By Kelly Kim Miller
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Last week, the Republican House Representative of Arkansas’s third congressional district and his Democratic challenger spoke to the public about key political issues that may define the elections coming up in 2020.
Last Wednesday night, Congressman Steve Womack faced a full house of vocal constituents at the Adult Wellness Center in Rogers, Arkansas. Many of them were critical of his stance on a variety of political issues.
One woman stood up to address him on climate change. “You usually stand on the side of corporate interests over the planet, and I am not happy with you about that,” the concerned constituent said.
Womack responded by saying that he was concerned about the planet, but then he followed up with a more incendiary remark. “Here’s the problem with folks like you,” said Womack. “You want to destroy the fossil fuel industry.”
He went on to elaborate that to suddenly stop using fossil fuels would not be cost effective for the United States. “I do want an all of the above energy policy. I do believe there is a place for all available sources and I believe if we do it correctly,” said Womack. “We will eventually wean ourselves off of our dependence of our fossil fuels, but we won’t be able to do it overnight.”
Gun violence was another hot topic. Women dressed in black were prevalent in the town hall. They were members of “Do Something!”, a group of women pushing for tighter background checks and bans on assault weapons. One of these ladies stood up to tell the Congressman about her concerns. Womack responded to the woman’s concerns. “I will tell you this, America needs to look itself in the mirror,” said Womack. “We have all of these kids growing up in single parent households.”
In contrast, Celeste Williams spoke to a smaller crowd of silent students at the University of Arkansas the following evening. Climate change was a hot topic there as well.
Williams said that she thought green energy was an opportunity to create more jobs for people She also said that it wasn’t just important to the planet, but to national security. “Certainly a lot of destabilizing governments in the Middle East make a huge amount of money off of selling their products to us, and if we could be less dependent on foreign oil — that makes us a whole lot safer as well,” Williams said.
Williams also spoke about gun violence with the crowd. She talked about gun violence in schools. “As a parent, it’s really frightening to take your child to school, worrying whether they will be safe,” Williams said.
She also called out the partisan politics surrounding the battle for gun reform and Congressman Womack’s statement about single parent households at the same time. “I found Representative Womack’s statements yesterday incredibly demeaning to the suffering of the people in our community,” said Williams. “I don’t think there should be a big partisan battle, and it’s certainly not the fault of single parents which was a statement he made and I think he owes his constituents an apology.”
Many other issues were talked about at both events. In Womack’s town hall, he spoke about his thoughts regarding the Mueller report. “The Mueller report was a sham,” Womack said.
Williams also spoke about healthcare which was not discussed during Womack’s town hall. “We need to have a healthcare system that puts the needs of human beings rather than the needs of shareholders first,” Williams said.