Station:      KVOR, 740 AM

Show:        Jeff Crank Show

Guests:      George

Link:          http://www.kvor.com/showdj.asp?DJID=48714#podcast

Date:         August 25, 2012

Topics:      Outsourcing, Department of Motor Vehicles, House District 18, Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Pete Lee, Reapportionment, Gerrymandering, Jobs, Economy, War on Women, Social Issues, Akin, Free Enterprise, Regulatory Burden, Small Business, Price of Bacon, Unamerican, Groceries, Rising Prices, Rainy Day Fund, Infrastructure, Priority Based Budgeting, Spending Growth Limit, Senator Steve King, Private Sector, Public Private Partnerships, Balanced Budget Amendment, TABOR

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HOST JEFF CRANK:  I want to shift gears.  What a topic!  I don’t normally talk about these things.  But, let me bring in Jennifer George.  Jennifer is the Republican candidate in House District 18, joins us in studio.  Jennifer, thank you for joining us.  You’re running in House District 18 against Pete Lee who is an incumbent Democrat right now in that district.  Thanks for coming in!

CANDIDATE JENNIFER GEORGE:  Yeah, thanks for having me this morning!

CRANK:  Okay, I want to say at the outset that we offer equal time to all candidates, and we called Pete Lee to try and see if he would be willing to come on the show.  Well, we did not get a return phone call.  He is welcome to come in, though I never allow myself to be gamed.  If I want people on a certain day on this show, it’s my show – you either come in on that day, I’m not going to make all of the arrangements and rearrange my life for you.  So, we’ll figure out when we can get you in and we may invite Jennifer back for that.  I’d rather have a debate.  I’d rather have people who want to talk and debate issues and things like that, rather than just have somebody say something and another one comes on.   But anyway, Pete Lee was invited.  He chose not to come.  Ah, Jennifer, thanks for joining us.  So, House District 18 – tell folks, first of all, where is House District 18?

GEORGE:  Sure.  House District 18 is the heart of the Colorado Springs community.  It’s the downtown area.  It goes east out to Academy, and west all the way out to Manitou Springs.  It encompasses all of Manitou Springs, all of Colorado City,…

CRANK:  And this is the district that’s been held by a Democrat for a long time.  Michael Merrifield used to represent House District 18, now Pete Lee.  To be quite honest, and I’m not—I mean, this was the district that was gerrymandered by the Democrats to try and give them one House seat, and of course they would beg and cry and say, “Oh, we deserve just one in El Paso County!”  Oh, but Republicans don’t deserve one in Boulder.  Gerrymandering is wrong.  It shouldn’t have been done.  Um, but, uh, I think you’re a great candidate.  You’ve got a great chance of winning this seat.  So, uh….

GEORGE:  Thank you.  Yeah, it has been held by a Democrat for ten years.  And it leans left so, in my race, I’m definitely the underdog.  But reapportionment has helped the Republicans in this particular district.  And voter registration-wise, we are in for a fight – in for a race.  It is going to be good.

CRANK:  Well, we’re going to take a break.   When we come back, we’re going to talk about the issues with Jennifer George.  Um, the president doesn’t want to talk about the economy.  He doesn’t want to talk about jobs.  I’m guessing Pete Lee doesn’t want to talk about economy and jobs.  They want to talk about the War on Women, and, you know, you name it, they want to talk about the social type issues.  How about jobs and the economy?  We’ll be back.  Jennifer George – up next!

[commercial intermission]

CRANK:  All right.  Welcome back to the Jeff Crank Show, Colorado’s 740 KVOR.  It is 8:19 [am] on this fine Saturday morning.  We’re talking with Jennifer George, candidate for House District nineteen.  Kind of the— Did I say “nineteen” again?  What  is my problem?  I mean, you know?

GEORGE:  I don’t know.    

CRANK:  I don’t know what the deal is.  Okay, eighteen!  House District eighteen!  That’s one-eight, not one-nine!   One-eight.  Okay, I’m sorry about that.  Running against Pete Lee who is a Democrat incumbent right now.  Let’s talk about jobs, the economy.  You know, it always amazes me that others try and move this off to anoth – you know, Republicans are always the ones that are accused of talking about social issues.  But it couldn’t be further from the truth this election cycle, because they want to talk about everything else besides jobs and the economy.  We’ve got to get our economy moving again in Colorado and certainly here in Colorado Springs.  What is your plan to help create jobs in Colorado?

GEORGE:  Sure.  Well, I want to comment first that I’ve been knocking on doors in this community since April.  And jobs and the economy is the only issue that anyone is talking to me about.  Real people, that’s what their concern is.  It’s not the War on Women, it’s not Akin’s comments, it’s the fact that their spouse is unemployed, that they have an adult child living at home, because they are unemployed or underemployed.  So, it truly is the issue.  And I’ve stayed on that the entire time. And that’s why I am in this race, is to improve the economic health of Colorado.  And what I’d like to do is have a free economy.  And in Denver, I would be a protector of free enterprise, and reducing the regulatory burden on employers.  I hear that constantly as well.  Um –

CRANK:  Yeah, you know, people say government–how do you create jobs is government? And the reality is, and I hope you agree with this, is the best way that governments can create jobs is kind of just get out of the way and stop over-regulating business.

GEORGE:  Absolutely. And that is the number one concern of employers, is that regulatory burden. And it is such a mammoth mess [chuckles].  It is peeling back the layers of the onion on the regulatory issue, and that is why I am very proud of the endorsements I have from the business community, because they know that I understand that, and will work with them to help roll back the regulations that are the most problematic.

CRANK:  You know, I always use the bacon rule.  I love bacon.

GEORGE:  Me, too.

CRANK:  Every–I mean who—“If you don’t love bacon, why do you hate America.”  That’s kind of the way I look at it.

GEORGE:  [laughing] My daughter loves bacon so much, we went to a buffet – Sorry,  random story.

CRANK:  [both host and guest laugh]  Great! Random story are great!

GEORGE:  –when she was younger, it was a Mother’s Day buffet, she was two.  And she ate so – like two plates full of bacon.  That’s all she had.  And to this day, like every week, at least once she’ll say, “I love bacon.”

CRANK:  [laughing] That’s good!  You raised her right. Uh, bacon has gone up 22% under Barack Obama.  I mean, honestly, if you look at–and to me, it’s the bacon test, man. You must not love America if you can’t keep the price of bacon down. Um, I look at it this way, uh, people are having a hard time making ends meet right now, whether it’s the price of gas, the price of bacon, you know, the price of going to the grocery store. The grocery store is outrageous anymore.  You go in and it’s almost, you know, almost 50 or 60% more than what you paid just a couple of years ago on these kinds of things. Um, those to me are the issues that people care about — is how do they have a job so that they can– a decent paying job so that they can afford these kinds of things, feed their family, live the good life, send their kids to college, those sorts of things.

GEORGE:  Yeah.  That is exactly what people want. And one man comes to mind that I met walking the neighborhoods as well, and he, in fact, confessed to me after a conversation with him that he has been a lifelong Democrat, a union member, and he agreed to support my candidacy because he said a man has got to feed his family. And what I have been doing in the past– what he has been doing in the past, as far as his vote, wasn’t working for him anymore.

CRANK:  Well, that’s good.  And I think people are waking up to that, and figuring out that, you know, the loyalty to the union or the loyalty to the cause or whatever, ends as soon as you realize that you’ve got to pay your bills and you got to make ends meet.  Um, on those type of issues, job issues, the economy, things like that, you know, people look to — we are fortunate in Colorado to have a balanced budget requirement.  We can’t have a deficit.  Thankfully, or think of the mess we would be in here as well as at the federal level. But, uh, you know, are there things that we can do to trim back government, trim back that regulation?  What are some specific things that you’d look to, to do that, to make our economy better and make it more productive for Coloradans?

GEORGE:  Mmm-hmm.  Well, I am about smart government, strong communities, and a free economy. Those are the three main points of my platform. And with the size of government, they tried this session, the Republicans, to limit spending to no more than a 6% growth—

CRANK:  Right.

GEORGE:  — and that is something that my opponent voted against.  So, trying to string the spending, uh—

CRANK:  Right—

GEORGE:  –from the general fund, at least put it into a rainy day fund or for infrastructure or something, in the mindset of a savings plan rather than, “Let’s spend everything we have.”

CRANK:  Right.

GEORGE:  Um, that’s certainly one way.

CRANK:  So, Pete Lee votes against a 6%– limiting it to 6%.  Now, how many people him out there, who are living in this economy today would take a 6% increase and be more than happy with that?  I didn’t get a 6% salary increase, but yet that’s not enough for some in government. It’s just incredible to me that people still don’t get the message in these economic times, that government needs to do more with less.

GEORGE:  Sure. Sure. And priority-based spending, is something else with our budgeting–priority-based budgeting.   What do we need to fund the most at the state level, rather than, “What did we fund last year?”

CRANK:  Yeah. People’s interaction with government, and I talked about this a couple weeks ago – I talked to Senator Steve King who is from the Western Slope, about this.  We talked a little bit about it– my son went to get his learner’s permit, and the wait to get your driver’s learner’s permit is 4 to 5 hours, you’re sitting down there waiting.  And, uh, you know, I don’t know that any business, that you would survive very long if you had a 4 to 5 hour wait for the customer.  And perhaps that’s what they have forgotten, is that it’s the customer who should be looked at here.  Uh –

GEORGE:  I’ve got to tell you –

CRANK:  Yeah—

GEORGE:  –my daughter turned 15 this year, so we were in the DMV in April.

CRANK:  Yeah.

GEORGE:  I was tweeting like crazy in there because my head was spinning off.

CRANK:  [laughs]

GEORGE:  We stood in five different lines and it took, I think, six people to get a driver’s permit [laughing], and I was like, “Outsource this function!”

CRANK:  No kidding.  How long were you there?

GEORGE:  Uh, four hours!

CRANK:  Oh, my god!  I mean, you know, to think that we can require a citizen, a customer, to sit for four hours really shows you why government shouldn’t be providing these kinds of services. So, yeah, I– are you in favor of outsourcing things like that—and the government getting out of that business?

GEORGE:  Absolutely. You know, the private sector does everything better—

CRANK:  Yeah.

GEORGE:  — the competition, the choice, the price, everything is better in the private sector.  And to the extent that we can outsource, or do public/private partnerships in as many aspects of government, the better off we’ll be.

CRANK:  My friend, Joe Woodford, who lives here in this community, he’s a great citizen here in our community, talks about the phonebook rule.  If you can open up the yellow pages and you can find the service in the yellow pages, then government ought not be providing it,.  They ought to be going to that business and seeing if they’ll contract and do it. What do you think of—obviously, we have TABOR – are you a supporter of TABOR and the provisions that provide for citizens to have to vote on tax increases and those sorts of things?

GEORGE:  Absolutely.

CRANK:  Yeah. Where is Pete Lee on those, do you know?

GEORGE:  I don’t know where he is on TABOR.

CRANK:  You don’t know where he is on TABOR?  But, I mean, there is a general sense, I think out there, that we need to live within our means. We are going to talk about this later with Mayor Steve Bach actually in the next segment.  He is going to be on with us talking about this.  The — Barry Noreen at the Gazette has talked about, “Oh, we need a tax increase and those sorts of things.”  It’s really two philosophies of government, which–one  is, live within your means, make government leaner and smarter and better, or, go ask the taxpayers at a time certainly that they cannot afford a tax increase to help pony up more for government’s pet projects. You fall on the side of fiscal sanity, I hope, on that.

GEORGE:  Yes.  Absolutely. And while I don’t know where Mr. Lee stands specifically on TABOR, I do know that he has proposed, in some of his town hall meetings, to — that businesses do not pay enough taxes in this state. So–

CRANK:  Unbelievable.

GEORGE:  Mmm-hmm.

CRANK:  Yeah.

GEORGE:  Mmm-hmm.  But business is just people, and in Colorado small business is 85% of it, and that’s just you and me paying more.

CRANK:  Well, and the reality is, if you look at the way the Gallagher amendment in Colorado structures our tax system, –businesses pay on $100,000 piece of property, a business would pay 10%, or ten times the amount of tax that it would pay if it’s residential.  So, for him to make the statement that, you know, somehow they don’t pay enough, it’s—it’s—amazing!  It’s laughable.  So–

GEORGE:  Right.

CRANK:  We got some — just a couple of minutes, or about a minute left. Your final thoughts and let us know where people can learn more about Jennifer George.

GEORGE:  Well, first of all, this race is a critical race.  Statewide, it is one of the top two targeted races in the state. The balance of power hangs in the balance on this House seat, for the Republicans.  We have to swing this seat to the Republicans.  Learn more about me at jennifergeorgecolorado.com.

CRANK:  Okay. Great. Thanks for coming in. We appreciate it. Good luck to you. I’ll do everything I can to help you. Obviously, I support you, and hope that you win this race. And, uh, you know, whatever we can do, let us know.

GEORGE:  Thank you, Jeff.

CRANK:  All right. Thanks for being here.  We’ll be back.  The mayor of Colorado Springs, Steve Bach joins us right after this.