Candidates for Missouri House District 140 are Julia Curran and Incumbent Representative Jamie Gragg. Gragg declined to participate in the interviews. The interview was conducted by Rachel Campbell with Show Me Christian County, one of the nonpartisan organizations that make up the Informed Voter Coalition.
Julia Curran
Campbell: House district 140 candidate Julia Curran will have one minute to introduce herself and two minutes to respond to each question. Julia Curran, 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. You have one minute.
Curran: Hello. My name is Julia Curran. Thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak today. I appreciate that. I've been a resident of Christian County for over 25 years at this point in time. I'm married. I've raised four adult children through the Ozark school system. I'm a retired nurse of 35 years. I love my community. I think that government should work for all of us, and the reason I'm running is because I don't think that it is. I think that right now a lot of people are struggling, and I think that we need to do a lot more to help government work for individual people in the community.
Campbell: Please share how your professional expertise and previous experience will inform your decision making as a legislator. You have two minutes.
Curran: Okay. I think it's really important that legislation isn't developed in a silo, in a vacuum up in Jefferson City. When we choose to write legislation, it should be something that the, that the citizens need changed. It should also reflect the needs of our citizens, keeping as much money as possible in our pockets and giving back investment through our taxes. So making our lives improved in that way. So whether it's building roads or different protections for taxes for citizens or protection for senior citizens and services. But that money all needs to come back to our community that we've made as far as an investment in our taxes. I don't think that we should be running off to Jefferson City and just engaging in partisan politics. I think that all of our decisions should be made based upon the needs of the people that we serve.
Campbell: In what ways have you actively collaborated with the communities in your district to understand their needs?
Curran: I've asked, so I've gone to different meetings. I've gone to school board meetings. I've been to some alderman meetings. I've been to different groups that volunteer their services within the community to make up funding gaps for different services, like Sertoma and Impact 100. And it seems that the greatest impact, the greatest need that we have in our community, is services. Some of those services should be just provided by reinvestment of our taxes coming back to our community. It's great that our citizens are very generous and willing to help with these services, but a lot of that can be funded by the the taxes that we've already paid. I think that we also need to make more of an investment in our schools because that is our future. And I see that the state really isn't meeting the same, the same goals as what our community does, where we pay a lot of taxes, a lot of sales tax, a lot of service taxes in our communities. And I would like to see the state stepping up a little bit more with that investment for our kids as well.
Campbell: Christian County is the fastest growing county in the fastest growing region of the state. If elected, how will you build relationships at the state level to advocate for your district as Christian County communities work to accommodate that growth?
Curran: One of the ways would be to go up — to build relationships, to build relationships based on trust and mutual need. I wouldn't be the only state representative representing Christian County. And I think that the other state representatives would want to bring things back to the community, lower costs, better jobs. And those are things that we could all agree on. I think it's really important to be able to work together in a, as a genuine sense, and not for individual political victories. And so I think that with having that mindset, you could accomplish a lot.
Campbell: Voters rejected Amendment 4 by nearly 80% in August, which would have made it far harder to pass citizen initiated constitutional amendments. Given that the legislature referred that measure to the ballot and may bring back similar proposals to restrict the initiative petition process, would you oppose or support further attempts to raise the threshold for citizen initiatives?
Curran: The citizen's initiative is a way for the people to say they don't like what's going on. Self-governance is very important, and that should never be stymied in any way or silenced in any way. It's a way for the citizens to say, you're not paying attention to what our needs are. You're not paying attention to what we're saying to you. And so we want this. And I don't think that no matter what the outcome is, if I agree with that petition or not, that citizen's voices should ever be silenced.
Campbell: Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed income tax overhaul, Amendment 5, this year. What is your specific position on sales tax or state tax policy going forward, including whether you'd support any changes to the income tax, sales tax or property tax structure?
Curran: I think one of the biggest problems with Amendment 5 was there was no plan. It was just going to be, well, we're going to temporarily take away all of the taxpayer protections, somehow come up with a plan to cover the $8.2 billion deficit that taking away income tax would be. And then, in the end, decide — the General Assembly would decide themselves what that plan would be to make up that revenue. It looked like it was going to heavily raise sales tax, and that would have been devastating for working people and senior citizens. I think that if you want to make a change in tax policy, you need to have a clear policy. Bring it back to the people and have them vote on that. That's what the people have said over and over again with the Hancock Amendment back in 1980, back in 2016 when we said no to sales tax on, on services, and then back in 2010 when we said no sales tax on real estate transactions. If we're taxing people, we don't want to overtax the electorate, and we need to make it make sense.
Campbell: And to conclude, please tell us what your top priorities will be if you are elected. You have two minutes.
Curran: People — I think that if you're representing a group of people, they should come first and not policy and not party politics. And it should just be as simple as that before you make a vote or a decision that you should step back and say, is this going to help the people that I'm serving? Because if it's not, it's not good.
Campbell: Julia, that concludes our interview. Thank you very much for taking time to talk to us. Again, I've been speaking with Julia Curran, who is a candidate for Missouri House District 140. Incumbent Jamie Gragg declined to participate in this interview.