1st District House candidate Alan Bennett pledged to support roads and bridges, schools, broadband, and conservative values during an interview with the Sheridan Express Saturday during a visit to Parnell. He answered more questions to Ballotpedia, which gives information about candidates from the state house to the national level.
Mr. Bennett is one of five Republicans running to replace Allen Andrews, who has been term limited out of office. He will represent Gentry, Nodaway, Andrew, and Holt Counties if elected. Due to redistricting, Worth County was moved to District 2 and Gentry County to District 1. He said in his Ballotpedia answers that he has answered a call to public service his entire adult life and that serving in the legislature would continue that call.
He said the main issue was roads and bridges. “They’ve been neglected for too long here,” he said. He noted that the legislature finally appropriated money for the area this session, and he said he wanted to build on the efforts of Rep. Andrews and State Senator Dan Hegeman, who is also leaving due to term limits.
On schools, Mr. Bennett said he wanted to increase funding for public schools, but also hold them accountable. He said he wanted more parent involvement in what students are learning and avoid “wokeness,” which he defined as teaching multiple truths instead of one objective truth. “The proponents of wokeness and Critical Race Theory present themselves as having revealed something,” he said. He noted that local funding was 50-70% of school revenue, while federal funding was 10% and state funding was 20%. “I’d like to see increased state funding,” he said.
There has been a lot of talk this year about open enrollment. He said he supported it because he believed it would make schools more competitive. “Higher quality schools would draw more students, and underperforming schools would have fewer. It would create an incentive,” he said.
He also supports calling a Constitutional Convention under Article 5 of the US Constitution, so that the people can bypass Congress. In particular, he wanted to see an amendment to enact term limits. “They’re never going to limit their own terms,” he said.
Mr. Bennett said he supported the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, which returns the abortion issue to the states. Previously, the Supreme Court had held that women had a right to choose. “The founders never intended to make it a Constitutional right, so the Supreme Court did the right thing by returning it to the states,” he said. He noted that it doesn’t affect birth control, and that it has nothing to do with the right to privacy or interracial marriage, as an example.
Currently, the state is pushing for major broadband expansion, and Mr. Bennett said he was all on board with these efforts, predicting they would reverse decades of population decline. “People can live here and work remotely this way,” he said. “This will get our schools on a more solid financial footing. We’re losing population, and this will bring our population back and get us better representation and increase the tax base.”
Mr. Bennett is a 31 year veteran of the US Army and the Missouri Army National Guard. He has served across the US and served a tour in Afghanistan and has earned the Meritorious Service Medal and the Army Commendation Medal. He was a Military Policeman, a Field Artillery Officer in the 129th Field Artillery in Maryville and Albany and later a Logistics Officer. He has also worked as a substitute teacher and a social security technician. He is currently a Construction Technician with the Missouri Department of Transportation, where he inspects construction of roads and bridges.
He currently lives in Barnard, where he is an Elder at Barnard Christian Church. He is a current board member at Christian Campus House at Northwest and a former Nodaway County DARE board member and president.
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