Fayetteville : Atkins attorney announces bid to unseat Boozman in ’08
Posted on Sunday, December 10, 2006
FAYETTEVILLE — An Atkins Democrat already is devising a plan to run for Congress in the 3 rd District in 2008, only a month after U. S. Rep. John Boozman trounced the Democratic nominee in the November election.
John Burnett, a lawyer who said he knows he’s got a fight on his hands, said Saturday that he’s planning to run for the seat held by the GOP since 1967.
He made the comments in an interview after Democratic Chairman Jason Willett introduced Burnett at the party’s committee meeting in Fayetteville.
“It’s going to be really fun to watch him go forward on this,” Willett said. “Let’s just do the damndest we can to knock John Boozman off.”
Burnett said he’s not deterred by the Nov. 7 defeat of Woodrow Anderson III, a Fort Smith businessman who got only 38 percent of the vote compared to Boozman’s 62 percent.
Even in a bad year for Republicans nationwide, Boozman managed to improve on his 2004 margin of victory.
Boozman hasn’t said whether he’s running again. He didn’t return a message left for him on Saturday.
Burnett said he’s a lifelong Democrat, the son of lifelong Democrats, and said he’s aware that a race in the 3 rd District would be an uphill battle.
He said he’s starting early — he was already wearing a homemade campaign button on Saturday — for that reason.
He hopes to raise $ 50 each from 2, 000 people in 2007.
“If one doesn’t hold values that they feel are strong enough to stand up and argue or fight for, then what kind of values do you really have ?” Burnett said.
He said he’s planning to work for policies that benefit “the bottom of the pyramid” rather than the top, the end of the economic pyramid that he said the Republicans tend to favor.
He said he wants to go forth like Hubert Humphrey and campaign as a “happy warrior,” having fun while he’s at it. Humphrey was vice president under President Lyndon Johnson then ran as the Democratic nominee for the high office in 1968, losing to Richard Nixon.
“I have no doubt that Mr. Boozman is a kind-hearted, well-intentioned intelligent human being, he’s just wrong on some things,” Burnett said. “I sense that he’s a follower rather than a leader, and I think we’re into times where we need to have a little bit more aggressive leadership.”
An example of where Boozman is “wrong” is in tax and social policies, Burnett said. Specifically, he mentioned Boozman’s opposition to estate taxes and his opposition to government funding of stem cell research.
Burnett said he’s not yet sure what the solution is in Iraq but that he’s studying the issue, including the recently released report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.
He said his 26-year-old son, a lieutenant in the Army, won the Bronze Star fighting in Iraq and will return for a second tour in October.
Burnett said he tells people that he “will never vote to send their son anywhere in harm’s way that I will not vote to send my own son.”
Burnett said he has a “ham and eggs” law practice in Atkins, which he said means he represents people in a variety of cases, from criminal defense to domestic cases such as custody disputes.
An Atkins native, Burnett said he lived in Oklahoma City for about 20 years, working for West Publishing Co., a legal publishing firm, before returning to his hometown in 2004.
He said his family has lived in Pope County since the 1830 s.
He said he’s a graduate of Atkins High School, Arkansas Tech University and the University of Arkansas School of Law.
He said he served as a Benton County justice of the peace in the early 1980 s and at age 27 came in fourth in a five-way primary race for state land commissioner in 1980, losing to Bill McCuen.
“Just to let you know what a fantastic politician I am,” he said jokingly.
He and his wife, Lana, together have five children, ages 9 to 26.
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