State Representative Candidate Visits Messiah

A Mechanicsburg attorney making his political debut in a bid for State Representative visited Messiah College last week. Republican Lowell Gates, a resident of Upper Allen Township, spoke at a Messiah College Republicans meeting on Tuesday night. He is running for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania's 88th legislative district. If elected, Gates would represent 66,000 people in Mechanicsburg, Upper Allen, Shiremanstown and other local townships including Grantham and Messiah College.

Gates spoke informatively and extemporaneously, seeming comfortable in front of a student audience. He dressed in a disarming navy pinstripe suit without a tie. Gates arrived early to the meeting to interact with students and distribute campaign literature, which he sarcastically referred to as "propaganda."

Gates is campaigning primarily on a platform of economic reform, promising to cut taxation and clean up unnecessary government spending. He identified his five guiding political principles which he said are the central doctrines of Conservatism: lower taxes, controlled spending, smaller government, economic freedom and personal responsibility. He said that Pennsylvania has the nation's second highest property tax and fourth highest gasoline tax and that although the state's population has only grown by 3% in the last 20 years, government spending has increased by almost 80%. "How can our government honestly take half of someone's income?" he said.

Gates portrayed himself as an outsider idealist on a mission to cut down on insider corruption among the Harrisburg political elite. He described his bid for office as an effort to serve the community by giving up his time to work in legislation. He expressed dislike for "career politicians" which he views as manifestations of people being too lazy to get involved in politics. He noted that career politicians tend to increase pork-barrel spending in order to stay in office. He also said that he disapproves of national Republican leaders such as President Bush who lower taxes but increase spending and bureaucracy, causing massive budget deficits. "I'm what Republicans have always stood for" he said. "We need to position Pennsylvania to create jobs for you [students] in the future."

When asked how he would avoid the fiscal trap of lowering taxes without meaningful decreases in spending to match, Gates responded that he would support a zero-based budget. In this budgeting scheme, the budget starts at nil and grows from there as programs are added on after legislative review. According to Gates, the current scheme is to simply take last year's budget and add on to it without any sort of thoughtful review. He also supports a bill called the Taxpayer Protection Act which would prevent the state government from raising taxes any faster than the rate of inflation.

Gates said that there are a few particular issues he would like to change if elected. One of these is eminent domain, a practice intended to be used to take personal property for public services such as road building, but often misused to take private property and (indirectly) sell it to developers. Another is casino gambling, which was recently legalized in Pennsylvania in order to raise money to phase out property taxes. Gates said that although the casinos are indeed bringing in vast amounts of revenue, none of it has gone toward reducing taxes. He said that gambling causes moral decay and is a hidden tax on the lower classes. Finally, he said that he supports privatizing state liquor stores as a means of promoting economic freedom and discouraging the current corruption inherent in the state system.

As a newcomer to the political scene, Gates offered a few interesting vignettes about the challenges of running for state congressional office. He said that his campaign managers gave him a list of 10,000 party members likely to vote in Pennsylvania's April 22nd primary and that he spends his afternoons walking door-to-door attempting to meet all of them. He says that he meets a lot of people, especially senior citizens on fixed incomes, who are frustrated with the career politicians and Harrisburg insiders. "People are angry about the unresponsiveness of government" said Gates.

The students he spoke to seemed generally impressed with his message. College Republicans member Jon Hopecraft said that it was good to hear Gates' perspective and that much of his platform was relevant to him as a Central PA native. "I think this area's ready to bloom and [Gates] knows that" said Hopecraft.