Primary Election Day in Illinois is Tuesday, March 17th. Three candidates are seeking the Republican Party nomination on the ballot for Illinois’ 94th State Representative District: Josh Higgins, Bailey Templeton, and Incumbent Norine Hammond. Candidate Josh Higgins explains his platform for running:
“My platform is based on really three main principles; obviously, lower taxes, being the big one, affordability for people, reinvigorating small towns, and really taking the shackles off farmers with regulations and allowing them to spend their money the way they want to spend their money. I think that the one thing that people kind of get confused with is farmers don’t want to have to participate in all these programs with the federal government. They want free trade. They want high commodity prices. They want less regulation. They want to be able to farm,” says Higgins.
“I will say another thing that is very important to me is health. I think we kind of miss the boat in our school districts. Obviously I believe reading, writing, and math is of the upmost importance, we need to prepare our children for the next stage of life, but I think that if we are able to do some sort of co-ops with local hospitals or local clinics and have them come in and actually teach people how to take care of their bodies very early, we could really eliminate some of these preventable disease,” Higgins adds.
Also appearing on the ballot for the 94th Representative District is Candidate Bailey Templeton, who says transparency is her main reason for running:
“Transparency is my biggest goal here. I also have sent in FOIAs when people request me to look into certain state agencies. I am more than willing to do so and am really good at formulating the questions we need to get the answers. One of the things I have been studying is the 17,000 acres of Illinois farmland that has been sold off in the past ten years to out of the country entities,” Templeton states.
“My biggest concern here is that they are putting data centers, wind farms, and solar farms on these 17,000 acres, not limited to, but these are agricultural lands that have become an infrastructure risk because of the power sources and a cybersecurity risk because of the data centers. These are all from foreign countries. In the 94th District alone, there are 2,300 acres that are owned by different countries, and I just don’t think that the people are aware of this invasion on our land or that they are being fully informed about what is happening,” adds Templeton.
Seeking re-election of the 94th Representative District is Norine Hammond:
“We have not had a balanced budget in the state of Illinois for several years now and we have to concentrate on affordability for our taxpayers because we are getting way out of hand with costs and we have to get those under control,” informs Hammond.
“I have always been an advocate for the seniors and the disabled in our communities. Often times they don’t have a voice, they may not have family, or they may not have family close by. The number one issue that we hear about are property taxes. We hear from seniors who can no longer afford to live in their homes. Also, certainly energy prices are through the roof and now we are seeing it not just in the MISO Market that we are a part of here in the state, but also the PJM Market up in the northern part of the state. We get our bills from Ameren, they come from Nicor, they are actually delivering the energy, but they have to buy that on the market,” Hammond says.
Early voting is underway across the state of Illinois ahead of the upcoming Primary Election on March 17th.
