Jana Kemp Running for Governor

This note come from the Spokesman Review that for State Representative Jana Kemp is running for Governor as an Independent. Thus, I feel validated in my decision to decline helping her 2004 State House effort after I lost the Republican Primary for the other seat. Our values were far apart, and while I will actively oppose no Republican in General Election, I will not waste my limited time and energies on those whose election will do little to make our state better.

I remember a forum where she,  myself, Tom LeClaire, and Graham Patterson all attended and the question came up of  school choice. Kemp announced herself opposed to the idea that parents should be able to get a tax break to send their kids to a school other than a public school because in principle that meant that as a single person, she could request to have the government refund her portion of money paid into education.

This was, of course, nonsense. One might as well say that as a single person, she ought to get a refund of her tax dollars because she doesn’t send children to public schools. The point is irrelevant, what her tax dollars are going for is education, and if parents are getting an education for their children, the public good she’s paying for is still being met.

While I disagree with her viewpoints, Kemp is going to be a formidable candidate. When going door to door to campaign for Seat A, I ran into a lot of Ms. Kemp’s supporters in District 16 and it should suffice to say they weren’t living in the bad section of Garden City.  You can expect her to come at this race well-funded by many rich contributors, however, she’ll take as many votes (if not more) from the Democrats than from Republicans.