KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There are a lot of tight races for Congress in Kansas. The House of Representatives race in the 2nd District, which includes Lawrence and Topeka, is no exception.
Republican Lynn Jenkins is retiring. Three candidates — Paul Davis, Steve Watkins and Kelly Standley — are vying to replace Jenkins and go to Washington for the first time.
On the Republican side, Watkins is a political newcomer. A former Kansas state representative, Davis is the Democratic candidate. Businessman Standley is representing the Libertarian Party.
FOX4 sat down with the three candidates to hear where they stand on some major issues.
Gun violence
Watkins: “To help curb violence — I am an engineer, and I also have a master’s in real estate development — I look to the built environments to help solve some of our problems. We have other soft targets in our country and in our landscape, and those include airports and banks. But there’s a few problems there because of the security that is built in systematically.”
Davis: “We need to have a background check system that really works. We have a background check system now that has a lot of holes in it, and we need to be able to make sure bad actors can`t acquire a firearm and go out and do harm.”
Standley: “We have loopholes at gun shows and stuff. Other loopholes that people may not realize is that you can order gun parts online.”
Health care
Davis: “The biggest driver of health care costs is prescription drugs, and I think we have to have people who say to the drug companies, ‘Enough is enough. You can`t keep increasing our prescription drug costs by double digits.'”
Standley: “I was diagnosed with cancer several years ago. Matter of fact, the year that Obama was elected president, I was diagnosed with cancer. And I had no insurance. I had no money to pay for treatment, and because of ACA, I am actually sitting here today and running for Congress.”
Watkins: ‘I believe in appealing Obamacare. My wife is a physician, so is my dad. So we’ve talked a lot about this. I believe health care needs to be built on a platform of free-market economics, characterized by transparency and empowering doctors and competition.”
Border security and illegal immigration
Standley: “I believe that what we should be doing is taking immigrants who are here now and going ahead and documenting them, going ahead and giving them the resources they need to be successful in life.”
Watkins: “We need to build the wall, and this is nestled into a larger immigration issue that ought to be characterized by removing the chain migration, visa lottery, sanctuary cities.”
Davis: “What we need to do is listen to the experts on border security, how we really effectively secure that border. The biggest role the federal government plays is keeping us safe, and border security is at the forefront of that.”
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.
