Dems’ Hartke goes on offense

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: June 20, 2008

Seventh District Congressional candidate Anita Hartke, a 40-something real estate broker from Culpeper County, seems to lead a fairly average life.

She has two kids in college and is raising a 7-year-old son.

Hartke’s mother Martha, a very active 88-year-old in spite of her pacemaker, also lives with the family.

Hartke has a mortgage, a couple of cars and, like everyone else, is feeling pain at the pump.

“I’m living the life that everyone else lives,” she said in a recent hour-long interview at the Star-Exponent. “Again, I haven’t been in (elected) office, but it doesn’t matter if your heart is in the right place.

“Who do you want to support you? Someone who has a lot of money or someone who cares about the relationships of the people?”

Unlike Hartke, a Democrat, incumbent Congressman Eric Cantor, a Richmond Republican, is well known around the 7th District, and with recent speculation of him being chosen as Sen. McCain’s vice-presidential pick, on Capitol Hill.

And so Hartke is on the offensive in her bid to unseat Cantor in the November election.

Cantor, a four-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, represents “the fat cats, special interests and corporations of society,” Hartke said, and has more than a million dollars in his campaign coffer.

She can’t compete with that, Hartke said, but on the other hand, Cantor has lost touch with the average constituent.

“Why doesn’t he care about the people? It’s because they’re not paying his bills. Money corrupts,” Hartke said, adding that she’s not raised “near enough” money in support of her campaign — though she didn’t know exactly how much she had raised.

“This may not be Eric Cantor’s fault — because it happens when you’re in politics for a long period of time — but the money and the notoriety of being in office breaks your connection with the people and serving the people,” added Hartke, daughter of the late Sen. Vance Hartke, a Democrat from Indiana who served nearly two decades in Congress.

“That’s something my father taught me: bring the needs of the people to Capitol Hill. You are their public servant.”

Considering her lack of name recognition, Hartke realized running against Cantor could “tear me apart as a person.”

“But I can’t sleep at night if I don’t go out and try to help the people keep their home, pay for health care, the basic things,” she said.

Hartke, like other Democrats running this November, wants change in Washington, and she thinks she can bring it.

Following is a summary of her stance on various issues, including:

The war in Iraq“
I support the orderly withdrawal of the troops and refocusing. We need to focus our efforts on where al- Qaida is and right now they say that’s in Afghanistan. That’s up to the military to target where we need to be focused and inform Congress and the White House, but you can’t go out and cowboy these types of things.
“There’s no excuse for the wealthiest nation in the world to pour their money in Iraq and not meet the needs of its people.”

Health care
“I support affordable, universal health care, the same program, basically, as Barack Obama. And we need checks and balances on the insurance companies — there is a reason why insurance companies have the biggest buildings in the United States. This has to stop.
“The insurance companies are making the decisions for will they cover that heart medication? My mother has a pacemaker and they make those calls.
“They make the call for surgeries because if they make it price-prohibitive they’re making a judgment on the value of your life.”

The economy
“It’s the single biggest issue, and other than the money that’s being spent on the war, the one thing that can fix our economy is to fix this oil issue.
“Our whole economy has been run into a ditch by the likes of George Bush and Eric Cantor. When someone is called to leadership, they are supposed to be responsible,” Hartke said of Cantor’s recent criticism of Congress for its inability to address the issues of health care, gas prices and the economic crisis.
“I found that odd. Like a mother, when you go home at the end of the day you can’t make excuses and say, ‘I don’t have any milk in the house because I ran out of money, I forgot to get it, there was something else that came up.’ Excuses don’t work for me. The pains of the people are the responsibility of George Bush and Eric Cantor right now and if I get into office I will fully back any funding for alternative energy.”

Gas prices
“I think we need funding for research and development of alternative energy. There are so many intelligent people out there,” Hartke said, naming groups like the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Sierra Club.
“These people are not extremists. They have some good ideas and I’ve gone down to Richmond and seen them just being knocked over because the oil companies line the pockets of George Bush and Eric Cantor and Dick Cheney. We don’t want to keep banging down the same door of foreign oil.”
Cantor’s support of cutting the federal gas tax
“That’s not even a drop in the bucket. It’s not good enough. We need to start working on alternative energy yesterday and we need to incorporate many great minds to get things done.”

The foreclosure crisis
“We need to have a program so that people can remain in their homes — give them a six-month reprieve (from their mortgage), six months to gather up their income and then tack those payments onto the end.
“Maybe their rate will reset by that time and it gives other programs a chance to take effect and we need to stop the predatory lending with new oversight of banks. You can’t have banks in charge of watching over how much money they make — of course they’re going to go out and lend like crazy. It’s human nature. You need safeguards to keep (banks) on the straight and narrow.
“Because when a family is facing foreclosure, they start to argue and they blame themselves. Then it leads to depression and divorce, they lose their job, and the kids go on welfare.”

Immigration reform
“We do have regulations on immigration, but again it comes back to funding. In order to implement it you have to fund it because you have to staff it.
“(Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is backlogged. They are not able to get all that done because we aren’t funding it. Instead, we’re funding this war.
“Immigration is terribly important because it’s costing us a lot of money. Having a worker program here is important. Letting people have a legal path to immigration is important. This country is a melting pot of many people.
“All we have to do is enforce the (immigration) guidelines that we set, fund that and quit occupying another country.”

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or .