(upbeat music) (camera beeping) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to Meet the Candidates ahead of the March 19th Illinois primary election.

I'm Jak Tichenor.

We're joined by Scott Crowl of Milan, Illinois, who's one of two candidates running for the Republican nomination for Congress in Illinois' 17th US House district.

Mr. Crowl, great to have you on the program.

- Well, thank you, Jak, I appreciate you doing this for me.

- Now, the 17th district is interesting.

It runs from Macomb and Bloomington, on the southern edge of the district, up through the Quad Cities area, and then northward along the Mississippi River to Savanna, and then it goes over to the Rockford area.

It's an interesting place to represent.

Your background is in farming, the state's largest industry.

When you think of your experience and your reasons for running, what makes you, in your opinion, the best qualified person for this nomination?

- Well, it isn't just farming.

I worked for a company called Air Wisconsin for 26 years, retired, at that time, during that time, I held a position of Customer Service Operations Manager, so I was in management, and then the last 10 years, I worked for the Quad City Airport itself as a customer, or not a customer service, but a field maintenance worker, which we were in charge of the whole airfield.

We took care of any needs on the airfield.

And during that time, I ended up being our AFSCME president, and the reason I ended up doing that is the gentleman that was doing it at the time, he was using it, let's say for personal gains.

He wanted to move on into management, in which he was throwing his members under the bus, so I ran against him and defeated him, and I was there for three years.

And my last term, they knew I wasn't gonna serve out, but several members came up and said, "Hey, Scott, would you do this until you retire?

Because we like the job you're doing."

So now, with that back in mind, I have a union background, I have a farming background, and a management background, so I have a diversity of experience in my lifetime.

And with that in mind, is what I think I will be presenting to the Republican Party, and to the party, or the 17th district, is a person who's walked in everybody's shoes.

I can relate to working, I can relate to unions, I can relate to management.

And that's what it's gonna take to get the 17th district into being a people's party versus a party of one side or the other, because I represent all facets of our life here in the 17th district.

- As you've traveled the 17th district, and we kind of went over the broad outlines of where that district runs along the different lines, and you've talked to folks, what do they tell you is the biggest issue facing them in the 17th?

- Well, it's kind of two of them.

One's the border crisis that they're fearing, because we're letting people in that shouldn't be in, and the other is inflation, because it is robbing everyone, I mean, everyone's, buying power, in which, you know, the stats came out just the other day where you have to be making $11,000 plus more a year just to keep up with inflation than you did three years ago, and that is wrong, and it happened by two reasons.

One, Congress overspending, which causes inflation.

You printed more money, so you made inflation that much higher.

And the second one is we took away our American energy independence, which affects everyone, no matter what you do.

You're energy dependent on fuel and things like this, electricity, heating.

So these two things are the combination of what's wrong with our country, and that's two things I'm gonna go right after, because we need those two things to be under control.

- I'd like to drill down somewhat more on the immigration issue.

As you recall, Senate Democrats and a number of the Republicans worked together to put together what they considered to be a comprehensive plan on addressing the migrant crisis on the country's southern border.

But Speaker Johnson, and the presumptive Presidential nominee on the Republican side, Donald Trump, wanted nothing to do with the plan.

What kind of border protection plan would you endorse if you're elected to Congress?

- Well, there's multiple things we can do.

One, just start enforcing the asylum laws that we have on the books today.

That's one.

Two, we can complete the building of the wall.

And three, we can start doing a like a visa program.

Those who are entered have to sign up within a certain period of time, too, so we can vet them people out, so we know who's actually in the country.

And one of the other plans we could do is anybody who hires an illegal alien, such as companies, private people, whatever, if we find out about it, they should be penalized for this, I mean, a substantial penalty.

This would help the American workers as well, because their jobs would be more guaranteed versus being undercut by people who came here illegally.

- We're a country that's based on immigration, because folks came from all over the world to build the country.

In your view, who should actually be allowed into the United States, and what should their pathway to potential citizenship be?

- The history of the United States has always been, we've always taken the best, and we selected them.

And why did we do that?

So they wouldn't be a burden on the people when they came in.

I have a friend who came from Greece.

He's my age, and he came over when he was 12, 13 years old.

His parents had to be sponsored by his relatives.

I don't remember if it was his dad's dad or mom or whatever, but they had to be sponsored so they weren't a burden on our society, and that's what we should do.

We don't want people coming over and being a burden on American society's taxpayers.

Once again, you're robbing from the people who actually work, and pay taxes, and that is wrong.

- What about folks who are basically, well, they're called Dreamers.

They were brought here unlawfully as children, many of them have lived most of their lives in this country, and many of them are productive citizens.

Former President Donald Trump tried to scrap that program, he was turned back by the Supreme Court, but there's always the possibility that that could be brought up again.

What about the Dreamers?

- Well, you know, if they're 20 years old and they've lived here all their life, they ought to apply for citizenship, and we ought to grant it.

I have no, you know, it's inhumane to send these people back, or to penalize them for what their parents did, but let's make sure they become citizens, and active people in our society.

- Governor Pritzker has been calling on the federal government in recent weeks and months to provide direct financial assistance to help states like Illinois deal with the thousands of asylum seekers who have been brought here by plane, by bus, or however manner.

It's stretching the state's capacity to the breaking point to deal with the crisis on their own.

What role should the federal government play in helping foot the bill, if you believe that is the case?

- Well, first of all, we shouldn't be aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in our country, and which brings me to the question of, a pondering question here.

If this is true, you cannot, it's against the law to aid and abet criminals, why isn't Pritzker being charged with this?

Because if they're illegal, came across illegal, and they're illegals, and we're giving state money to them, why isn't a prosecutor charging him with aiding and abetting?

I think that's dead wrong, these people don't belong here, if they came illegally, they should be deported.

- I wanna turn to a different issue, and that has to do with abortion.

The Supreme Court, of course, overturned Roe versus Wade, leaving it basically up to the states to decide how to deal with the issue.

A majority of Democrats in Springfield in the General Assembly have put a lot of effort into protecting abortion rights in Illinois.

Many Congressional Republicans, though, are pressing for a federal ban on abortion.

Where do you stand on the issue?

- Well, I'm pro-life, I can make a couple exceptions.

Life of the mother would be one, rape and incest would be others.

The state, it's a state issue, and it went back to the states, so the federal, you know, as far as federal House and Senate, it's the states' issue, it isn't a federal issue anymore.

- You touched upon this earlier in your introductory remarks, talking about inflation, and the next topic has to do with the Illinois economy.

When you look at Illinois, it's a major economic powerhouse across the country, like the fifth largest economy in terms of states.

The gross domestic product is somewhere now over a trillion dollars, it has been for a couple of years.

But a lot of the benefits of that strong economy don't always trickle down to all the people who live in the 17th district.

Many of them are facing unemployment, housing and food insecurity issues.

What's the state perhaps doing wrong, and what could we do better through Congress to bring more business and industry back to this district?

- Well, tax incentives are the biggest part of the business problem.

We need those in place to bring back jobs from China.

We need to have incentives, and the state also has to do what's right, too, and it's a state issue to a degree, but the state is overspending, we're, the biggest budget Pritzker just introduced this last State of the State address is the biggest by $27 billion more than when he started in office.

And actually, Illinois is losing because of taxation in Illinois.

We have to reverse that, but that's at a state level.

At the federal level, if we devise tax incentives, bring back jobs from China and overseas, that's great, but Illinois has to play their part in making sure that they're not overtaxed as well.

- When it comes to building economic activity, transportation infrastructure is a huge part of that.

Northwestern Illinois has major interstates, railroads, there's river-based commerce on the Mississippi River.

What specific projects do you have in mind to promote on Capitol Hill to improve the transportation system in this district?

- Well, in this district, agriculture is relying on the Mississippi River, and with that in mind, they've talked about it, and one of the things I would like to see is the lock and dams made larger so that they don't have to break up the barges as they go through, so it can make 30 barges, I wanna say, one whole lock through, versus being broken up.

And this would cut in half the transportation cost down to the Gulf where we do all our shipping in the 17th district.

I shouldn't say all, but quite a bit of it.

A lot of it goes to the ethanol plants as well, which is a big industry in the state of Illinois as well, which we need to, as far as I'm concerned, the EPA, I think, are going to let E-85 go year round, which would be a big plus for the agricultural industry, and it would help cut down on the cost of fuel for everybody who drives and uses it.

- There's been a lot of emphasis on building high-speed rail corridors through the state in recent years.

How does that fit into the picture, as far as you're concerned?

- I don't see that as a major plus in our state.

I wish it would be, but it's not going to be.

They're talking about doing a high-speed rail between the Quad Cities and Chicago.

It isn't, they gotta lay basically new track, and nobody uses the train around here anyhow.

I mean, the closest railroad station I know from the Quad Cities is Galesburg, and not too many people go down there to use it.

Either they drive, or they fly.

- In terms of education, it's always, when you talk to people around the district, in my experience, people talk about jobs, number one, they talk about education right behind that, or at the same level as creating jobs.

The federal government plays a relatively small role in addressing the quality of public education in the state of Illinois.

Most of the money, of course, comes from state and local sources, for K through 12 education.

There are still districts, though, across the state, despite education funding reform a few years ago, that still are trying to catch up in terms of per people spending, and a lot of them have poor educational outcomes, high dropout rates.

What role, in your opinion, should the federal government play in addressing those issues for K through 12 schools?

- Well, the Department of Education doles out quite a bit of money, and listening to people talk in the forums I've been attending, is that we need these school boards not to be scared of the federal government.

Okay, so as what we need to do in the Department of Education is we need to go back to basics, to STEMs, to science, technology, engineering, math, and we could drill down a few more subjects need to be in there, too, but when you fill out the federal money, these school boards, or school districts, should be going to the core of teaching these items, versus woke things, and other things that, you know, the true that helped Americans become a better and more prosperous nation because of our children's education, which I think we should do, or we just get rid of the Department of Education as well, and let the local people decide what they need, and what they don't need.

- Same question for higher education.

This district has Western Illinois University in it, it has Northern Illinois University in it, and community colleges and the like.

What is the federal government's role in trying to keep more of Illinois' best and brightest here in their home state as opposed to going over to Iowa, Missouri, wherever, to pursue their higher education goals?

- Well, it's what happened under the Obama administration, is he guaranteed student loan rates, and when he did that, these schools, and I'm not saying it was Illinois, it's across the nation, they saw this as a way to increase their tuition costs, because the government's basically backing it up.

Well, it's what we did, is we polluted our school education.

By doing that, it made it more costly for these kids to go to school and obtain that goal of theirs.

So what'd I'd like to do is get out, the government get out of financing student loans, because not everybody is qualified to go to school, and there's a lot of blue collar jobs out there that pay just as well as when you got out of college.

So I'd like to see this gotten away with, and put back to the basically, the local level, where people can make their own decision, and do what they wanna do, and with that in mind, if Illinois does more to keep businesses here, it'll keep more of our young people here in the state as well.

So that's what we need to do.

It's kind of a trickle down effect, but we need to work together between the federal and the state to keep our children here in our state.

- Of course, agriculture is huge in this district, and it's, you know, one of the, it's the biggest business in the state of Illinois, because of our farm resources.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans are really having trouble finding common ground on negotiating a new farm bill.

We're currently operating under a continuing resolution to keep that program alive.

There's differences between the two parties on things like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and then how much we should be spending on environmental issues and the like.

They're not finding much in the way that they can agree on.

What, in your view, needs to be the approach to negotiating a new permanent farm bill?

- Well, what we need, for the farmers, what he needs is crop insurance protection, because he has leverage, as a new farmer, or even a middle aged farmer, he has leverage, and with a crop failure, he'd be out of business, and that isn't good.

The government, I know, because I used to do this, spray at my own fields, and they've had their regulations on what you can spray, when you can spray it, how much can you spray.

That's fine, because it helps the environment, but it's what we're doing is ruining our farming industry by keeping some of these regulations in effect.

One of the big things that I think the Democrats would like to do is put the cattle farmer out of business, the pig farmer out of business, because they want us to be plant-based, people who eat plant-based food, in which I think it's up to the people to determine what they eat, not the government dictate their means of food.

- You touched upon this earlier, when it comes to energy.

Illinois was once one of the top coal producing states in the country, employed something like over 10,000 coal miners in years past.

Many of those jobs are down state in Illinois, but in terms of negotiating national energy policy, it's still something that the winner of this race will be involved with.

The Clean Air Act of 1990 pretty much put the coal business to bed in Illinois.

There was still some mines operating.

Is there any role for coal still in the nation's energy portfolio?

- I think there's room for a few more.

I mean, Illinois is a net importer of our energy, which is another reason why businesses are leaving, the cost of energy.

We need to go to the future.

I know the governor signed a bill to allow a nuclear plant to be built in southern Illinois, but here's one of the things that I see coming up in the future.

I don't know if it's five, 10 years down the line, it's fusion.

What I've seen on fusion, it's very clean, very energy, you know, independent, doesn't take much to do it, and it'd be very cheap to supply our nation with.

- What about forms of renewable energy, developing that at the local level and state level in the state of Illinois?

We have a lot of wind farms in the state of Illinois, solar is catching up in many respects.

What is Congress's role in trying to address and grow that industry?

- Well, at the present time, it seems to be only growing because of the subsidies the government is giving.

It's not reliable.

That's the whole thing in our energy policy.

It isn't reliable, and the batteries it would take to store the energy we need to run a city is outrageously not even available at this present time, so therefore, we need to look at alternative energies, like I say, there is nuclear, there is fusion that's gonna be coming on the line.

Those are the two things we need to build our future on, not something that's unreliable.

We need something reliable for our country.

- I wanna close with a couple of questions on foreign policy, since that's also in the purview of Congress.

The continued military and financial support by the US for the state of Israel is driving wedges between Americans.

You have the situation with the Palestinian casualties in Gaza, then of course, you also have, you know, what started the whole thing, with the October Hamas terrorist attacks.

How does the United States manage to create, or negotiate, a longer lasting peace settlement in that region?

Is there any hope for a two-state solution at this point given how far things have gone?

- Well, my understanding is, a lot of the mid-Eastern countries don't even want some of the Palestinian people, they don't wanna associate with them.

With that in mind, it's gonna be hard to get a two-state solution, and when you have these Hamas people teaching young kids to kill Jews, those people are very, very, very sick to do that.

We are brothers to each other, and that's what we should do, is try to work together, but when you teach people at young age, to be hostile towards Jews, those people, they're just wrong, there's something wrong within that country, and that segment of population that's just dead wrong.

I mean, I don't blame Israel for going after them, because they want them dead, they want them massacred, thousands of people, kidnapped them.

That's just dead wrong.

I mean, those people don't, they have a problem, and I don't know what it is.

I don't quite fully understand it, but I'm disappointed that a race like that would wanna kill people.

- Let's turn to Ukraine.

The Ukraine, the war in Ukraine after the Russian invasion is now entering its third year, and there's no end in sight to it.

Ukraine continues to be desperate for American military and financial aid to keep Russia at bay.

Some members of your party, the Congressional Republicans, are questioning, though, how long the United States can help continue footing the bill for that.

Where do you stand on continued aid for Ukraine at this point?

- Well, Ukraine's kind of a double-edged sword, and why I say that is, one, I support them.

Two, we should make sure when we send the aid, that it goes to the war effort itself, because that is what we're trying to stop, is aggression by the Russians, and we need to do that.

And the other part of this equation is, we're taking down Russia's military might by knocking out their tanks, knocking out their infrastructure, and this is good for America, because it makes them have to rebuild and spend their money, and all we're doing is sending aid over versus sending boots over, and I do not wanna send boots over, I'd rather send my money over than American souls.

- We've got about a minute left in the program.

Along those lines, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has made it very clear that he would let Russia do "whatever the hell it wants," quote/unquote, to countries that don't fulfill their financial pledges to support their commitment to NATO.

Do you agree with the former President's position on that?

- Well, as you know, that's kind of taken out of context, 'cause what he's saying is you need to pay up.

Why should we protect you, and use our treasures to protect you, when you signed a contract, basically, with NATO, pay 2%.

You're not paying it, it's a threat to them, and they'd better understand if they want help, they need to do their share in this part of the contract.

- We have reached the end of our time.

Thank you very much, Scott Crowl, he's one of two candidates running for the GOP nomination in Illinois' 17th House district.

Thanks very much for your time, sir.

- Well, I appreciate your time as well.

I enjoyed this interview, Jak.

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