Jason Kasiar, a Republican from Eldorado, is running against Democrat state Rep. Brandon Phelps in House District 118 with the hope of helping the state's residents live better lives and to protect them from corrupt politics.
Kasiar is a pharmacist and business owner who owns and operates Beck’s Drug Store, and he has relatives who were born and raised in Eldorado for at least four generations.
In a radio interview with Tom Miller from Morning News Watch on WJPF, Kasiar said the U.S. Founding Fathers served people, but also worked as farmers, lawyers and other professions.
Jason Kasiar
| Contributed photo
“Being a representative is a service to those you represent, not a job,” Kasiar said.
The benefit of not seeing a run for office as a job eliminates the need to make money off of it, like many current politicians are doing in Illinois.
“Our state faces a lot of problems, problems that have been created by career Chicago politicians like (House Speaker) Mike Madigan (D-District 22) and those who support and vote to keep him in power,” Kasiar said. “Career politicians see being your representative as a job instead of the service it’s intended to be.”
Kasiar said career politicians regularly make and break promises to the hard-working people of southern Illinois year after year, and he is running because he is tired of the party politics.
“Right now, there is an ‘us vs. them’ mentality in government that drives me crazy,” Kasiar said. “I’m not interested in any of that; my only concern is representing and making every vote to benefit southern Illinois. We must do something to strengthen education, bring good-paying jobs and fix the corruption going on in Springfield.”
Kasiar said the city of Eldorado, along with the other cities in the southeast part of the state, has been in decline, and it is pretty obvious when one visits the area, and the only way to make things better is by small steps.
“We need every seat we can gain, and we need to become more conservative with our spending,” Kasiar said.
Kasiar said the answer to improving the state’s situation is not to tax the people more. Instead, the answer is to spend more conservatively, and that takes one step at a time.
“Illinois needs to be more business-friendly,” Kasiar said. “(Some) 1.1 million people left Illinois in the last four to five years. Those people were taxpayers. So are we going to punish those who stayed in Illinois by taxing them more? Increasing taxes from 3.5 percent to 7 percent or 8 percent is not the answer.”
Kasiar also said those who receive pensions should not be punished for what legislators and candidates have promised them.
“I firmly believe that when our government makes a promise to you, we must uphold that promise and not mismanage money and make excuses,” Kasiar said.
In addition to defending the pensions promised by the government, Kasiar wants to make sure public servants do not receive pensions, especially considering how badly they are managing taxpayer dollars.
Kasiar also wants to fight the war on coal in the area and promote the industry in southern Illinois, strengthen education, bring in good-paying jobs, improve infrastructure and get rid of Springfield corruption with term limits.
"Together, we will win this campaign and take southern Illinois' vote back from the Chicago elites and special interest groups," Kasiar said.
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