KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The ads are all over TV. The House race in the Kansas 3rd District is a tight one.
The 3rd Congressional District, which represents Wyandotte, Johnson and northern Miami counties, is expected to be among the House’s most competitive races during the midterm elections.
Republican Kevin Yoder is defending his seat against two candidates who hope to replace him: Libertarian Chris Clemmons and Democrat Sharice Davids.
FOX4 sat down with the three candidates to hear where they stand on some major issues.
Health care
Clemmons: “I am not someone who supports a single-payer or a Medicare for all just because it’s going to blow up our budget, essentially double our budget. I think it is $3.2 trillion a year.”
Yoder: “We’ve got a choice. Most folks in this country know Obamacare is not working. We can keep the things that we like about it, such as a mandate that all insurance companies cover people with pre-exisiting conditions, that they can`t charge them anymore for that coverage — I support that.”
Davids: “Health care costs in general are so high, and we should make sure that people are protected from losing their coverage. We should make sure that people shouldn’t be faced with bankruptcy because of one medical incident. I am really committed to making sure everyone has access to affordable, quality health care.”
Stopping gun violence
Davids: “I think we are facing a public health crisis, and when I say that, I mean that we have seen so many different incidents of senseless killings and death at the hands of firearms.”
Clemmons: “Generally, from a policy standpoint, I don’t think this is something the government can fix. I believe this is something we as a society and as a culture need to take a hard look at the value of an American in our economy, in our society. And we really need to work on making sure that people have the resources necessary to get out of a lot of these low points in their life.”
Yoder: “There are a number of things that we can do, but them most important thing we need to be doing is talking to each other, not getting into our partisan corners and fighting each other, but to actually listen and say, ‘What are common sense ensures? Like better background checks, like better school safety measures, like CDC research, or banning bump stocks — those common sense measures. How can we continue to promote those?”
Border security and illegal immigration
Yoder: “I think we need serious comprehensive immigration reform, and we need solutions that will actually get the job done. But primarily and first and foremost, we have got to secure our borders because otherwise, even if you come up with a solution for DACA kids and people who are living here now, if we don`t secure our borders, then 10 years, 20 years later, we are going to have another group of people here living illegally.”
Davids: “I feel that right now in the climate that we are in, I have to say that strong borders absolutely doesn’t mean and shouldn’t mean and can’t mean that we are taking children away from their parents. Without including our values as Americans into the immigration reform, I think we are really missing the mark.”
Clemmons: “But we do have to defend our borders. That comes down to security, economics. There’s a lot of reasons we need to make sure we know who is coming into our country and ensuring those people are who they say they are.”
This is just a small portion of what the three candidates had to say. FOX4 also asked them a fourth question: What is the most important thing voters should know about you?
You can get each candidate’s answer to that question, along with their full interviews with FOX4, in the videos below.
