The Informed Voter Coalition is made up of these nonprofit organizations: Be Civil, Be Heard ; Drury University’s L.E. Meador Center for Politics & Citizenship; Junior League of Springfield; KSMU Ozarks Public Radio; Leadership Springfield; League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri; Missouri State University’s Office of Public Affairs; NAACP Springfield; Rosie; Show Me Christian County; Springfield Business Journal; Springfield-Greene County Library District; and the Springfield News-Leader.
You can hear the interviews recorded at KSMU by clicking on the "listen" button above or watch videos of the interviews recorded by Nathan Papes and Greta Cross of the Springfield News-Leader.
Candidates were interviewed individually and asked the same questions. They had one minute to introduce themselves and two minutes to respond to each question. Questions were submitted by Informed Voter Coalition partner organizations and were not provided to the candidates in advance. The order of the candidate interviews was determined by a random drawing.
U.S. House, Missouri 7th Congressional District
I'm Ashley Silva with Rosie, one of the nonpartisan organizations that make up the Informed Voter Coalition. Today, we are interviewing candidates for U.S. representative, 7th Congressional District, Missi Hesketh, Kevin Craig and Eric Burlison.
Missi Hesketh
Our first candidate is Missi Hesketh. Thank you very much for joining us. Let's begin by having you introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this office.
"Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate this opportunity to share my, my views. My name is Missy Hesketh, and I live in Forsyth, Missouri. I am a mother of three, and I have been a teacher for, this is my 21st year, and I'm also the mayor of Forsyth. I have come over the past, well, I have seven years community service altogether with my city council time. I've come to love public service and making a difference in my community, and becoming aware of the lack of representation in the Missouri 7th made me want to expand that service to those counties as well."
What issue is most important to you that you'd carry to Washington, DC from southwest Missouri?
"So for me, in my capacity as mayor and being on city council, it is evident to me that there is a lack of funding available for municipalities to invest in their communities to prepare for the future. You know, I'm thinking a lot about what's going on in the Carolinas and Tennessee and Florida and Georgia after the hurricane that just went through and devastated a lot of those communities. If we don't get assistance, if we don't have a representative who is fighting to bring back federal monies to help us get into a better position ahead of situations like this, we won't be able to recover from those in a timely way to keep people in services. So I think that's one of the biggest problems, is that we — our small communities do not have the resources that they need to innovate and keep the young people there locally. You know, in 2022, Mr. (Eric) Burlison was asked the same question and he said that supply side economics work in increasing prosperity for people. And I do not think that that is the case. He has not done anything for southwest Missouri. He has not asked for earmarks in 2023, nor in 2024. And as a mayor of a small town, I know that we cannot afford to leave any money on the table if we want to make improvements in our communities."
The rising costs and lack of child care services in the United States has created a challenge for many working parents. What can the federal government do to help working families with these child care challenges?
"If there is child care available, increasing the child tax credit would be optimal to help families afford it. I do know from just being in my own small community and in speaking to others within the 7th District, that there is a shortage. I did see where, you know, a congresswoman from, I think it was Kansas, northern part of Kansas, just brought back $2 million for her district in order to help families receive child care. So, again, having a congressional representative who would actually dig in to find those solutions would be the first step in fixing that problem."
What should America's role in the world be, and how would you, as a member of Congress, help guide U.S. foreign policy toward that vision?
"America needs to take care of Americans first. And I think that we do a good job of that. Some of these situations that are happening around the globe, from Ukraine to Israel, every situation needs to be taken on a case by case basis. You know, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. Burlison said that Ukraine is not a bastion of freedom and that our money would be better spent elsewhere. Ukraine is indeed a bastion of freedom. They are indeed fighting for their way of life. So it is incumbent upon the United States to protect countries like Ukraine who butt up to our NATO allies. Poland was was just speaking the other day about how, you know, they are fully behind Ukraine, as is the rest of Europe, and those are our allies. So we should be supporting countries like that. When it comes to situations like are going on with Israel and Palestine, and now it's spreading outwards, I think that we should be cautious in the amount of money that we and materials that we supply to organizations that are not necessarily following the most humane approaches to preserving their freedoms. So helping those who need help but ensuring that those people are being humane in their approaches would be my stance on American politics there."
In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, what federal legislation might you support on the issue of reproductive rights?
"Whew. So it is my strong opinion that reproductive freedom, reproductive rights, health care in general should not be legislated. So if I were sent to D.C. and we flipped the House and had the Senate, I think that we should codify Roe and get this issue off of the table completely. I think that reproductive care, health care in general is private and it's personal and again, has no business being legislated. You know, I went back and I saw that in '22, Mr. Burlison was asked the same question, and he touted having gone through and introduced a pregnancy care center tax credit, which is really just a tax credit for incredibly wealthy people who are pro-life. It is not a solution for young people who become pregnant in ways that, you know, maybe they had no control over, that they are in absolutely no position to become parents. We have 13,000 youth in foster care in Missouri alone, 365 nationally. So care centers like this don't do anything to help those people, those children get into into care. And also, when it comes to abortion, I think there's so much misinformation out there. There are not, you know, the late term abortions being conducted, like they say, or post birth abortions, which is really infanticide, which is completely illegal. 91% of abortions occur in the first trimester, almost 99% within the first 20 weeks. And the rest of it has to do with maternal or fetal morbidity. So I would leave reproductive freedom to the individual and the doctor and codify it if given the chance."
How can we best bridge the political divisions and factionalism of our country?
"That is one of our number one problems that I see. There is absolutely so much division, and you see friends losing friends and families being torn apart from, from the division that is out there, the lies that are being told, the gaslighting that is out there. I joke because I say, you know, I heard somewhere in a northern European country outlawed lying basically by their legislators, if they're caught in a lie, they're kicked off of the legislature. I don't know how many people we would have left if we were to do that in the United States. But I think, I think our electeds need to be held to the highest standard possible. And I can't lie, my kids would tell you that I can't lie. They would always know if I was trying to tell them a story. We need to be upfront with ourselves. We need to come together and understand that compromise at the federal level is the only way that we're going to get anything done. This whole partisanship and grandstanding in order to get their way to impose their beliefs on others, that's what needs to go. That's what needs to go. We need to, you know, kind of do that, mind your own business kind of a thing, but mind your P's and Q's. Be honest with the people. Be honest with yourselves. Tell the whole story, whether it be our elected leaders or just in the conversations that we're having with each other. And that's, that's really about it."
Kevin Craig
Joining me now is Kevin Craig. Thank you very much for joining us. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this position?
"Well, thank you for having me. I'm the founder of a Bible study group called Vine and Fig Tree, which takes its name from the most popular Bible verse in America 300 years ago, the verse that talks about everyone beating their swords into ploughshares and dwelling peacefully under their own vine and fig tree. And the Libertarian Party, for which I run, makes its candidates sign an oath that says, I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a solution to any personal, political or social problem, which is, I think, keeping in mind with Christian ethics, that you don't hurt people and you don't take their stuff. And if you don't like what they do, you need to work through persuasion, education, inspiration, helping them rather than enforcing your will on others by force. So I would, as a congressman, seek to abolish all unconstitutional agencies, which impose some people's will on other people by force, and seek to create a more peaceful society where we can all dwell peacefully under our own vine and fig tree."
What issue is most important to you that you'd carry to Washington, DC from southwest Missouri?
"Well, as I mentioned, Thomas Jefferson said the job of my job is to bind the government down by the chains of the Constitution. There are two ways to look at the Constitution. The founders intended us to see the Constitution as a document of enumerated powers, which means the government can't do anything unless we, the people say, you can do this and specifically this, that or that. The other view is the government can do anything it wants, as long as the Constitution doesn't say, you cannot do this, in which case we have lawyers for that. But the the idea is that we would cut all the unconstitutional agencies, which are taxing us at an exorbitant amount. If you, if you abolished all unconstitutional agencies like the Republican Party has been promising to do for decades, such as the Department of Education, Department of Energy, they have a long list in their political platform, you could save trillions of dollars, literally trillions of dollars, which would mean, just as a broad estimate, $10,000 for every man, woman and small child in southwest Missouri that they would be able to buy more stuff, improve their standard of living. And the government isn't doing that. It's not improving our standard of living. What I've learned from the last 400 years of human history is that capitalism, or a free market, raises everyone's standard of living and socialism, communism and fascism, violent imposed order on people always brings mass poverty and mass death. So the first thing I would say is eliminate the unconstitutional agencies, return the power and the money to the people. And I think that would drastically improve everyone's standard of living."
The rising costs and lack of child care services in the United States has created a challenge for many working parents. What can the federal government do to help working families with these child care challenges?
"The Libertarian Party believes in the separation of school and state. If we abolished all contact between the government and schools or education, the means of education, the cost of education would go down tremendously. For example, it costs maybe $20,000 a year for the average public school student, but it costs much less for a private education, because capitalism and competition always improves the services and lowers the cost. So parents who are, well, first of all, they wouldn't be having to have two jobs to pay the taxes that the government is imposing on them so that would leave more freedom for them to take care of their children on their own. But also the cost of education would go down. They would have more money for child care or other ways of of doing things. For example, they could help subsidize elderly or extended family members with all the savings that they would have because we are abolishing all these unconstitutional bureaucracies, there would be a lot higher standard of living with a lot more money to expand our standard of living, including daycare, education, taking care of children. That's a, that's a real easy issue for me. Abolish the unconstitutional agencies, lower taxes, increase the amount of disposable income that people have, and our families would be much stronger as a result."
What should America's role in the world be, and how would you, as a member of Congress, help guide U.S. foreign policy towards that vision.
"That's a really important question. I was born in the year of Sputnik. That was the Russian satellite that kicked off the space race, which was part of the Cold War. After the the Soviet Union fell, the Russians realized communism didn't work. Everybody was in poverty. It just was a system that was a massive failure. And they wanted, at that point in the late 1980s to forget communism and join the Western world, join the capitalist world, become a trading partner with the United States. But within the United States, they have what we call the deep state or the security state. And their view was that the United States must always be the most powerful nation on the Earth. We must have global hegemony. And the deep state said to Russia, no, we're not going to allow you to grow. We're not going to allow you to become a capitalist country. We are the only superpower on earth, and we will crush any country that attempts to rival us. They want global hegemony, or as they call it, full spectrum dominance. So we, the the Cold War continued even after communism was over and then the United States, the deep state, I don't mean to indict everybody in this room, but the deep state said, we're going to expand NATO and make it so that Russia cannot compete with us, and we will do regime change if necessary. So the United States overthrew the government, the democratically elected government of Ukraine and put in place an anti-Russian leader, whereas before they had Ukraine wanted to be neutral between the West and Russia. But they put in a guy who was hostile to Russia. The Ukrainians began attacking Russians in the Donbas region, and now we're facing, literally facing, nuclear war over this issue. And it's because the United States wants to dominate rather than it wants a unipolar world rather than a multipolar world. They don't want China, they don't want Russia, they don't want anyone to be stronger, to have hegemony like the United States does. And it's 500,000 Ukrainians have died in this conflict, which is completely unnecessary. We should just allow other nations to compete with us and to, and to grow. China has grown a great deal because they've also abandoned Marxism under Mao Tse-tung. So our foreign policy is one of hegemony, and it's it's threatening the world."
In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, what federal legislation might you support on the issue of reproductive rights?
"We get back to the idea of the Constitution being a document of enumerated powers, and nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government any authority to make any law or anything at all with regard to reproductive rights or anything like that. It's not in the Constitution. Ron Paul had a, my favorite congressman who's no longer in Congress, but he had a bill, which would have overruled Roe versus Wade by simply saying that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction. That's one of the powers given to Congress is to describe specifically the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. And so if a state wanted to have an abortion law for or against, they could do that. And anybody who says, 'I want to appeal that law to the Supreme Court or federal court,' they wouldn't be able to because the Congress had removed their jurisdiction. And so we would have had right at the get. I mean, the day after Roe was passed, we could have said no more, no more jurisdiction over an abortion state by state basis. That's what we have now. And I think that's a, that's a federalist approach. That's what the Constitution would say, that the states and the locals have that power, not the federal government. Even the 10th Amendment enshrines this whole philosophy of delegated powers by saying the powers of the federal government are very few, and they're carefully defined. But the powers of the states, they're vast and indefinite. The states do what they want. The federal government is supposed to be very, very small. Now, personally, I'm pro-life. I believe what science tells us that the baby in the womb is a separate human being with its own unique DNA. And I would say it's wrong morally and legally to to kill that separate person. It's not just a tumor. It's not just a blob of flesh. It's. It's what I was. It's what each of us in this room were at one time. So I'm, I'm a pro-life in philosophy, but constitutionally, the federal government should have nothing to say about that. That's a state and local problem."
How can we best bridge the political divisions and factionalism of our country?
"I would say that the libertarian philosophy is the way to, is the way to do that, because what happens right now is we have two sides. One side wants to impose their view on the other side using the power of the sword, the power of government. The other side wants to impose their will on the other side by the power of the sword, by the power of the government. What we need to adopt is a philosophy that says it's wrong, it's not ethical, it's not moral to hurt people and take their stuff. Matt Kibbe has a great book, An Introduction to Libertarian Thinking, and that's the title, don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. It's a simple grassroots kind of Morality, but says, I don't have the right to hurt you, to threaten to lock you in a cage with a psychopath who will rape you. I don't have the right to do that, to inflict harm to, as the libertarian pledge says, to initiate force against you just because I don't like what you do, or I don't like what you believe or what you say. And once we get that the political infighting is the result of people wanting that power over other people and wanting to impose their view on other people by force or threats of violence. Eliminate that worldview, that way of looking at life by saying, I get what I want by threatening other people with violence, then there's no more political problems. The lobbyists who right now control our government, they wouldn't be able to spend millions of dollars on the candidates they want, or millions of dollars to bribe or lobby people in office, because what they want is the power of the government on their side and against their competitors, so that they can have the government keep people from competing against them, or to subsidize them if they're not doing a very good job on their own business, bail them out all the time. And again, here in southwest Missouri, we have to pay for all these bailouts, and we have to pay with a lower standard of living to have one organization, one corporation, get the high hand, the saddle, so to speak, and all the other corporations are regulated out of business so they can't compete, come up with innovative and creative ways to serve consumers like us. So it's that philosophy. I don't have the right to hurt people or take their stuff that eliminates the political infighting."
Eric Burlison
Joining me now is Eric Burlison. Thank you very much for joining us. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this position?
"I'm Eric Burlison. I'm a native of Springfield, grew up here in the southwest side, went to Parkview High School and then eventually went to Missouri State University, and back then it was SMSU. Graduated with a degree, a master's degree in Business Administration, and then went to work for CoxHealth as a software engineer, project manager and process architect. And then along the way, I went into finance and became an investment advisor and started serving our state at the state level in the Missouri House and the Missouri Senate. For me, running for US, Congress was giving up a lot. I had to give up my private sector businesses, my, my investment practice. But it was for an important cause because I think that this country needs help. I think that we're careening towards some, some very difficult times, and I want to I want to do what I can to save America."
What issue is most important to you that you'd carry to Washington, DC from southwest Missouri?
"I think that the — our fiscal crisis is probably the biggest issue that we have. It's, even our military brass are saying that testifying that it's the biggest national security threat that America faces is our $35 trillion debt. Now, to each taxpayer, that's $250,000 that each taxpayer shares of the of the full national debt. Just imagine how much money or how much income you're going to have to make before you're paying in $250,000 income. And that's just to get us back to even not to pay for all the future obligations. So it is a, it's a crisis, and I think that it's something that that we have got to pull back. We've got to start cutting spending and be more responsible. We need to grow the economy and hopefully we can grow our way out of this."
The rising costs and lack of child care services in the United States has created a challenge for many working parents. What can the federal government do to help working families with these childcare challenges?
"I like to say the tax code is something that we could look at, making sure that there's a deduction that's available. I think that one of the issues that we're facing in Missouri is because we've overly regulated that industry. So there was, for example, at one point in time when my wife and I, when we would send our daughters to child care, we've experienced all three versions. You had your in-home care provider or in-home provider, and then you have a licensed, larger one that's a home care, you know, and then you have more of an institution, a larger facility. And, you know, frankly, the the one that we used that was a individual who was unlicensed in the home, who had a very small group of kids, was probably the best one that we had for — during during our child's upbringing, but that is no longer possible today. When that law was put into effect, it eliminated thousands of options for parents across the state of Missouri, and that's, that's I think that that's one of the reasons why we have a crisis."
What should America's role in the world be, and how would you, as a member of Congress, help guide U.S. foreign policy towards that vision?
"So, the tradition has been that we've tried to police the world, and I don't think that we need to stick our nose into every country's business. I think we need to set an example. And when there are, when there are abuses of, you know, humanity, you have, any kind of horrific acts that that a country might do, the United States should respond with tariffs. We should respond with sanctions and and saying, 'we're not going to do business with your country until you correct what you're doing.' I think that we need to be a lot more careful about getting involved in conflicts around the world. We need to reconsider the conflicts that that we are involved in. And I think that if we if we can pull back our aggressive actions across the globe, I think that we'll see the temperature, we'll see the temperature come down."
In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, what federal legislation might you support on the issue of reproductive rights?
"Yeah. You know, what I find interesting is that, to me, substantively, things have not changed much since the reversal of Roe v Wade or the Dobbs decision. And I say that because in Missouri, Missouri, the values and the legislature that reflected the voters of Missouri, we basically eliminated abortion in the state of Missouri. But states like Illinois just across the border, and many states, they, they didn't do that. The Dobbs decision really didn't change, in my opinion, much. I think that there's been a lot of a lot of aggression and anger towards it, but at the end of the day, it's had very little real world impact on — functionally. And I think that we just need to pull back, see what, where the dust settles before we're going to make decisions about what the next steps are."
How can we best bridge the political divisions and factionalism of our country?
"I think that we need to find a shared goal, right? So it used to be that we all wanted the best education for our children. And, and we all wanted us to, if that meant reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. But so I think some of the arguments that we have today are because we why why it's so hard to find agreement is because we're not on the same spectrum. We're not arguing about the same topics, or we don't, because we don't have the same priorities. And so I'm frustrated as well, but I think that we need to face and look at the bigger, the bigger challenges that we face, our fiscal situation, the safety and security of the American people, and we need to focus on those large issues, and we'll realize that we can, we can come together and find shared solutions for, for those large issues that we face."
