Indiana District 3: A conversation with Libertarian Jarrad Lancaster

Ahead of the election, we invited the candidates for Indiana’s 3rd Congressional district into the station to discuss their reasons for running, their policies and how they’ve campaigned since May.

Libertarian candidate Jarred Lancaster discussed immigration reform, connecting with voters, and financing his own campaign.

So in northeast Indiana, we've seen a significant increase in our immigrant population over the past few years. Were it not for that immigration, the population as a whole would have grown very slowly. That community is very important to a number of business sectors, including construction, agriculture, food production. How would you speak to that community at large and their value?

Jarrad Lancaster: Yeah, certainly. And I guess, let me start off by saying that I am the great grandson of an immigrant. My great grandfather immigrated here from Holland when he was 10 years old. He passed on when I was 15, 16 and because of it, it's actually caused me to rethink a lot about immigration policy and things like that.

You know, I used to be pretty staunch with the right as far as closing the border, right, and thinking that way. Unfortunately, along the lines of this, too, a lot of people, when they hear secure the border, they hear close the border.

For me, that's not the case. I do believe that we need to secure the border, but it's not as much for immigration as it is for me to prevent the trafficking, but we need to look at some severe, hard hitting immigration reform.

I think that the idea that it takes 12 years and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in lawyers and courts for an immigrant to be able to become a US citizen if they want to become a US citizen, is absolutely ridiculous. I think that we can reform that. I think that we can get a lot of the courts out of it and open up the courts for better things and make a better easier, more straightforward process for an immigrant to be able to become a citizen.

There's been a lot of politicizing of education in the last couple election cycles. There's a lot of educators running. Do you have an education policy and how do you see the federal government helping the state of Indiana with education a little bit more?

JL: You have to understand, I'm a Gen Xer, or I'm I'm a product of the 80s, and when I was in high school, the United States was the number one in education. We're currently number 26. The main difference that I see between then and now is the fact that education has went to the federal government instead of staying in the States, and I wholeheartedly believe that it needs to be sent back to the States.

Anything that goes to the US government is like it's bound for failure, so to speak. But no, I believe that we need to get the federal government out of the education system and allow that to go back to the states and back into more of the local parents hands.

Do you have any support for any sort of reform in terms of gun control, things like universal background checks or red flag laws? Where do you think we are?

JL: I am a constitutionalist. I personally believe that we need to have one more gun bill and that abolishes the 300 plus that came before it. I'm very supportive of the veterans, and there's a lot of times that our veterans want to seek mental health and they don't because of the red flag laws. So, when it comes to the issue of the Second Amendment, like I said, it's I'm constitutionalist. I believe in in taking it right down the line and "shall not be infringed" is one of my favorite statements.

There's been a lot of conversation about who is and isn't showing up in communities during this election cycle, what has been your strategy for reaching out to voters?

JL: This is the first time I've ever ran for office, in all honesty, and I've had a blast. I honestly have, we have done, I don't know how many parades this year it's been, it's been a lot, and if I can reach out by hands on walking, walking in that parade, and I can honestly say, out of all the parades I've walked, I have not seen any of the other candidates. I've seen party representatives, but I have not seen any other candidates, and I've been there to shake hands and talk to people.

If elected, would you hold regular town halls with constituents?

JL: Absolutely, to me, that has been a big issue and a big problem. I never dreamt I'd be getting into politics. I never did, and you have to understand what brought me here. You know, I was one of the original founders of the American Freedom Convoy to DC to fight for body sovereignty, and this was more or less the next step in my battle and in that fight, and for people to have representation, because I didn't feel like their voices were heard when everything was going on with COVID, and there was definitely a lot of issues there. I felt that there was a lot of government overreach and overstepping, and that's what brought me here.

Yeah, I do. I absolutely love connecting with people. I would enjoy having town halls. The problem, the problem is, and that I see, is, you can email your congressman, you can call your congressman's office.

But does your congressman really get the message? Or do you just get some email back saying, "Well, yeah, I heard you," but there's not actually ever a response. Look, I could respect my congressman or my representative. If they come back and they look at me and go, "Look, I understand how you feel. You just aren't in the majority." I would have more respect for that than I would just to be pushed off to the side.

Would you support a legislative solution to campaign finance reform and/or to gerrymandering?

JL: You know, I have no issues with campaign finance reform, because I have ran, I've ran this campaign on, other than out of my own pocket, probably $250 I absolutely appall PAC money. You should never be able to buy a candidate. Let them stand on their own merit and let them all have that equal voice.

Do you have any plan for legislation to counteract or respond to climate change we're seeing here in the third district?

JL: I am a proponent of a smaller footprint nuclear power, and in all honesty, I mean hydroelectric is actually the most efficient power, but it isn't quite as reliable. You give up a little bit of that efficiency, and when I say a little bit, I'm talking less than 5% you're still in the 90% efficiency range for nuclear, but the reliability goes up enough that it definitely makes that trade off worth it. And we, we don't have the infrastructure for hydroelectric here. We don't have the dams. You go on down in the district, Huntington County and Salamonie, down there in that area? Yeah, we have a couple of dams, but they only have one outlet. So it just doesn't make it practical to run Hydro Electric in this area.

Indiana in itself, there they have the LEAP project going on, but the massive amounts of water usage that that's going to take, and this is something a lot of people don't realize, is the IEDC (Indiana Economic Development Commission) has a study for the amount of water that they're going to be using, and it doesn't hit this district quite so much yet, but it does hit the Indiana taxpayer.

But they were looking at pumping up 2 million gallons of water a day out of the Wabash River. And what people don't realize is, if it drops the water table, you have one commission that's doing this. But when the farmer goes out and has to get a permit for an irrigation system, it goes through the DNR, which is another branch of government. So what's going to happen if, if that drops our water table low enough that our farmers can't get to the water that we need to grow our food?

And that has definitely been an alarm bell, so to speak, is food production in the United States.

So there's a lot of things that go on there with climate issues that have to be considered.

What makes Indiana unique, both politically and generally, and why do you want to represent it?

JL: Man, I've been a lifelong Hoosier. I was born here in Indiana. I was raised from basically the sixth grade up through high school on a dairy farm. I love our agricultural industry enough that, I mean, I still have my horses and everything you know, and kind of a little bit of a rodeo background. This district is kind of unique between the rural and the city, and I can honestly say I'm kind of, I don't mind saying I'm a little bit out of touch in the city. I didn't used to be. I had a former wife that she actually lived right here in Fort Wayne on Calhoun Street, just south of Rudisill, is where she grew up at.

So when I was in high school and and after, you know, I was really in touch and came to Fort Wayne, was in Fort Wayne, I guess, a lot. But there's different challenges within the city, and that's something I would be better off, in all honesty, pulling somebody else in that knows those challenges better than what I do.

And if you've got to be able to realize what your weaknesses are to be able to best provide for the people within that area.

It's diverse, and I like it.

Find our conversation with Democrat Kylie Adolph here. Republican candidate Marlin Stutzman did not respond to several requests for interview.