A visit from Congressional candidate Kara Eastman began with facts about her background: a social worker from Chicago, non-profit fund-raiser in Omaha married to a Creighton professor. Then she shared her goals in running again for national office after "I came up a little short" two years ago.
"I've seen first-hand where government programs fail and succeed," she said, and emphasized, as we've seen in TV ads, her commitment to work for affordable health care and to fight to hold down prescription drug costs. Eastman, noting that she doesn't accept corporate money, said, "We need to work with corporations but not for them."
We learned more about Kara's views from an extended Q & A session with Rotarians throwing both hard balls and soft balls when she stepped up to the plate. The first one came from a point raised in Republican attack ads connecting her to the New York Congresswoman known as AOC and asked, "Are you in lockstep with her?" Eastman said she's "proud of my coalition of endorsers," but doesn't agree with them on everything. "I'm independent."
Later, club president John Sullivan suggested the race will be won by the "candidate who commands the middle," which prompted Eastman to cite key issues that she supports and which are supported by 70 percent of voters polled. Several times, she touched on efforts to cast her as an extremist, "calling me comrade. I'm not a socialist, I'm a Democrat."
While "a lot of outside groups are attacking me, voters deserve the facts. I'm pretty boring, to be honest."
She invited Rotarians to view the racial justice plan she has released. Speaking of her contact with Police Chief Todd Schmaderer, she declared, "He was great. It sounds like Omaha could be a model for the country."
Guest Journalist
~Warren Franke
