Raymond “Buddy” Sifers, who embraces Tea Party principles, will challenge Bill Otto for the Republican nomination for the 9th District Kansas House seat in the Aug. 3 primary election. Success in the primary will decide the seat, since no Democrat filed.
Otto, 61, is completing his third two-year term in the Legislature.
Sifers, 53, thinks government is too big and spends too much.
“Most of us think what we do in our households is what government should do — when times get tough, you tighten up,” he said.
When the Tea Party movement began to unfold early last year, to express dissatisfaction with federal bailouts and deficit spending, Sifers was among those who organized the first rally here.
He spoke at the rally and recalled the admonition from Thomas Paine that it is “the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” and proposed that “our government’s spending is completely out of control … we are moving further each day from law, reason and the constitution our country was founded on.”
Sifers told attendees he would prefer to trust his future to “all of you than those who govern us today.” He likened Tea Party gatherings to pre-Revolutionary War conferences in the original colonies.
“Maybe what we do across this country today will be enough,” Sifers said. “Maybe the silent majority will be heard, our warning heeded, but if it isn’t, how long will we wait, how many trillions will we be in debt? … Common sense says, ‘When you’re in a hole, quit digging,’” … “when times get tough you don’t borrow all the money you can.”
Sifers heeded his own admonition by agreeing to seek election to the Legislature. Sifers told the Register Friday initially he “never thought about running” for the Legislature, although as early as last year a knot of people, noting his concerns were the same as theirs, began to encourage him.
“They were from both parties, which is what the Tea Party represents,” he said: Republicans and Democrats who are “fed up with the way things are going in government.”
As the 2010 session progressed in Topeka, starting in early January, Sifers said he became more distressed and also heard from more people, asking that he run for office.
His reluctance, Sifers said, was because of his businesses, a drilling company he started with former Iola High classmate John Barker in 1989 and a pump supply and repair business he and wife Donna started in May 2009.
“I’m so busy I didn’t know how I could maintain my businesses and spend three months in Topeka (for legislative sessions),” he said.
That’s when supporters went a step further.
“The people I do business with stepped up and said they’d help out if that’d swing me to run.”
Running for the Legislature wasn’t “something I didn’t want to do,” and now that he is committed, Sifers said, “I’m going to get my walking shoes on and knock on doors. When people put their faith in you, you owe it to them to do your best.”
“WE NEED to get a handle on the deficit,” Sifers said. “We’ve lost a lot of private sector jobs and we don’t want to go down the (financial) road of some other states. It’s hard enough for Kansas to compete as it is, with the (favorable) corporate tax structures of some of our neighbors,” notably Oklahoma and Texas.
Small businesses are beleaguered by taxes that at all levels of government have increased in recent years, Sifers said.
He began occupationally in agriculture and worked on drilling rigs to supplement farm income. When he decided to go into business for himself, Sifers said he “read every book they had in the library about small business. They all said that 90 percent fail in the first year, but if you make through the first year you’re in pretty good shape.”
Not completely true, he allowed.
“Keeping a small business going today is as difficult as it was when I started 20 years ago,” Sifers said. “It’s not unfair to ask government to do what we do at home and with business, get along with what we have.”
Education consumes the biggest share of the state budget.
Sifers said he wasn’t prepared, a day into his candidacy, to outline how he would deal with cuts to education, or to address any other key issues in Topeka.
“I’ll have to study the details,” he said.
However, Sifers said: “As I see it, education in the U.S. is pretty good but it’s going along like this — a flat line with little improvement, he said, with a wave of his hand — while funding is going up at about a 45-degree angle. If the two were going along parallel, I don’t think anyone would argue with funding for education. But, it’s out of whack.”
Legislators passed a a 1-cent statewide sales tax just before adjoining, to prevent additional cuts to education funding and social services.
“The sales tax (increase) is going to hurt the border counties, such as Johnson, Bourbon and Montgomery,” Sifers forecast. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a net loss in revenue overall,” because of people shopping across state lines to avoid higher Kansas taxes.
