Local firefighter in race for state House seat
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/hl/News/24435/
GRAVETTE — Holding local and county elective offices has left the candidates in House District 100 with different approaches to tackling government problems.
Mary Lou Slinkard, Benton County clerk since 1981, faces Byron Warren, a nine-year member of the Gravette City Council, in the May 20 Republican primary.
Slinkard said she’s learned it’s best to study the nitty-gritty details of an issue before jumping out with a solution.
Warren said he gets the feeling that Slinkard is trying to get elected on name recognition, without taking stands on important issues. He said he wants to lower taxes — though he doesn’t have specific plans for how to deal with the effect of tax cuts on the state budget — and he has ideas on how the state should take on illegal immigration.
“ I don’t know what her views are. All I hear is how much experience she has, ” he said.
Slinkard said that’s just her approach to government.
“ I don’t think anybody can go to the Legislature for the first time and have all those answers, ” she said. “ I probably have more questions than I do answers.
“ I’m not trying to go down there and make a name for myself. I just want to go and do as good a job as I possibly can for the people of this area, ” she said.
Slinkard and Warren are competing for the seat held by term-limited Rep. Daryl Pace, R-Siloam Springs. The district includes a mostly rural area and the communities of Gentry, Gravette, Decatur, Centerton and other towns in western Benton County.
There are no Democrats in the race.
Slinkard, 64, a lifelong resident of Benton County, grew up on a farm near Gravette, a few miles from where she lives. She worked as a legal secretary for several years before running for county clerk.
She beat the incumbent in 1980 and has had few opponents. The last was in 1994, she said. She decided to retire as county clerk and run for the Legislature.
Warren, 35, is a Heber Springs native who moved around while he was growing up. He ended up staying in the region after attending the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
A firefighter for 13 years, he’s a captain in the Siloam Springs Fire Department. He’s president of his local International Association of Fire Fighters and has lobbied the Legislature on firefighters’ issues.
Warren said he’s always considered himself an independent, in part because city government positions are nonpartisan.
But he said he became more active with Republican Party politics in recent months.
Warren and Slinkard disagree on whether the Legislature should have voted recently to raise the severance tax on natural gas. Slinkard said she would have voted for the increase; Warren said he wouldn’t have.
Slinkard said she favored it because the increase won’t be passed on to consumers, and that it will create needed highway revenue.
Warren said he’s philosophically opposed to tax increases.
“ Taxing companies is another way of saying, ‘ We don’t want you here, ’” he said.
He said he believes cutting taxes would increase state revenue, though he said he doesn’t know how or at what level of tax cuts such a change would begin to occur.
Slinkard said better roads will help the state.
“ I’m not an economist, but infrastructure affects many things, ” she said.
Like other Northwest Arkansas legislative candidates, Warren said immigration is what he hears the most about when visiting with voters at their homes.
He said he wants state government to fine landlords and employers who rent to or hire illegal aliens.
“ Take away their jobs, and they will go back to their country, ” he said of illegal aliens.
Warren said it can be difficult to discuss immigration issues in a political race because people take things the wrong way. For example, he said, he doesn’t want illegal aliens to have access to free or reduced lunch programs in the public schools.
“ People say, ‘ Oh, so you want those children to starve ? ’ I’m sorry. Those families have money. They’ve got wads of money. You go up to any of them, they pull out a wad of money, ” he said. “ They can send $ 1. 25 to school for their children to eat... like I do. ”