Dale Kerns, Libertarian candidate for U.S. senate in Pennsylvania
The Delaware County (Pa.) Daily Times recently featured an interview of Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania 2018 candidate for U.S. Senate Dale Kerns, a former borough councilman. Below is an excerpt from the Dec. 3 article by Kathleen E. Carey:
Kerns is the Libertarian running for the Senate and he’s optimistic it will go well, considering his predecessor’s success with little effort.
“Ed Clifford brought in 235,000 votes without even being a candidate who was campaigning,” Kerns said of the 2016 Libertarian Senate candidate. “I expect us to get far great than that because we have a great plan in place, we have a great volunteer team and student organizations on campuses across Pennsylvania.”
With 12 town halls scheduled through April and two state tours completed, the Ridley Township resident and former Republican Eddystone councilman explained why he is running as a Libertarian.
“We don’t have a viable option when it comes to going to the polls,” he said. “Everybody feels that they have to vote Democrat or Republican, the lesser of two evils and I don’t want that to be the case. I have two daughters and I want them to grow up to have the freedoms that we’re all promised as individuals. I want them to know they can be anything in life, people aren’t going to have handouts for certain businesses. They can be anything they want, they don’t have to worry about government getting in the way.”
Individual freedom is the backbone of many of Kerns’ issues from the war on drugs to the war on terror to personal liberties and even education.
In a letter he sent to President Donald Trump last month, Kerns wrote that the U.S. has spent more than $1 trillion on the war on drugs as the federal prison population increased 800 percent and the country is the top in the world with illegal drug use.
He recommended taking an approach similar to Portugal and Switzerland by legalizing drugs and having addicts administered maintenance doses of heroin.
“It’s better than going on the path that we are with people dying every year,” Kerns said, adding that the free markets are the solution to this problem and would eliminate the underground trade and perils, similar to alcohol and Prohibition.
“The war on drugs is a big money maker,” he said. “It’s unethical as a human race to cage people like animals and pay someone to do it. Now, you’re putting an incentive on someone’s head to keep them in prison.”
With the war on terror, Kerns said the founders believed members of Congress were closer to the people.
“The Constitution says that Congress shall declare war but recently over the last decade, even longer, our presidents declare war,” he said. “Our presidents send people off to war and we don’t even know that they’re there.”
In addition, Kerns said, “I’d like to allow people to be more free. Right now, we rely on government for so many things.”
That includes health care, taxing, FEMA, welfare and social security.
Education, he said, should be local.
“As a U.S. senator, as far as education goes, I don’t think that the federal government should have a say, so I would not dictate what they do,” Kerns said. “I would just give them the power back, which would allow them to be more free.”
That would also apply to struggling districts. Kerns said they should handle themselves and then, if they had to, close down like any business would.”
Referring to the 2016 Libertarian presidential candidate, Kerns said, “Gary Johnson said Libertarians bring in the best of both worlds. You have fiscal conservatives and you have socially liberals and you bring them together, that’s a Libertarian
“People don’t have to take the lesser of two evils,” he continued. “There’s another option out there and that other option has people in mind, that other option wants to solve problems.”
To appear on the ballot, Kerns will need to collect at least 5,000 signatures from registered Pennsylvania voters between March 8 and August 1 next year.
Learn more at the Kerns for U.S. Senate campaign website: DaleKerns.com
