Full Transcript of Vital VOICE ***EXCLUSIVE*** interview with candidate Rep. Robin Wright-Jones (5th District)

VITAL VOICE INTERVIEW
REP. ROBIN WRIGHT-JONES (D-63)
JULY 3, 2008

Colin Murphy, Senior Writer: You’ve received the endorsement of PROMO and have a superb record of supporting GLBT issues but I’m curious from your experience in the state House what have you learned about how GLBT issues are progressing in Jefferson City and as you look to serve in the state Senate, how do you see them getting up for a vote?

Rep. Robin Wright Jones: Okay—well in the six years and certainly since Jeanette Mott-Oxford has come into the General Assembly there’s been more visibility. The filing of legislation for our GLBT community has increased and the teachers have begun to take it up because of the bullying issue. That’s kind of a universal issue. It’s [bullying] an issue in the school’s wherever it’s from whether it’s race or sexual preference or whatever. So with the bullying [legislation] I see more leaning towards the whole vast GLBT legislative agenda out there.

So I would say there’s definitely an increase, there’s more understanding, there’s more awareness and Jeanette has helped a lot with that, absolutely. Now in the Senate I will be 100-percent progressive on GLBT issues as I was in the House because I will actively work with Jeanette to carry anything that she sponsors or sponsor it myself in the Senate.

It’s going to take time. That’s the other thing I’ve learned about the House—it takes forever. The wheels turn slowly. The lobbyists really are the ones that carry everything and they have to get comfortable and once you can get them comfortable with a piece of legislation then they’re willing to carry it and push it where it needs to be because lobbyists are in the process. So it does matter. If they’re carrying it has a better way to go. But I have definitely seen an increase in interest and awareness in the amount of legislation that’s being filed.

CM: I’d like to turn to economic development—there’s not a lot that Jefferson City can do about gas prices…

RWJ: Well you can do something about it as it relates to ethanol. Absolutely. And you know ethanol kind of blew up in our faces because it sounded like a wonderful thing; it certainly was helping the rural communities and the independent farmer, but it has kind of slammed into a wall and I would expect that there will be legislation in January to amend the current legislation. But we can do something about it in Missouri where that’s concerned. Just any added costs—any gas tax or the fact that ethanol tends to make gas a little higher than normal…I think in that regard can do something.

CM: What can we do to improve public transportation?

RWJ: Oh my God—one of my favorite topics. Well obviously with the increase in gas we’re going to have to do something because people can’t afford it. Unfortunately in St. Louis our rapid transit system goes from Belleville to the airport and to Shrewsbury, so it doesn’t serve a large population on the western side of the river. Metro hit a wall last year; they had a major spate of lawsuits that didn’t go well for them and they are really to regroup and find out how they can come back to the community and ask for dollars to expand the system.

And assuming that—I mean when you look at the gas situation I think it would clearly be favorable right now—of course it’s going to take an awful long time to get it up. Because infrastructure—there’s so much that has to happen so I would say that’s still a good three to four years away if indeed they bring something this fall or next spring—we wouldn’t see a change.

We’ve got a real transportation issue because we we’re making improvements on our highways and we don’t have the dollars to maintain that improvement in the next decade which is just around the corner. We’re going to have to look at Missouri very, very and very, very seriously to educate the public that we’re going to have to have more dollars to maintain our highways; we’re going to have to put dollars into our rapid transit in our urban areas; we’re going to have to put more money into our rural areas and transportation for seniors, medical issues and the disabled. Missouri is just not ready to embrace that and maybe because of the gas crisis they may be willing to say ok we’re going to have to do something.

Because right now we have so many people who really need to ride the bus; our bus service is increasing, but Metro has to be able to put those buses on the street for the people, but they have to be able to pay the cost of fuel. So that’s a really serious issue and it’s going to take a lot of work on the state and the local level to work—the federal level too—to get the money in to help with most of these things.

The other problem with Missouri is not being a progressive state, not embracing high occupancy vehicle lanes, not embracing a lot of telecommuting we’re not likely to get federal dollars. That is their interest; they have three or four things and those are a few of them that the feds are looking at before they’re willing to fund you in the future and we’re not ready, we’re not ready. So we’ve got a real transportation problem coming in the next three to five years.

Lucas Hudson, Editor: One thing I wanted to ask you is what do you think the best strategy is to maintain diversity in the city in neighborhoods that are being revitalized and some would say, gentrified?

RWJ: When you do redevelopment there is a plan—it’s a federal plan—first of all you are supposed to help the families relocate; give them relocation assistance, help get them dollars for the actual move; most of the time that does not happen in the city of St. Louis. I’m not sure why that falls in the hole. That’s problem number one. The developers need to be reticent to put that in the plan to let people know that these are services that are to be provided that the developer has to pay for. That doesn’t happen—that’s number one.

Inside of that plan, also, when you relocate that family, they have first rights in relocating back once the development is done. Now because there’s federal housing dollars in everything that happens there has to be a mix of income—you can’t say race, necessarily, for the obvious reasons—but there has to be a mix of income. If you mix your income you’re going to mix your races. Again, those things don’t seem to be communicated to the families who are sent out. What we really have to do is be vigilant about the law that already exists. That this is what happens and this is supposed to happen and we as consumers; those of us who are watching the development and watching our government; we have to be the voice to say, shouldn’t you have this in your plan. We have to challenge the developers and say its federal law—I forget the name of it—I really had to write some of it when I was in the housing industry. But we have to make sure that that is carried through so that we can identify those families and get them help that they’ve got coming. That’s the vehicle that’s there.

In addition to—we also have to say that the mix of housing units that come back—will they replace what went out? If you take a family that needs a four bedroom unit are you going to have four bedroom units in your plan? It really requires a great deal of discipline and we have to have a third party do it. The family is being displaced in their minds and are like, what’s happening to me, where will my kids go to school, how will I get to work if I need a bus? We have to be a third party, kind of vigilante on that and say ok, this play should have this and you need to have a place for this family to return to if that’s their choice. But sometimes they move a family out; they don’t know they have any types of benefits and when it comes to moving them back they’ve been gone so long they’re like, I don’t want to uproot.

LH: Are you referring to eminent domain or what’s happened in McRee Town …?

RWJ: Generally in any type of move—if we took a senior building and said we’re going to tear this senior building down—like they did in the Darst-Webbe area—we’re going to tear this down and build something new, you have to tell that family they have services available to them on the move and that they have a preference on returning to the area. This isn’t eminent domain but even if it’s eminent domain it needs to be in the plan. And we have to be vigilant about that when they first come out with the proposal to the public—we’re having a public hearing on this—then that’s the time when the third parties need to go in who know these things to say, I know that you have to have this, I don’t see it, where is it? And to communicate to the public that you have a right to some services and some dollars in this particular issue.

Now eminent domain is a whole different thing, but when you get down to actually doing the redevelopment and impacting the family somebody has to be the third party to follow that on behalf of the families. See, generally they don’t know and they’ve got all types of papers and proposals and their whole life is changing, so we’ve got to be on top of that.
There’s already a plan there we just have to use it—we have to use the resources there.

CM: I’ll take healthcare—under Gov. Blunt thousands of Missourian’s have lost their healthcare—been kicked off of Medicaid—what are some of your thoughts on addressing this issue? It’s one of the top two issues on voter’s minds…

RWJ: My issue is this—when I went into the House in 2002 our budget was like $18-billion and right now we’re hovering right at $23-billion. So we’ve obviously had an increase in revenue which they touted—we’ve got more revenue in the state last year—they tucked that money away for a rainy day and I can’t imagine a more rainy day than to have a family who needs some type of health services that they can’t get or can’t access.

The first thing we need to do is take the money that’s in the budget and I like to use the term triage—who needs it most? Our children, our seniors, our disabled families; those who have debilitating illnesses or are in constant need of some kind of medical care. We have to in the budget process move ourselves away from sacred cows or personal agendas and put the tax dollars back to the people who paid them because the money is there to cover it.

We also need to look at expanding eligibility and expanding services because as we move in time costs change and modalities of care change and is the state really responsive to what’s out there in the marketplace for the consumer? The state may pay $100 and St. Louis University now is requiring $3,000 for that procedure. How much of that can the state cover?

For me it’s a matter of negotiation. The state obviously has to be able to develop more
revenue and to develop more revenue you need a healthy population and you need an educated population. Because we cannot attract business and industry with an unhealthy and uneducated population—there’s nothing for them to come here for. So it’s such a multifaceted approach. In order to have the revenue to take care of our citizens who find themselves in that need we have to have some fresh dollars coming in because we are living off tax credits and they have their benefit of course, but they also hurt the state’s bottom line. And all that comes into play when we’re doing the budget.

But for me, the condition of the people is first because it’s the people who are going to be everything—the state workers, the workers in our business and industry, our students—we have to take care of our people who pay the taxes. So in a word it’s about reallocating the money in the budget and putting it where the need is and I already know education and healthcare are the top two items behind public debt but we have really got to concentrate on that. Because if we don’t have healthy, educated people it doesn’t matter what happens with the budget. It matters that we have something here to attract business and industry and that we’re humane enough to take care of our people.

CM: Reproductive freedoms and sex education have been slowly chipped away at here in the state of Missouri. What are your thoughts on what is achievable? Obviously you want to put up a dam and stop the backslide of these rights, but we’ve got a situation here in St. Louis where we’re number one in Gonorrhea, number one in Chlamydia; these issues really need to be addressed. What are your thoughts on this?

RWJ: Well Joan Bray and I had filed the Prevention First bill routinely here for the last two, three, four years; I guess since I’ve been in the House now that I think about it and I think we’ve had one hearing which she was able to negotiate in the Senate. Of course it didn’t get anywhere, but we did have a hearing—we didn’t have a hearing in the House.

In the face of the statistics and the issue you’ve just raised I don’t understand—and a lot of it has to do with our General Assembly is Republican controlled right now—their agenda is in full swing, in full play. It is really time to have a change of leadership at the help, at least more reasonable leadership. Even as Democrats we have our conservatives as well but the reality is we have a population that is ill and it’s a menace when we have this type of rampant communicable diseases. We have to have education, we have to have treatment, we have to have legislation to support that.

Now so many of our members are so skittish about anything related to sex as well you know. I don’t know how they think they got here. I call them the cabbage leaf people because they think they just sprouted up—Mom and Dad didn’t have sex—I don’t know what they think. But to be adults and be so interested in you not having it you know it exists so we’re having it—lets be wise about that and let’s educate our children. Let’s have the health care bill. Again, it’s about leadership and about agenda. And we have to have people in place who are willing to listen and willing to follow through and willing to sign off on the bill and not to create the obstacles.

Now the legislative obstacles will continue to come but we have to have the votes to kill it and again that’s being in control. You have to either be in control of the House or you have to be in control of the Senate. The Senate is not likely, the House is possible.

So that’s where it comes from—you can’t fight the votes all you can do is advocate and stand up and bring the message—but if you can’t turn the votes around nothing will change and hopefully we will have a change. And I think the people—and I have seen such a groundswell of interest from the people—just the people—on all issues across the board. I have knocked on about 1800 doors. Every person I talk to tells me they’re really concerned and this is all ages, this all races, all ethnicities; their concerns are the economy and health care and public education and having a say. Because they’re feeling like everything’s dumping on them, that they’re carrying everything but their not having any success.

We do get tons of people in Jeff City, of course, but it’s time to come down with a busload about sex education and about these issues that impact us. We get busloads and we pay attention to that. Because the hallways swell and you go into the rotunda and the capital belongs to the people, it’s open 24-7—you go into the rotunda and whatever you do down there you hear it through the whole building. And we’ll go, who is that? What group is that? Then we’ll go over to the banister and say oh that so and so. We pay attention to that. The squeakiest wheel gets the oil. So come to Jeff City, you testify in front of the committee, you bring a bus load of people with the same color shirt or cap and you make noise. Outside of what we do inside the chamber the people need to speak and we hear that. You go into the offices of people who are not your friend. Those of us, who are your friends, come drop your coats and visit your enemies.

LH: I want to talk about education in the city a little bit. Obviously you want control of the city schools back in the hands on an elected school board, but beyond giving control back, can you outline what else needs to be done to make schools in the city viable?

RWJ: In 1950 when I was born, the St. Louis city schools had over 100,000 kids because we had 800,000 people here in the city—a very viable city at that time. It has obviously degenerated to less than a triple A rating. We only have 300,000 people in the city and we only have now approaching 30,000 students.

But this is the 21-century where resources and information is everything. It boggles my mind that the city of St. Louis came together in 2004 for the Fair—we had [inaudible] and workshops and a big Ferris wheel out on Highway 40—but somehow we’re not able to come together about the education and the future of our children and our schools.

For me the public schools issue is not a difficult one. I’ve been told “well we tried or we’ve done this or we’ve done that,” yes—but have you talked to the consumer? Have you talked to the teachers? Have you gone into these schools to see our successes? Do you recognize that public education is free to everyone? It is not that you have to pass a test, it is not that you have to have this much income, it is not if you don’t have this, that or the other; it is a basic democratic right that has been the basis of our success in this country.

We need to help our schools, we just can’t turn around and abandon our schools and it’s all about money. It’s a political agenda to siphon off those public dollars and put them in private pockets, number one, and whatever else it is they want to do with those billions of dollars that sit in that budget and the best way to do that is bash the schools.

The same media outlets; the same people who were at it could very easily change their message or they could not report. Because all we get in St. Louis for news are traffic accidents, fires or murders. That’s all you hear every morning—surely there’s something else going on. But in our public schools the recommended cuts to the SAB are just completely egregious—your talking counselors and psychologists and librarians and registered nurses and the free food program and I don’t know, maybe they did it to scare everybody to say oh my god, if we gut that system—which it is, it’s a gutting—what’s the purpose of surviving? We will not maintain accreditation of any kind without those services.

And the fact that public schools have approximately 3,000 homeless kids every day, maybe school is the only stability they’ll get that day. So we certainly need a nurse or a counselor because we don’t know what will happen to that child when school is over.
So to me it’s a matter of an outcry from the public to say we demand these schools; your tax dollars are going to get into that budget whether you think it is or not; your going to be having some type of public education even if it is one school with ten children because it is in the constitution and if we’re going to have it, lets make it a class act. Let’s come together and work toward it.

The other thing that I hear in the media that is distressing to me as a licensed professional, as a real estate broker and as a former classroom teacher as was my mother, who was a former classroom teacher and counselor in the public school system; what we’re hearing from the media is that the teachers don’t know what they’re doing. That’s an insult of the first order. You are insulting people who have gone to school, have and maintain a license; whatever the requirement is from the state; you’re insulting them. You’re changing the leadership at the top and anytime at the leadership at the top is fractured your organization isn’t’ going to work well.

So they continue to create chaos, chaos, chaos, chaos. I also have a long history in public housing as a public housing administrator. I worked in East St. Louis when the feds came in to take it over. I worked in St. Louis County Housing and Section 8 before that and then I wound up at St. Louis Housing Authority. I was Assistant Director of Housing Management and then I became Director of the Section 8 program. Through all of that time and all these controversial cities as long as the media was consistently beating and beating and poking and picking and misrepresenting and misreporting there was always something (negative) going on. Whether media was on the property or not, it was an incendiary atmosphere. It was designed to topple an organization and that’s the same thing that’s happening here.

They’re consistently throwing bullets and anything they can to destabilize the schools and make it a reactive institution as opposed to a proactive institution which destabilizes, demoralizes from the inside so it begins to cave in on itself. And yet there’s things happening there. We’ve got 30,000 children in our system—surely there are two adults that care that that kid is in there. So right there that’s 90,000 people in the city who are using this service. We only have 300,000 people so a third of our population is supporting our schools. Why is it we can’t sit down at the table and say ok—good things happen, lets talk about them, lets build on that, lets get some good financial information—lets hire a Superintendent who will be allowed to come in and do what they know to do. They don’t let them do their job because the agenda is to dismantle that school system.

And it’s not just St. Louis; this is happening around the world in Europe and everywhere—it’s not just us. It’s an agenda. It’s an assault and they do it by destabilizing. It’s the same thing the government does in Iraq and Iran and Nicaragua. We destabilize from the inside and from the outside and that’s what they’re doing to our system. It’s not rocket science—everybody has financial and fiscal problems from time to time but if you need the institution you keep it together and you rally it. You change the political agenda and you give it the leadership that it needs so the people can do the work that they need to do.

It’s about bringing people across the city who are interested and concerned about the future of these kids and we are different in many other areas; some are pro-gun, some are pro-life; I’m anti-gun and pro choice; but we’re black, we’re white, we’re men, we’re women we’re running for various things from committeeman and woman to the Senate. But we all care what happens and we have vowed to fight and it’s a fight because they’ve gone a long way down the line of really taking it down. But we’ve got to fight and the people have to let themselves be known and be heard.

Obviously TIF’s and tax credits have an impact on the system but that would happen if it wasn’t in turmoil. That’s not the only issue with the system. That would be going on if it was properly run and it was quiet in its corner. I drew the analogy about the housing because when they finally got who they wanted at the top all of the interest went away. You don’t ever hear anything about the housing authority in the paper anymore and they were one of those kinds of words where it was inflammatory. When you said housing authority people automatically had an opinion and their claws came out. You don’t even hear that anymore. It’s like they wanted that. It’s the same thing with the public schools system—they’re trying to get it the way they want it and they want those dollars that they are saying are not being well used.

The urban school system has to have a whole different approach or modality as to how they treat the urban kids. Because not all urban children, but some urban children, like the homeless subset or the lower income level subset may have different issues. But we know middle level incomes have issues. But we have to have a system that’s viable and open to everyone.

We need our neighborhood schools because they stabilize neighborhoods. Charter schools are not a system. If you get mad about this one you just can’t go over there to that one. And Charter school teachers want to join AFT (American Federation of Teachers) which I think is a total affront. Oh no, you don’t want union representation? Against whom exactly—just your school? To me that’s just another assault on unions. And obviously vouchers or tax credits—to me—it siphons off public dollars when you have to keep that one whole pot.

Now I’m a former classroom teacher and not upset about any other type of educational venue but it needs to be quantifiable—are you doing what should be done—are your children meeting their standards—and you have to find your own funding stream. The Charter school kids are getting $700 per pupil and the public school pupils are only getting five or six, you have automatically made a difference there. You’ve got the same goals but you don’t have the same resources. We fought that in the 50s—why are we going back to fighting inequality in our education system—that’s dangerous.

LH: When you say “they” want to see city schools destabilized I guess Mayor Slay would fit in that mold?

RWJ: I would think so.

LH: Rep. Hubbard is in favor of tax credits (some still call them “vouchers”). Do you think that his motivation is different than simply finding a worthwhile solution to educate children?

RWJ: They’re saying here’s another alternative but they want to take that alternative at the behest of public education and I think that’s wrong. If that’s what you want to do you find a way to fund it. If you think tax credits and vouchers are great then voucher and tax credit out of a different pot of money. But do not use public funds for anything other than public education—period. I’m just passionate about that, I really am, because look at what it’s doing. Nobody’s held to a standard but the public education system and now you’ve got the “No Child Left Behind” madness which to me is not responsive to the need and even our best school systems are not doing well under that paradigm. We have Rockwood schools that are on the troubled list and there’s something wrong when the best can’t meet the standard. And certainly the more fractured systems will never meet the standard. So lets shore up what our tax dollars pay for—what they say their supposed to be for—self education and welfare and let’s do that. And if you want to do something else then you find a different type of funding stream for that and go do that. And for people who want it—do it.

In my day you had public and you had parochial. The private schools were for the super rich and in the city you just had public or parochial so you either went free over here or you paid the tuition over there. It’s a choice that happened inside the family. And for me your tax dollar—and I have gotten that information from our research team—any tax dollar in the state is going to leach into the public schools budget. Because the way things pass through back and forth you’re going to always have some kind of tax dollars leaching in supporting that system whether you think you are or not. Well I want my money to go over here—well some of that money is going back over there anyway—so you better demand for it to be all that it can be.

LH: Do you support vocational training in public schools?

RWJ: Absolutely—because college is not for every kid. Whether they don’t want to do it or whether they’re not capable of doing it not everybody has to go to college. You could have a skill—you could be an insurance broker, you could be a mortician, a beautician, an aesthetician, a nail tech—you could be a million things if you can read and take a test. So I absolutely support vocational ed in schools. I thought it was terrible they took it out. I support physical education in every class and every year through high school. They took it out. And I’m not saying that’s the only reason we have a generation of obese children but I think it’s an issue. President Kennedy had a thing where we had to throw softball and do the broad jump and run; we had to do that. And I think it was harmful to take it out. We’re making a generation of soft kids.

CM: Could you point out one or two differences you have with your opponent Rep. Rodney Hubbard?

RWJ: The first one is obviously education. The second one is Rep. Hubbard likes to [inaudible]. If you are a Democrat and you have aligned yourself strongly with the Republicans and that’s very easy to do and he was the only one for however long he’s been in the House. I’ve been in Democratic Leadership the whole time. I was chair of the House Democratic Caucus, I was chair of the Black Caucus, I was Chair of the Regional Caucus and I was chair of the City Delegation Caucus. I’ve been in leadership and I’ve been a focal point for not letting any of your agendas run through and I have filed bills routinely, and gotten hearings on some. This year I didn’t get any. Last year I got knocked off two committees because of the Hubbard/Hoskins relationship with the Republicans. And I was put on the joint committees by my floor leaders because we had control of that.

So that was a way to curb my legislative impact in the House. When I first went into the House we were in control but we weren’t in the Fall. So from that point I do what I can and advocate for what I can that’s why my voting record is so very, very strong because I knew legislation was going to be virtually impossible for me to get through. So I concentrated on being in there and making the votes for the people.

Another difference is I am unborrowed and unbought. My money is deep and wide and diverse and his money has very serious special interest overturns. So in the leadership capacity and my difference in schools and in my legislative history I think those are three very profound differences.

LH: A couple more questions—are you in fact in favor of having local control for the police department?

RWJ: I am in favor of local control for the police department. I have a concern that our city is in such disarray that maybe the current administration should not take that on right now. I’ve heard that voiced from some of our retired police officers. They’re mainly concerned about their pension which is not pending with the legislation which has been filed but nonetheless there seems to be a lack of confidence in our current leadership and maybe to put that on the plate may be too much. But I do believe in local control. I also believe in not having to force our city workers to live in the city. First of all because I’m a broker and ethically that’s an issue and that’s because I just believe that people have the right to chose where they live. And I don’t think we’ll have a wholesale retreat from the city if that should happen and that’s not the way to ensure your tax base.

LH: Are you in favor of a civilian review board?

RWJ: Yes I am. I think there should be some civilian review. There’s an awful lot of people who continue to tell us that our crime rate is down and I don’t believe that for one minute. Listen to the news. Read your emails. I’m on the list serves of all of those who are in my state Rep district and all I have to do is look at the list serves to know what happened last night. You can’t convince me that our crime is down. I think the people who are being impacted by management or lack thereof needs to have support with some oversight. I certainly do support that.

LH: This is my last question: At some point it seems likely if you win this race that you will have to deal with Paul McKee in some capacity. Why did you vote for the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit Act?

RWJ: Well, yes, I signed it. Even beyond him being involved there the idea of it in the city is not a bad thing because all of our lots are 25 x 150. We don’t need to build another house in the city of St. Louis. We have enough houses. We have homeless people and yet we have places where they can go. We need to house our people who are on the edge of everything. We need to have land assembled to attract industry and warehouses. When I travel back and forth to Jefferson City there’s a Pepsi plant, there’s a Coke plant, there’s a women's clothing store called Soft Surroundings; they have a warehouse up in Mexico. We can’t have that here? We had a Pepsi plant and a Coke plant in the city of St. Louis but we have a house on every little parcel of land. We need to be able to assemble for some bigger issues. We need to attract companies, who can create a tax base; who can put some money in our coffers.

Mr. McKee—I think that’s a very unfortunate situation. I think again, it’s a matter of taking advantage of our city. Earlier I had a discussion about eminent domain and the ballot initiative. They’re taking homes for virtually nothing, creating a hundred little parcels of something in what was a residential neighborhood and probably a thriving one. We’re not actually confiscating but Mr. McKee wrote as it relates to what that bill allows I think is not fair for our citizens. I don’t know what will happen. My understanding is he’s not going to do anything in north St. Louis.

LH: Were you in favor of the act itself but perhaps a little wary of what Mr. McKee wants to do?

RWJ: I was in favor of the act because it gave us the opportunity to assemble land in a way in which we did manage to put in some Board of Alderman oversight. They kind of were like the firewall against anything that shouldn’t happen within our city. But I don’t agree with him being able to take advantage of things. I wasn’t aware at the time the offer was drawn and I signed up on it that that was going on. So I think that was unfair. I don’t know what Mr. McKee is going to do up north and from what I heard he’s not going to do anything. So now we’ve got hundreds of parcels of land that he owns and it just takes your breath away that the lots have gone all the way back to seed I mean it’s just like being out in the wilderness. So I don’t know, when Mr. McKee arrives, if I’m successful then I’ll have to sit down and have him explain to me what he was doing and what his point was and what he thinks is going to happen in the future.

LH: Paul McKee and Rex Sinquefield have given a lot of money to your opponent. Do you really believe that your opponent is controlled by Republican money and Republican interests?

RWJ: Absolutely. He’s controlled by private money and private interests—completely, completely. That kind of money is buying an agenda; it’s not supporting a campaign. $675 once is support--$675 a hundred times is buying a campaign—buying a vote.

LH: If he is more or less “buying” Mr. Hubbard—what does Mr. Hubbard have to gain from this in your opinion?

RWJ: I have no idea. I don’t know what their relationship is. It doesn’t take $300,000 to run a Senate campaign—it just doesn’t. I don’t know what he thought he would gain. I’m not him; I’m not McKee or Sinquefield. But just look at the record and it creates a pattern. Why? It’s the same thing as taking the limits off donations. No really smart lobbyists or anybody is going to give you $50,000 out of their pockets. Why? Why would I need that? Why would you give it to me? It puts everybody under the scope like that. A wise lobbyist or a wise giver wouldn’t want it to look like there’s some sort of pattern here or relationship. So I think it will have a chilling effect but for those who want to do it—why? Why $50,000—why from you—what’s the relationship—what do you want? And hopefully anything that they would get would come under scrutiny. You’re just setting yourself up for an awful lot of investigation. If you put that kind of money down, you want something; if you take that kind of money, you want to give something.

Thanks for coming here and speaking to me. It was a pleasure.

LH: Thank you, Robin