‘Anybody but Bush,’ Democrats say
The economy and public education will be the name of the game in this election year, local Democrats say.
The Cache Democrats and Utah State University’s College Democrats held a Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner in the Taggart Student Center Ballroom Saturday. About 250 people attended to meet candidates running on the Democrat Party ticket and donate money for their campaigns.
Gubernatorial candidate Scott Matheson, Jr. and Paul Van Dam, who is running for U.S. Senate, were the special guests for the evening. Van Dam, former Utah attorney general, will be running against Sen. Bob Bennett.
Democrat leaders said President George W. Bush is failing to provide enough jobs for Americans and is mishandling the war on Iraq. Several people at the event wore buttons that read “ABB” – “Anybody But Bush.”
Van Dam said terrorists were being drawn to Iraq by the presence of American soldiers.
“Everybody who hates the United States in the Arab world migrates to Iraq to see if they can go kill an American,” Van Dam said.
He said he wished America could back up in time for a year and not get into the Iraq war. But since America is now involved, he said, the country needs a definite strategy. Van Dam said the United States should go to the United Nations and let them take over the Iraq project.
The economy is improving in regards to the stock market, Van Dam said, but there are not enough jobs, and the current president doesn’t have a plan to solve that.
More jobs could be created by coming up with alternative energy sources and by initiating public works like fixing highways, Van Dam said.
“I’m frightened [the deficit] isn’t going to go away because there’s no policy to change it,” Van Dam said. “The amount of money we’re spending on the war is just frightening.”
Van Dam criticized Bush’s decision to limit Pell grants to $5,400 and said the “no child left behind” program is under-funded by $27 million.
“To me, the strength of someone’s commitment to a program is their willingness to fund it,” he said. “If you can toss $87 billion to Iraq, why in the world can’t you fund $9 million dollars a year for education?”
Van Dam said the bottom line is, Republicans are doing “nothing to help the economy and the jam we’re in with education.”
Matheson said Utah needs to put students first and consider reforms in competency-based education. He said it is important to support businesses that create “the lion’s share of jobs” and to recognize the importance of research universities like USU and the University of Utah.
“One of the reasons businesses like to come to Utah is that they can draw on a very well-educated workforce,” Matheson said. “If we ever lose that, we’re in trouble. In fact, we should be improving it to give us more of an advantage in that area.”
Matheson said it is clear people want new leadership for Utah, as evidenced by the “message bills” introduced by the Legislature this year when “our focus ought to be solving problems that really count.”
Matheson said Utah needs a balanced, two-party system.
“For the most part, one party has dominated for the last 20 years,” Matheson said. “I just think it’s important, when you have a Legislature as one-sided as it is now, to have effective checks and balances. It will improve policy debate and ultimately make for better policy.”
Reid Pearce, chair of Cache Democrats, said Matheson had a good chance of winning the election.
“He is not too liberal, not too conservative, he’s a middle-of-the-roader,” Pearce said. “Matheson’s moderation will definitely bring a lot of people to the polls and I think they’ll vote for him.”
Matt Everett, state chairman of the College Democrats and USU student, said Democrats in Utah were mainstream, not extreme.
“On the other side of the ticket, the Republicans are either really right-wing or really, really right-wing,” he said.
Everett said students should be concerned about the economy.
“We’re all hoping to graduate eventually and hope to find good jobs. It’s going to be difficult to find good jobs,” he said.
Utah Democrats state chair Donald Dunn said that in Cache County there was a Democrat running for every office and that the primaries last week garnered an unusually high number of voters.
“We’re sending a strong message to Republicans: Watch out, here we come,” Dunn said. “We need to do our part to send Bush back to Texas.”
-heidithue@cc.usu.edu