman’s support for big-business and agribusiness subsidies and his votes for deficit budgets under President George W. Bush that added trillions of dollars to the national debt.
The disenchantment with Washington reflected in recent polling numbers from Public Policy Polling that have both parties facing voter-disapproval ratings approaching 60 percent is something that Vanke is hoping to be able to capitalize on in the 2010 election in the Sixth.
“The system is broken,” Vanke said. “What can we do about it? That’s what we’re trying to do with this movement. We understand that we’re in it for the long haul.”
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Vanke gives Waynesboro a first impression
Jeff Vanke was a one-man campaign team at Sunday’s Summer Extravaganza in Waynesboro.
It’s called retail politicking – giving people what one voter who Vanke, an independent candidate for the Sixth District congressional seat currently held by Republican Bob Goodlatte, met recently called a “horseback view.”
“It’s just a brief impression, but it speaks volumes,” said Vanke, who acknowledges the uphill battle in the upcoming November election against Goodlatte, a nine-term congressman who easily won re-election in 2008 against his first major-party challenger in a decade, Democrat Sam Rasoul, and this year will face off with Vanke and Libertarian Stuart Bain without a Democratic Party opponent in the race. Continue reading “Vanke gives Waynesboro a first impression” »
Vanke: ‘Both parties’ part of the problem in Washington
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Republicans are talking tough on federal spending and the national debt right now, but where we they just a few years ago when they had control of Congress and the White House?
“Both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have left these issues unaddressed,” said Jeff Vanke, an independent on the ballot for Congress in the Sixth District who will challenge incumbent Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte in November.
Vanke is making the budget and the national debt a central focus of his campaign. The 40-year-old former college professor proposes tying federal income taxes to the national debt to ensure that everyone, from the working class to the middle class to the wealthy, contibutes toward paying down our debt, within a simplified system stripped of or reducing many existing tax deductions.
“Not one single person in Congress will propose in specifics how to change the course we’re on, but I do,” said Vanke, noting that Goodlatte, who touts his conservative budgeting stands, is part of the problem as well, going along with budgets passed by Republican majorities in the House and Senate and signed into law by President George W. Bush in the 2001-2007 time frame when the GOP was talking the game of spending restraint but acting very much to the contrary of its public positions.
“He’s part of the big spending and deficit spending problem,” Vanke said. Continue reading “Vanke: ‘Both parties’ part of the problem in Washington” »
