U.S. senator's record fodder in contest

Boozman touts his votes; Coleman says incumbent not conservative enough

U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Rogers
U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Rogers

In his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Rogers, Curtis Coleman of Little Rock says Boozman isn't conservative on fiscal issues.











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Arkansas Secretary of State

Curtis Coleman of Little Rock

Boozman disputes Coleman's characterization of his voting record.

John Boozman

Age: 65

Birthplace: Shreveport

Residence: Rogers

Family: wife, Cathy; three children.

Occupation: U.S. senator since 2011.

Business/political experience: Co-founder of Boozman-Hof Regional Eye Clinic in Rogers, 1977-2002; Rogers School Board 1994-2001; cattle rancher, 1984-99; Benton County Fair Board, 1990-2000; 3rd District congressman, 2001-11.

Education: Northside High School, Fort Smith; attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; optometry degree, Southern College of Optometry in Memphis.

Curtis Coleman

Age: 67

Birthplace: Jacksonville, Texas.

Residence: Little Rock

Family: Wife, Kathryn; three children.

Occupation: Chairman, Institute for Constitutional Policy.

Business/political experience: Church pastor, 1971-74; president of the Curtis Coleman Evangelistic Association, 1977-94; owner of Northwest Advantage Information Services, 1994-99; founding chief executive officer and president of Safe Foods Corp., 1999-2009.

Education: Conway High School; Central Baptist College, associate degree; Southern Arkansas University, bachelor’s degree; attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

"I have been accused of several things in my life, but not being conservative enough has never been one of them," Boozman said in a recent interview in Little Rock.

For the second time in six years, Boozman and Coleman are vying for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. The primary election is March 1. The winner will face Democrat and former U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge of Fayetteville, Libertarian candidate and former Tull Mayor Frank Gilbert, and write-in candidate Jason Tate of Fayetteville in the Nov. 8 general election.

In 2010, Boozman won in an eight-candidate race for the GOP nomination for the Senate seat. He received nearly 53 percent of the vote. Coleman finished in fifth place with 4.8 percent of the vote.

Boozman went on to oust the incumbent, Democrat Blanche Lincoln. Boozman went to the Senate from the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 2001-11.

Coleman made another try at statewide office in 2014, but lost to now-Gov. Asa Hutchinson in the Republican primary. Hutchinson won 73 percent of the vote, compared with Coleman's 27 percent.

Coleman said voters should cast their ballots for him in the GOP Senate primary because he favors a "smaller, less-expensive and less-invasive government."

"John's voting record does not reflect those standards or principles, and mine will," Coleman said in a recent interview at his office in North Little Rock. "I think he is probably the nicest guy I have ever met and I like John personally, but I don't think he has provided leadership in the Senate, and I think we are in a place where we desperately need that."

Boozman said voters should vote for him because of his varied life experiences as a small-business man, a health-care provider, a cattleman and a U.S. senator. He is the second-ranking Republican senator on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, and the third-ranking GOP senator on the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee.

He said he and his staff have worked hard to represent Arkansas and help constituents with their problems with the federal government.

The incumbent has bettered Coleman in collecting campaign contributions. Boozman reported raising $652,240 and spending $212,023 last quarter, leaving $1.559 million in the bank as of Dec. 31.

Coleman reported raising a total of $58,688, including $17,971 from himself, and spending $52,813 last quarter, leaving $5,899 in the bank as of Dec. 31 for his 2016 campaign. He also reported contributing $17,971 to his 2010 campaign account and spending $17,993 to terminate the account as of Dec. 31.

As for Coleman's criticism of his voting record, Boozman said, he has good grades with conservative groups such as the American Conservative Union, Americans for Prosperity, National Right to Life, National Rifle Association and Numbers USA. The latter aims to reduce illegal immigration.

To support his contention that Boozman isn't conservative on fiscal issues, Coleman said Boozman voted seven times to collectively add $6.3 trillion to the federal government's debt that now totals $19 trillion. Coleman said the senator should have fought more to reduce federal spending and debt.

Boozman said he was elected to represent Northwest Arkansas' 3rd Congressional District in a special election in November 2001, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the United States spent a lot of money when it went to war in Afghanistan after the attacks and later in Iraq.

"When President [George W.] Bush was commander-in-chief and in power, I voted to raise the debt ceiling, and I think that was an appropriate thing to do ... looking at the circumstances that we were in," he said.

"I voted to raise the debt ceiling once in relation to Barack Obama, and I did that in return for the biggest slowdown in government spending in a decade," in the Budget Control Act of 2011 that set discretionary spending caps for 10 years, Boozman said.

He said he voted last fall against raising the federal debt ceiling because "we busted the budget caps ... instead of showing fiscal responsibility."

Boozman said he voted in October 2013 to end the ill-advised federal government shutdown and that measure included a four-month suspension of the debt limit -- not an increase. That set up a vote that required Congress to vote on a debt ceiling increase in February 2014, which Boozman said he voted against.

Coleman said Boozman voted in December 2014 for a federal budget that "effectively funded Obama's executive amnesty order, the use of tax dollars for Planned Parenthood and another year of Obamacare." The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010 by President Obama is often called Obamacare.

In response, Boozman said that's ridiculous.

Planned Parenthood receives Medicaid funding, and "that is mandatory spending we don't vote on, but we did send a bill to the president's desk that would have defunded Planned Parenthood. President Obama vetoed that bill," Boozman said. Boozman said he's voted to repeal the federal health-care overhaul enacted in 2010, and he opposes "amnesty."

Coleman said he opposes abortion except to save the life of the mother. Boozman said he opposes abortion except to save the life of the mother and in cases of rape and incest.

Coleman criticized Boozman for voting to renew what was known as the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which he called "one of the most egregious invasions of the federal government into our public classrooms."

Boozman said he and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Dardanelle, also a Republican, voted to renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but reauthorizing the law does the opposite of what Coleman said.

"It's probably viewed as the greatest turnback to state authority in the last 25 years," Boozman said. "It effectively makes it so we don't have a national school board that is trying to micromanage [education].

"We were able to remove the tie between federal funds and Common Core standards. Now the [U.S. Department of Education] cannot withhold funds to states because they are not using Common Core or any other Washington-driven curriculum," he said.

As for his top priorities, Coleman said he wants to rein in federal spending, stop deficit spending and reduce the national debt.

He said he favors eliminating a number of federal agencies -- the Departments of Education, Energy, Labor, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development -- because they infringe on responsibilities of states.

Coleman said he would support a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution to limit federal spending to 18 percent of the gross domestic product because that spending is now in excess of 20 percent. The federal government historically hasn't had a deficit when it spent less than 18 percent of gross domestic product, he said.

Boozman said he wants Congress to agree on a balanced-budget amendment with "real teeth" that could be modeled on Arkansas' law, which bars state government from deficit spending.

"That's the only way I think we'll rein in spending long-term. Presidents come and go. Congresses come and go," he said.

Coleman said he would propose a constitutional amendment to limit congressmen to serving a total of 12 years in Congress, and would work to make the care of veterans a higher priority with the federal government.

As for his top priorities, Boozman said he wants to work in the U.S. Senate to "create a [business] environment where people want to hire people.

"Right now, we are being inundated by [federal government] regulations," he said. "[Small businesses] aren't reinvesting in their companies because they don't know what the rules are going to be in the future."

Boozman said he also wants to push for the federal government to have a better plan for fighting the war on terror and the Islamic State.

"The No. 1 priority is protecting its citizens .... and we have got to become engaged on that front and come up with a sound plan for how we address the war on terror," he said.

As for whether he favors using American ground troops to fight the Islamic State, "what we should have learned from Vietnam is that we shouldn't manage wars in Congress," Boozman said.

"We need good information coming from people on the ground and the military leadership, and we need to come up with a sound list of how to defeat ISIS," he said, adding that he wouldn't take ground troops "off the table" as an option.

Coleman said he would rather fight the battle against the Islamic State on "their soil" not U.S. soil.

As for using American ground troops to fight the Islamic State, Coleman said "the strategy that we use is beyond my level of information. But attacking ISIS and taking them out, I absolutely support," he said. "Are we going to use drones? Are we going to use ground troops? Are we going to use airstrikes? I don't know what the best tactics are. But I will support the best tactics that are available."

Boozman and Coleman said they both support repealing Obamacare, which is the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Boozman said the federal health-care overhaul hasn't controlled health-care costs. Mandated regulations have increased health-care costs and led to $5,000 and $10,000 deductibles on health insurance policies that amount to "catastrophic insurance," he said.

The senator said he wants to allow people to shop across state lines for health insurance, and he wants Congress to enact "tort reform, so we don't have to practice defensive medicine."

Coleman said, "Let's free the health-care market to a free market economy that ... solves it own problems when we give it a chance. Almost everything we have seen the federal government do is screwed up."

The state is using federal Medicaid funds available under the federal law to purchase private health insurance for low-income Arkansans under what state officials call the private option; the program provides coverage to about 200,000 Arkansans. Supporters of the private option call it a conservative alternative to Obamacare.

Hutchinson wants to overhaul the private option to encourage participants to work and take personal responsibility. He wants to rename it as Arkansas Works.

"Eliminating the people who are on the private option is different from eliminating them from having health care," said Coleman, who opposed the private option. "The private option is about health insurance. It is not about reforming health care. If we can return health care to a free-market economy, I think we'll see a dramatic improvement overall in health care, including for those on the private option."

Boozman said, "When Obamacare is repealed, the money for Medicaid expansion should be granted to the states for those governors and Legislatures to decide what fits their needs, as opposed to shoving everybody into a broken, one-size-fits-all system that does not and will never work."

SundayMonday on 02/14/2016

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