Emily Fessler: Good afternoon. I'm Emily Fessler with the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri, one of the nonpartisan organizations that make up the Informed Voter Coalition. Today, we are focusing on the race for Missouri's 7th Congressional District. Candidates are incumbent Eric Burlison, Missy Hesketh and Kevin Craig. Burlison declined the Informed Voter Coalition's request to be interviewed. (The) 7th Congressional District candidates will be interviewed individually and asked the same questions. They will have one minute to introduce themselves and two minutes to respond to each question. Our first candidate is Missi. Thank you very much for joining us today. Let's begin by having you introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this office. You have one minute.
Missi Hesketh
Missi Hesketh: Thank you, Emily, for having me here today. I appreciate it very much. I am a 22-year classroom teacher and former mayor and city council member in Forsyth, and I really enjoyed the time that I put in in serving my community. And when when things were starting to go awry back in 2024, I ran against Mr. Burlison at that time, and I chose to run again because things have continued to spiral out of control. And there are many, many people in the 7th Congressional District who do not feel as if they are receiving the representation that they want and deserve. So, that is my objective, is to bring them that representation.
Fessler: What is your assessment of the recently enacted federal budget and tax legislation, and how do you evaluate its tax provisions, spending reductions and potential effects on households at different income levels?
Hesketh: So, there were many, many aspects put into the OBB, and the tax cuts that went to the wealthy at the expense of those on the lower end of things is going to be devastating. A lot of those effects will not be felt until after the midterms are over. We have, we have about 20% of our population that live at or below the poverty level. And when we continue to make cuts to programs like SNAP and Medicaid and Medicare, those folks continue to get worse off in, in life. The — aside from the tax cuts, we also have all of the increases that people are seeing at the pump and at the grocery stores and with their rent. We need to have some real solutions brought in to make life affordable again for not just southwest Missourians, but for the nation at large. And that's not just coming from me. That's not just coming from the Democratic Party. That is widespread sentiment of the bottom 80%, really, the people that are struggling.
Fessler: When it comes to election security and ensuring everyone eligible to vote can do so without unreasonable hurdles. What do you think the current system gets right or wrong, and what changes would you support?
Hesketh: You know, I think the election integrity debate that has been put out there is just another way for certain people to try to increase the division in this country. We have a I think it was 0.0003% voter fraud rate in this country, an extremely small amount of voter fraud, and it's, it's just not an issue. We should be focusing on making voter access easier for people. Instead of some people seeing their polling locations close, we need to make sure that they are able to access the ballot because that is, you know, it's their right, it's their responsibility, and every voice should be heard.
Fessler: With campaigns for statewide and national offices routinely drawing millions of dollars in political contributions, do you support any specific changes to federal campaign finance or disclosure law, such as requiring more disclosure of donors to outside groups? Why or why not?
Hesketh: So, one of my primary goals in getting into Congress is to overturn Citizens United. The money in politics and in these races is obscene. It is deplorable to me that candidates can be bought. I'm running a grassroots campaign taking — I get donations of $1, $5, $10. You know, sometimes they're larger, but for the most part, I think we're averaging maybe around $25, $30 a donation. When you have corporations and outside entities making huge donations to campaigns, those politicians are then beholden to those individuals or to those, those entities. My goal is to be strictly beholden to the voters and the people that I represent. As far as, you know, a dollar amount, maybe it would be wishful thinking, I think, to say, you know, every campaign gets $100,000 or $200,000 to spend. I think that voter, I think that campaign integrity comes from the candidate themselves. And I think that you can get a lot done with a little if you use the money wisely. And I think that the, the amount of money and the manner that a person runs a campaign is reflective of how they will operate when they're in office.
Fessler: Congress has increasingly relied on continuing resolutions rather than a full year budget, and government spending lapses have become more frequent. What do you think should be done to make the federal budget and appropriations process more functional and accountable to voters?
Hesketh: I think that Congress continually kicks the can down the road — the federal budget. You know, we're sitting at over $40 trillion now, and spending is out of control. I think that, I think that every single division of the federal government should be audited. I think that they should look for responsible ways to cut spending. That doesn't mean taking a DOGE style and going in and just doing mass firings without looking at the cause and effect and effect of eliminating those positions. But, you know, start with energy efficiency audits and then look at the number of staff that they have and travel expenses that they have. I think that there is an — I know that there is an incredible amount of fat that could be trimmed from the spending, for sure. And if they if everybody bought into that, it should be done in a, in a reasonable amount of time, and we could start working at, at, at a balanced budget.
Fessler: What is your position on federal oversight and checks on executive power, such as congressional authority over agency actions? And can you give one specific example of when you would push back on your own party's leadership or the executive branch to preserve that balance.
Hesketh: I think that there is an incredible lack of oversight and checks and balances coming out of the 119th Congress over the executive branch. We are involved in the war in Iran, and that should have been brought to Congress. And the Republican Party has completely given up their, their, their job in that aspect, not requiring Congress to approve those actions. All of the spending that's being done with the, the reflecting pool and the arch and the wing and all of these, these vanity projects that are going on, you know, you talk about wasteful spending. It's right under their nose and they're doing absolutely nothing about it. There's always, you know, the Epstein files that still have not been completely disclosed and those victims that are waiting for justice. And there are entirely too many people sitting in office, just completely skirting their responsibilities to the oath that they, that they took. An instance for me to go against my party would be, I don't know, agreeing to spend more money, send more money to Israel when they're basically, they're committing genocide. And I know that there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who have taken money from AIPAC, and the expectation of them to be able to vote objectively when they are in the pocket, I don't know that they can do that.
Fessler: And to conclude, please tell us what your top priorities will be if you are elected. You have two minutes.
Hesketh: So, there's three things that I that I want to focus on, and a couple of them are really big umbrellas. One is accessibility of my position, of myself, to the people of southwest Missouri. We have, we don't have in-person town halls from our current representative or anybody who has preceded him for at least the last 30 years. And people deserve — the taxpayers who are paying the salary deserve — to have that contact with their person to ask questions about why votes went a certain way. I think that it is disrespectful to disregard the considerations of your voters, whether it be your, your, on your party side or the other. You know, they're not political nut jobs as they as they've been called. I think that when people in, in elected positions are able to see face to face the emotion that's on people, I think it drives them to, to make more informed votes. And then, also, there's the affordability, affordability issues. We need to fix health care, and I think that we should move toward universal health care. And in doing so, or to do so, I think we need to look at raising the corporate tax rate, because in the past 40 years, it has really plummeted down, and that has contributed also to the deficit. And then there's the, the accountability piece. And that is holding everybody to account for following the Constitution, following the law, and setting the tone in this country of how we should be treating one another. And getting us out of the war in Iran. Those are, those are the goals.
Fessler: Missi, that concludes our interview. Thank you very much for taking time to talk with us again. I've been speaking with Missy Hesketh, who is a candidate for Missouri's 7th Congressional District.
Kevin Craig
Fessler: Thank you very much for joining us.
Craig: Well, I'm grateful to be here. Thank you.
Fessler: Would you please introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this position? You have one minute.
Craig: Well, I'm running to give people who take the Constitution seriously someone to vote for because I don't think anybody else in Congress really takes the Constitution seriously. But I also take the Declaration of Independence seriously. 2026 was the year we celebrated the 250th anniversary of that document. And it says that we have a duty to abolish any government that becomes a tyranny. And I suspect that if America's Founding Fathers could see our government today, they would say this was the worst tyranny than we could have imagined. My ministry that I started is called Vine and Fig Tree, vineandfigtree.org. It's promoting the most popular Bible verse in America 300 years ago. The verse that talks about the day we beat our swords into plowshares and everyone dwells peacefully under their own vine and fig tree, with no one to make them afraid. By being afraid, I mean, people who will take your stuff hurt you in any way. We want to be free from that aggression. That's the Libertarian Party principle, and my campaign philosophy is liberty under God.
Fessler: What is your assessment of the recently enacted federal budget and tax legislation, and how do you evaluate its tax provisions, spending reductions and potential effects on households at different income levels?
Craig: Well, if we took the Constitution seriously, we would understand that it's a document of enumerated powers, which is an important concept, which is so vital that it was even enshrined in the 10th Amendment. And the idea there is that the Constitution gives the federal government the power to do only certain limited things, and the government can't do anything that the Constitution doesn't say you can do this. Now, today, everybody in Congress or next year for sure says we can do whatever we want because this is a living Constitution. But that's not true. And they're taking their oath — when they take an oath to support the Constitution — they're taking it in vain. So, for example, when I first started running for office 20 years ago, the Republican Party platform said, we're going to abolish the Department of Education because it's unconstitutional, there's nothing in the federal Constitution, which gives the federal government any authority over education. So they said, abolish the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, Housing. They listed a whole laundry list of government agencies, which should be abolished because they're unconstitutional. And if you vote to appropriate money for those agencies, you're voting for something that's unconstitutional and you're breaking your oath of office. So, if we follow that principle and abolished all the unconstitutional agencies, we would slash trillions, not just millions or billions, but trillions of dollars from the budget. You would literally double everybody's income if you followed the Constitution, which would be a mammoth uptake for people with — struggling to find affordable housing and education and health care and groceries — double their income, because that's what would happen if we followed the Constitution specifically. And I think that it would also be an ethical, a moral improvement, because we no longer believe in that philosophy that I have the right to vote for somebody who will take somebody else's stuff or will threaten to hurt people if they don't do what I think we should do. That whole philosophy of the public sector, I believe, is immoral and unethical. So slashing, following the libertarian principle, slashing the budget would be the greatest thing for Americans that we could imagine.
Fessler: When it comes to election security and ensuring everyone eligible to vote can do so without unreasonable hurdles, what do you think our current system gets right or wrong, and what changes would you support?
Craig: Well, that's a good question. And when I lived in California, I was involved in a group that tried to get electronic voting decertified and moved to paper ballots. And we actually convinced the secretary of state to do that. And for some reason, the secretary of state lost his job. That was a curious thing. But I do think that we should move to paper ballots and, but I think the bigger question is, why is it that so many people I mean, probably a majority of Americans don't bother to vote at all? And I think it's because they realize that the current system is just very corrupt. It's wasteful, it's inefficient. It's a, it's a, it's a private game. And I think people are very cynical and discouraged about what government is. And I think that's actually healthy because I think government, this idea that we have an oligarchy, a small group of people who get to plan everybody else's life, tell them how to run their businesses, tell them how to educate their children, all these things, that's a, that's the worst idea that human beings have ever had. And it's funded by extortion. It's funded by threats of violence. It says, we're going to lock you in a cage with a crazy person if you don't do what we say or if you don't think the way we think. That whole idea that a small group of people get to plan the lives of hundreds of millions of people, that's the worst idea we've ever had. And it leads to war. It leads to unhappiness. It leads to a lot of bad things because it's premised on this idea that some people have the right to hurt other people or take their stuff. Podcaster Matt Kibbe wrote a book with a great title, Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff. It's the most basic principles of Christian morality. I'm a Christian, and that's what we should follow, but we don't follow that basic principle when we vote for someone who promises, I'm going to hurt people, I'm going to take their stuff, I'll make you better. I know how to run your life. That whole idea we don't need, we don't need that idea. It's, it's an archaic idea.
Fessler: With campaigns for statewide and national offices routinely drawing millions of dollars in political contributions, do you support any specific changes to federal campaign finance or disclosure law, such as requiring more disclosures of donors to outside groups? Why or why not?
Craig: I don't think that's the issue because people don't. — most people don't care. When, if you disclosed somebody's got this money from somebody most people don't care. However, if you follow the Constitution and abolished all these unconstitutional agencies, then there wouldn't be people knocking at the door of Washington saying, here's some money. Enact this law. Here's some money. Do what I would like to do. Help my business cripple my competitors. All these things are going on because the people in Washington have so much power. Take away that power, and you take away the desire for special interests to go there and bribe them. It's, it's the moral equivalent of bribery. We put politicians in jail when they engage in bribery. But that's what the whole campaign financing thing is. And, and it's like I say, it's a game where the, the Constitution — or the congressional candidates are all just vying for more and more money. They're meeting with donors more than they meet with voters. And it's all because they want to stay in office. But the remarkable thing is Congress only passes a few hundred bills a year. But the agencies, the bureaucracies, they create thousands and thousands of pages of rules, which affect our lives and reduce our standard of living. And yet Congress has very little to do with what all the lawmaking processes going on. We don't really have a constitutional democracy or Republican anymore. The political scientists will tell you we have an administrative state. That's the name they give to it because it's run by administrative agencies and not by Congress. So. what Congress should do is abolish unconstitutional administrative bureaucracies that are making thousands of rules, and then you won't have people lining up at Washington, D.C., to try to influence all these rules that are being made. And that's where the source of corruption is. It's the ability of Washington, D.C. to have power over people's lives and special interests, go there wanting to get some of that power. Take away the power, and the campaign contribution thing goes away.
Fessler: Congress has increasingly relied on continuing resolutions rather than full year budgets, and government funding lapses have become more frequent. What do you think should be done to make the federal budget and appropriations process more functional and accountable to voters?
Craig: Well, see, we keep coming back to this bedrock issue. First of all, is it okay for some people to have the power to violate basic principles of morality by hurting people, threatening violence against people, and be willing to take their stuff to engage in extortion? And you have all these unconstitutional programs that are spending trillions of dollars of our money, which it would be better left here with people in Missouri than to be sent off to Washington, D.C. let the bureaucrats and the politicians filter through, take their cut, and then send some of it back to Missouri, usually with strings attached, which don't necessarily make our lives better. And that whole system of massive transfer of wealth through threats of violence is the problem. Congress should not be appropriating any money to unconstitutional agencies. That seems like it would be a basic principle. I mean, everybody who signed the Constitution would say Congress should not appropriate money, should not take money from taxpayers and appropriate for unconstitutional purposes. But nobody cares about the Constitution. So, one of my favorite slogans, in addition to that vine and fig tree idea and my campaign philosophy of liberty under God, would be, let's get serious. Let's get serious about the Constitution. Let's get serious about what we claim to be doing here in this game of the public sector. Because if we took that, that promise seriously, we took our oath of office seriously, things would change dramatically. And I think that America would be, as they say, a great a great nation, again, if we simply followed basic Christian morality and the promises that we've made to follow the Constitution.
Fessler: What is your position on federal oversight and checks on executive power, such as congressional authority over agency actions? And can you give one specific example of when you would push back on your own party's leadership or the executive branch to preserve that balance?
Craig: Well, the balance is not the important thing. It's the massive reduction in the power of both of all the branches of government, really. But fortunately, as a Libertarian Party candidate, my party is totally behind the idea of dramatically reducing unconstitutional spending, reducing the amount of activity and violence and theft that the federal government engages in. So, I don't have a problem. This is a big problem, though, with the other two parties, because even if you have a Libertarian-leaning candidate who's a Republican or maybe a Democrat, their party structure has made it almost impossible for us to move back to the kind of government we had 200 years ago because they're they have — they, they are bought off by the special interests, and they have a structure and a philosophy that's completely different from the Libertarian Party, so they're under tremendous pressure not to reduce power. Everybody there wants more power. All the agencies want more power. When they fail to do something, the first thing they say is we need more money. Give us more money. Everybody there wants more power. Nobody is trying to say we need to reduce the power of our agency. Nobody says that. We need to reduce the power of our, of our Congress, or of the executive or of the judicial. Nobody is saying that. They're all saying we need more power. We need more money because that's, that's the name of the game is more power and more money.
Fessler: And to conclude, please tell us what your top priorities will be if you are elected. You have two minutes.
Craig: Well, as I said, my, my ministry, my vision is vine and fig tree. That's the philosophy that I think made America the most prosperous and most admired nation in history. The Declaration of Independence says things that you're not allowed to teach children in a public school, that the existence of God is a self-evident truth, that we are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights and that the government cannot violate those rights. You can't teach creatorism in the public schools. Our creator has told us what we should do and that includes don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. We will all stand before the Supreme Judge of the world, that's what the Declaration of Independence says, who's going to judge us on did you hurt people? Did you steal stuff? How did you treat, as Jesus says, the least of these. And and finally, it says, we can have a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence if we're following the laws of nature and of nature's God. You can't teach those things in a government school because that violates the myth of the separation of church and state. They'll say, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to impose a theocracy on America? Well, the word theocracy comes from two Greek words meaning God governs. Another way to turn that around is to say we're a nation under God. It's the same thing. But when you try to make. When — John Adams said the Constitution, a government of limited powers, is made only for a moral and religious people. And one of the foundational documents, one of the foundational charters of America, it's part of what they call the organic law, says that religion and morality are necessary for good government and the happiness of, of mankind. We don't have good government. We don't have a lot of happy people. We have a lot of people who are chronically depressed because they can't make ends meet, because the politicians are, are sending out money to billionaires. So, if we return to these foundational principles of liberty under God and call it theocracy, in fact, I've also been I promote anarchism because I'm so much in favor of liberty. Well, okay, anarchism, theocracy, all these bad words that are meant to scare you. But that's what made America the most admired and most prosperous nation in history, liberty under God.
Fessler: Kevin, that concludes our interview. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.
Craig: Well, thank you very much for having me.
