(mellow music) (mellow music continues) (upbeat music) (phone beeping) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to "Meet The Candidates," ahead of the March 19th, Illinois primary election.

I'm Jak Thichenor.

We're joined by Thomas Clatterbuck of Champaign.

He is one of two candidates vying for the Republican nomination in the 13th Illinois House District for the US House of Representatives.

Thomas, thank you for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- The 13th district runs from the Champaign Urbana area over to Springfield and then down to the East St. Louis area on the southwest end.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I understand that you're a third year law student at the University of Illinois and before that you were a digital journalist in Springfield.

- Yes, all that's correct.

I was not born in Illinois, but the first trip we ever made was moving to Illinois.

I grew up in Jacksonville where I went to public school district 117.

After I graduated, I went to the University of Illinois.

I did most of my undergraduate at the Champaign campus, but I did finish up in Springfield at the UIS campus where I got a BA in history.

After I graduated, I worked in Springfield.

I did a couple of different things.

The main thing was that digital media project that you talked about where we did a lot of watchdog journalism in the Springfield area and for the surrounding communities.

We did some really good work in Jacksonville as well.

And then of course COVID happened and journalism, which is never an easy gig, became impossible.

And I was working at the courthouse at the time and I decided I wanted to do more than work at the courthouse as a deputy clerk.

And I decided to go to law school.

And so I applied again to U of I and I was accepted.

And now I'm in my third and final year at the law school.

Oh, I'll be graduating in May.

And with any luck taking the bar at the end of July.

- Do I understand correctly that you did some work for the current incumbent Republican Congresswoman, Mary Miller?

- That is correct.

I worked in her Mahomet office this summer from about May to mid-July doing constituent service work.

- [Jak] How would you describe yourself when it comes to the political spectrum?

Left centrist, right of center, or where do you come down?

- I would say definitely right of center, but you know, as you mentioned, Mary Miller, Mike Boss, very right-leaning candidates.

I would say probably not as right-leaning as Mary Miller or the Freedom Caucus, but I do have high respect for them.

And I worked for Mary who's sort of the lead of that caucus.

So, I'm comfortable working with the whole range, 'cause I also worked for the Senate Republicans in Springfield, I guess a year ago now.

- [Jak] What prompted you to run for elective office yourself?

- So there, the big thing are the issues.

A lot of issues have been brewing for a while.

The big, my big ones are emerging technology, things like self-driving vehicles, AI.

Eight months ago when I was putting my first literature together and I was talking about AI, people said, "Nobody knows what that is and nobody cares."

And now it's everywhere and it's a big deal.

This election cycle is going to create an opportunity where some very important questions are gonna be answered, questions that are gonna impact everything about our lives.

And I didn't wanna be on the sidelines for that.

I didn't wanna say, "Oh gosh, in two years I'll be better cemented, in 10 years I'll be better cemented," because the answer, the questions are being answered right now.

And I don't wanna look back and say, "Gosh, I was just too busy to be part of that process," and miss the historical moment.

- You raised the issue of artificial intelligence.

Where do you come down on that?

There's a lot of, there's a lot of viewpoints on that issue and how it can affect our politics, how it can affect our daily lives.

Where do you see this being a part of everyday life and what are the policies that you would propose to address that?

- So when we talk about AI, there's really I think two separate categories of questions about AI.

There's the civilian side and there's the military side.

And the military side I think is much more people's minds because we have people in Springfield who have talked about the weaponization of AI.

Colonel Mark Hurley has talked about how things like Skynet are much further along than the general public is generally aware.

And I think we need to say, we need to take this moment and say, what are we doing?

Because there are wars brewing around the planet.

Where's wars in Ukraine, wars in the Middle East, conflicts in Africa and South America.

We're about to reach a moment where saying no to new military technology is going to be a lot more difficult than it is right now.

But right now we're in 1913.

And if in 1913 we had said no to poison gas, we would never have seen it at all.

But in 1915, the same people who said no a year before and three years later said, yes, we can't do that with AI.

But to your direct question, the question about civilian AI, there's a lot of opportunity.

The legal field was worried for a moment about the ability to produce documents, the ability to draft documents almost instantly.

And I think that it's gonna have some really powerful impacts for access to justice, access to bureaucracy, making things work better.

But systems are no better than the people who make them.

They have the same priorities as the people who may make them.

And we need to make sure that whatever tools we're building are respecting, A, the processes we have in place, but also things like copyright, because music, visual art, literature, all of that is being threatened by these language learning models, which are able to produce what is essentially mechanized copyright infringement.

And while I'm not gonna say I don't enjoy AI produced materials, I think it's really fascinating technology.

We can't say to all our human artists, "you're just outta business now.

Thanks for all the content, but we don't need you anymore."

So I think the government has to say, "We can respect the new technology, but also we need to make sure that we're not just putting human creators, human workers out of work wholesale."

And so I think those conversations need to happen.

I'm not gonna say I have all the answers, but I know there are questions that need to be answered that are not being answered right now.

- One of the big issues facing Illinois and many other states of course, is that of immigration, the southern borders to the country.

Senate, Democrats and Republicans in Washington put together a comprehensive plan that would address the migrant crisis.

But House Speaker Johnson and presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, rejected the plan.

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

- The most important thing we need to do is whatever system we have, we need to make sure we're funding it effectively.

We need to make sure we're staffing it effectively.

Part of the reason we have such a large immigration backlog is we don't have enough prosecutors, we don't have enough judges, we don't have enough law enforcement officials to process these cases in a timely manner.

It's like playing football with only eight players.

You could do it, but until you get a full roster, any other conversation's really missing the point.

We do need stronger border enforcement.

We do need to make sure that these systems are running better.

And in a lot of ways until the executive branch is able to step up, both by having the manpower from Congress, but also having the political will to enforce the law as written.

Changing the law itself is fixing the wrong problem in my perspective.

We need to commit to what we're doing.

And once we decide how that's working, then we can have a conversation about what needs to change.

- Who should, in your view, who should be allowed into the United States and what should their potential pathway to citizenship be in your view?

- Whatever, listen, I think the system we have now has a lot of merit to it.

But the number one thing we have to do is ensure that people understand the legal pathway is the only pathway.

As long as the promise of amnesty is dangling in the air, people will understand that cheating is the way to get into this country.

That can't be tolerated.

Until we're committed to say there's not gonna be another Reagan amnesty, there's not gonna be another forgiveness, the law is gonna be enforced as written.

No other pathway makes sense.

No other change tweaking around the edges, 'cause people are gonna overstay their visas, they're gonna cross the border illegally, they're gonna commit other kinds of fraud.

And until we say no amnesty, period, that's not gonna change.

- Democratic Governor JB Pritzker is calling on the federal government to provide direct financial assistance to help states like Illinois and others deal with thousands of asylum seekers who have been arriving by bus or by plane, sometimes on foot for months now.

What role should the federal government play in helping the states with actually footing the bill for once these folks get here?

- There should be less footing the bill because there should be fewer bills.

If we had the appropriate number of administrative judges, the appropriate number of prosecutors, lots of these claims, which are quite frankly patently illegitimate, would be processed, the people would be sent home and they would not be readmitted to the country.

But the system where we're dangling being allowed to stay in front of their faces and we're not putting those resources behind the immigration system itself, we're fixing the wrong problem.

The problems that we don't have enough resources for the people who come legally.

The problem is that we're trying to fund a system we don't think is legitimate, but not fund the legitimate system.

And so I think, yes, when states are given populations, they should have the resources to deal with them.

But if we're not funding the courts themselves, if we're not funding the real system, giving people the stopgap funding is just totally focused on the wrong question.

- Let's talk about the economy.

The Illinois gross domestic product is now over $1 trillion past couple years.

The state of Illinois is a major economic powerhouse, but the benefits of that economic growth don't always trickle down to people who live in the 13th district.

Many people are struggling with unemployment, housing, and food insecurity.

What is the state doing wrong and what could we do better at the federal level to bring in more new industry back to this district?

- So when you talk about industrial policy, all of the arguments about free trade, about comparative advantage are perhaps legitimate economic arguments.

But they miss the wider arguments about what a nation is.

The United States isn't just an economic zone, we have an economy because we have people who need to be taken care of, but also we have national security issues, which are hopelessly tied up with industry.

The fact that we're reliant on China for the chips that go into our defense infrastructure is a huge national security problem.

But it's also an industrial problem.

It's also an economic problem.

We need to prioritize reshoring industry to the United States and forgoing the short-term economic benefit for the long-term economic stability that comes by having wealth producing jobs rather than arbitrage jobs.

Because Illinois, like you said, is excellent, has an excellent position for being that new Silicon Valley.

We have the universities, we have the rail, we have the people, quite frankly, we have the water and the clean air that we should be a hub.

And if we had an industrial policy that focused on making sure Americans were getting jobs in those key industries, I think we would see Illinois make a comeback.

- Well, your response leads me to my next question, and that's transportation infrastructure.

How does transportation infrastructure fit into the picture here in terms of economic development?

The central part of the state's kind of the crossroads for rail, for highways, all of that railroads.

What specific projects would you promote on Capitol Hill to bring back to the 13th district to spur job creation?

- We need to be getting our bridges under control.

There's a huge backlog of bridge repair.

And so that's number one.

We need to be taking care of the infrastructure we have now.

But rail is very efficient.

Our canals are very efficient.

And so industry needs to tell us what they need and we can make sure that that happens.

Because again, we have a lot of that preexisting infrastructure in place, but it's not being maintained the way that it needs to.

And if we don't maintain it, we're gonna lose it.

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

Most of that funding comes right at the local level, and it's the state level in terms of the quality of K through 12 education.

A lot of the city and county school districts in the 13th district are still catching up when it comes to per pupil spending for students.

And there are poor educational outcomes and high dropout rates.

What role should the federal government play in addressing issues for K through 12 students?

- So first, when it comes to things like curriculum design, the federal government should be less rather than more involved.

But my family had school administrators in it, and part of the problem with the federal government getting more involved is federal dollars come with red tape and red tape takes dollars to handle.

And so we need to make sure that when we're increasing the number of spending dollars, that those dollars are being used effectively and that we're getting a good return on investment for that reporting that we require, and so I think the federal government could play a very powerful role, not so much in providing more dollars, but in making sure that the backend bureaucracy that makes our schools function from a mechanical standpoint is being streamlined and we're only doing the effective stuff because I don't wanna see local control be lost.

But I do think those sort of macro analyses that the Department of Education is very good at, that could be done much more effectively.

And I think that's the most important role for the federal government.

- You mentioned higher education institutions as being one of the major selling points in growing the Illinois economy.

Illinois has been a gross exporter of college students for decades as high school seniors look out of state to attend college and university.

Does Congress really have a role in helping to stop the brain drain when it comes to Illinois and keeping our best and brightest here?

- I think, again, speaking to the industrial policy, the more places there are jobs, the more places people can stay.

And so I do think there's a role there, but a lot of it has to come to the states themselves, making places that are attractive and keeping dollars, the cost benefit there, because one of the problems in higher education is not that higher education is unaffordable, it's that it costs too much just in raw dollars.

And so there's a lot of people in my graduating class at the law school who their first job, maybe first couple of jobs, aren't focused on the work they wanna be doing.

They're not focused on where they wanna be living.

They're focused on where can they earn enough money to pay for school.

And so if anything, the federal government should be helping make college less expensive.

Again, through that streamlining of bureaucracy, through that streamlining of requirements that will make it possible for people to make choices based on what they want to be doing rather than where the money is.

- Here's one that hits home in central Illinois.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans are kind of going head to head right now on negotiating a new farm bill for the country.

They're split on issues like providing money for supplemental nutrition assistance programs known as SNAP and how much to address environmental issues, conservation issues.

Illinois is one of the largest agricultural producers in the country.

What would your approach be to negotiating a new farm bill for the country?

- So my agricultural priorities are first we need to make sure that the supply and the price of food is stable and we need to make sure that family farms are protected because when we have the major consolidation of agriculture, that is not beneficial to the economy at large.

Even though again, some businesses make a lot of money, the rest of us are maybe worse off for it.

And so anything that can prioritize those two goals really has to be the focus.

And there's a reason SNAP has always been tied to the farm bill is that we're too good at growing food and we won't accept there being hungry children in this country.

I think those are both things we should be proud of.

The fact that we don't tolerate hunger in this country and that we're so good at growing food.

And I think those two things don't have to be in conflict.

And so from my perspective, I can support both of those things comfortably.

- Illinois was once one of the top coal producing states in the country.

We employed thousands of miners in downstate Illinois, Southern Illinois, Central Illinois.

But the Clean Air Act of 1990 pretty much wiped out most of those jobs.

How would you make the 13th district competitive when it comes to new and renewable forms of energy?

- So the market of energy is changing and part of the problem is, as we've seen in Springfield, the demand for energy is changing as well.

One of Springfield's major problems with the CWLP plant was they were expecting the demand for energy to rise pretty precipitously over the last two decades.

And that simply hasn't materialized.

And so I think from a perspective of we can prognosticate about how much energy we're going to need and where it should come from, again, I think is maybe giving us too much credit.

Again, where did fracking come from which dramatically impacted the price of oil?

So I think renewables have their place in the equation.

I think coal has its place, natural gas has its place, but this is an economic question on a day-to-day basis as much as anything else.

And so I think the ability to plan prospectively in terms of fossil fuels versus renewables, I think is not something we're gonna be, we're quite as good at as we think.

- [Jak] What role should Congress play in dealing with climate change?

- So climate change from my perspective is a downstream issue from other environmental concerns.

Things like water pollution, land erosion, and the abundance of plastic.

And so climate change is a downstream issue.

We need to get issues like plastic under control because that's an issue that builds up in the ecosystem.

And we don't know how to get rid of, we know how to deal with atmospheric carbon.

Some of it's easy, some of it's hard, but we know what the answer is.

We don't really know how to get the microplastic added to the ecosystem.

We don't really know how to get the chemicals out of the water.

We don't know how to restore our top soil in a time span measured in less than generations.

And so while climate change is obviously an issue we should be concerned about, there are much more pressing environmental concerns which are feeding into the things we know cause climate change.

And so that's where my focus is.

- A couple of social policy issues.

Mental health experts have said for years that Illinois, particularly rural Illinois, needs to have better access to mental health services, especially young people, children.

What can Congress do to improve services to our most vulnerable residents, especially those who are relying on Medicaid and other social safety net programs to get the help they need?

- Like a lot of things, your priorities are where the dollars are, if we need there, want there to be more professionals available, we need to make more dollars available.

And we also need to make sure that there aren't going to be professional risks for seeking those services.

Because a lot of conversations when it comes to professional responsive, when it comes to professional licensure, when it comes to being able to own a firearm, when there are credible conversations that say you might not be able to be a doctor, you might not be able to be a cop, you might not be able to be an attorney, you might have to give up your guns, when those threats are in place, people don't get services when they should get them.

And so I think we need to say mental health is the priority.

We want people to get treatment and that means we're gonna have to take some of those risk factors away and that is something Congress could do as well as making it the real focus.

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

Majority Democrats in the General assembly in Springfield have worked to protect abortion rights in Illinois.

Many congressional Republicans though are pressing for federal ban on abortion.

Where do you stand on that?

- So I think the real holding of Dobbs was clear.

Abortion is a state issue.

As much as I am pro personally, pro-life and if I was running for State House, my answer would be very different.

But I think under the Dobbs decision, as I understand it and as it has been explained to me, I don't believe a federal abortion ban would survive constitutional scrutiny even by the Supreme Court because it doesn't fall under a good article one power.

And so the most important thing for the pro-life movement right now is making sure that the Dobbs decision stays in place so that when the culture changes in the states, states can adopt pro-life legislation.

Any action, I think at the federal level in terms of banning abortion or restricting abortion is going to be struck down by the Supreme Court and is going to be counterproductive for the pro-life movement.

Certainly in the short, short to medium term.

And so that's not something I would support because I don't think it's consistent with our constitutional system and not good for the pro-life movement.

- I wanna turn to foreign policy issues for a moment.

Continued military and financial support for the state of Israel is driving wedges between Americans because of the Palestinian casualties in the wake of the October Hamas terrorist attacks that were in Israel.

How does the United States have a role in brokering a lasting peace agreement in that area?

Is there hope still for a two states solution?

How would that work in your view?

- I think America, as a major ally of Israel and as a major global power clearly has a role to play in any peace project for a regional conflict.

And I would support, I want the hostages to come home, but I also want the Palestinians, the Palestinian civilians to be safe.

And so if a ceasefire accomplishes those goals, that's something I would support.

But again, we're decades into the peace process and I think hoping for a peace in the short term is maybe not reasonable.

But I think the United States, if we made a public commitment that we want there to be peace, I think that is very important to helping that process move forward.

- The war in Ukraine has entered its second year now, and Ukraine is still desperate for continued American military and financial aid to keep Russia at bay.

Some congressional Republicans are questioning how long can the United States keep investing in that?

Where do you stand in terms of what we're doing with regard to Ukraine?

- The United States needs to get out of the way of peace in Ukraine.

The United States has been dangling the promise of NATO support in front of Ukraine, has been privately interfering with the peace process.

And that process has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men being killed in a battle that Ukraine probably cannot win.

And so I want as much of Ukrainian territory and as much of the Ukrainian people to be intact at the end of this as possible.

But America should not be dragging this conflict out because we think it's good for our defense industry or good for our weapons testing.

That is not an appropriate use of the Ukrainian people.

- Yep.

Just less than a minute left.

Illinois of course, is tipped blue in recent years with Democrats holding super majorities in the general assembly, all the statewide executive offices and all but three of the state's congressional seats.

If you win the primary, you'll be running against incumbent Democrat, Nikki Budzinski.

She has a sizable campaign war chest.

The district favors Democrats and the way it's run, how can a Republican win in the 13th District?

- It's a couple of ways.

The first is as we build our message about the issues like bringing industry home, getting a control on artificial intelligence and these other good government programs, Democrats who have become disaffected by the failures in Springfield and the failures in Washington can feel comfortable crossing over because the problem has often been for the Republican party that we've been a couple of issued party where if you work in Blue World, I've worked for legal aid.

There are things you can't talk about in the legal aid office.

There's things you can't talk about if you're a social worker and or a teacher.

And I hear that from students all the time.

If we can give those unhappy Democrats something to talk about, something that they can feel good about voting for, we have the votes in the 13th to win this race.

- Thomas Clatterbuck, thank you very much.

One of two Republican candidates running for the Republican nomination in the 13th US Congress District in Illinois.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you so much for having me.

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