House hopefuls face panel grill

Thursday, June 26, 2008

By PJH Staff

Candidates running for Wyoming’s lone U.S. congressional seat faced a flurry of questions from Jackson citizens and local newspaper editors last Thursday night at the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Hot question topics were the Iraq War, Wyoming Range resource exploration and the federal budget deficit.

A candid, intimate setting allowed the headstrong crowd to laugh, cheer and at times gasp at the Candidates’ answers and anecdotes.

The five candidates - Mark Gordon, Cynthia Lummis, Bill Winney, Dr. Michael Holland, who are all Republicans, and Gary Trauner, a Democrat - are vying to fill the seat that Rep. Barbara Cubin will vacate this fall. Cubin, a Republican, has said she will not seek reelection. One other candidate, David Herbert, a Libertarian, was not present at the panel debate.

Trauner, the only Democrat, will run against the winner of the August 19 Republican primary.

The candidates faced 45 minutes of questions from three panelists before taking comments from the audience.

Trauner’s response to the Iraq question drew a huge response by the Teton County Crowd. After saying that the U.S. needs to ensure infrastructure like water, energy, and border controls for the Iraqi people, he closed his response by saying, “We need to get our troops out of direct harms way in a civil war that they need to figure out for themselves.” At that point the moderator asked for the audience to hold applause, but they couldn’t quite restrain themselves.

Lummis received mixed applause and scoffing when she suggested that, in order to balance the budget, she would support giving the president line-item veto authority. Then, her suggestions for cutting foreign bases and reducing subsidies on foreign-based ethanol drew hearty applause.

Dr. Holland’s words on the matter were a bit more dramatic.
“We have to stop this foreign adventurism and bring our troops home from over 140 nations, where they have no business being and start patrolling our own borders, which are hopelessly porous,” he said. “Let’s get out of other nations affairs and start taking care of our own business.”

Dr. Holland was again critical of the federal government later in the program. “We have an incestuous relationship between oil companies and our government, and we can’t tell where the government stops and the oil industry starts,” he said. “That’s called fascism.”

Gordon, who has been criticized from within his party for past donations to Democratic campaigns, stressed the need for the state to elect “somebody who can work across a wide spectrum, who is really solution oriented.”

Bill Winney addressed reducing the federal deficit, which “last time I checked was at $9.6 trillion,” he said. Someone in the crowd corrected him, saying that the deficit was now $9.7 trillion (a hundred billion dollar difference). Throughout the evening, the candidates said bickering and bureaucracy were a problem in Washington, and balanced judgment is crucial for the country’s progress.

When asked what characteristics are needed in a representative from Wyoming, State Rep. Pete Jorgensen, a Democrat who was part of Thursday’s audience, said, “we need someone that will speak up regardless of party ties and implications.”

Photo by SPENCER SIMENSEN
The audience listens on as panelist grill five congressional candidates.

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House hopefuls face panel grill | Planet JH News Article: General News

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