Libertarian gubernatorial candidate talks about drug war, taxes

A man in a blue sweatshirt and jeans got up once again and sneaked a peek into the… A man in a blue sweatshirt and jeans got up once again and sneaked a peek into the auditorium. He returned to his spot on the bench and sat down. But after doing this several more times, he pulled his off-white Nike baseball cap a little lower and went inside.

The man was one of 55 people who saw Ken Krawchuk, the Libertarian candidate for governor, at the open forum held by the public debate team on Pitt’s campus Monday night in the auditorium of David Lawrence Hall.

Three students sat off to the side of Krawchuk with some prepared questions. People from the audience were also invited up to the other side of the podium to ask questions into a microphone.

Krawchuk’s wife, Roberta Krawchuk, attended the forum, sitting toward the back of the auditorium. Krawchuk shared that he has three daughters and runs a computer-consulting firm.

“I’m a family man, a business man,” Krawchuk said. But, he added, “most importantly I’m a Libertarian.”

Krawchuk said the Libertarian Party works to defend people’s right to live the way they want to live, as long as they are not harming anyone else.

He compared the Libertarian Party to an “800-pound Chihuahua,” explaining that the Libertarian Party is the largest of the smaller parties in America. It is the third largest party in America, he said.

Krawchuk opened the forum with a five-minute speech.

“I’m the only candidate who is speaking out for the taxpayers,” he said. If he were elected governor, he said, he would veto all tax increases.

“I’m also committed to ending the property tax,” Krawchuk added. He said Pennsylvania does not tax food, medicine or clothes, yet they tax shelter.”

The main issue discussed was Krawchuk’s view on the war on drugs. Krawchuk believes the drug war is “insane.”

“Right now, there are a lot of people in jail who don’t belong there,” he said. Krawchuk added that 30 percent of people in jail are drug offenders, and the government lets out rapists and murderers to make room for these drug offenders.

“Who believes pot-smokers belong in jail?” he said.

One person raised his hand. According to Krawchuk, this was only the seventh person during his campaign thus far to raise his hand in response to that question.

“Who here knows someone who does pot?” Krawchuk said.

Nearly everyone raised his or her hand. Krawchuk said statistics show that 20 percent of college students smoke marijuana.

He admitted he smoked pot in college, adding, “and I inhaled.”

If he were to be elected, Krawchuk promised to pardon all nonviolent drug offenders on his first day as governor.

He then said he only needs to attract one in eight voters to win the election. “If the potheads alone remember to vote for me, it’ll be a landslide,” Krawchuk said.

In talking about the death penalty, Krawchuk said it was “too powerful a tool to leave in the hands of the government.”

“What if they’re wrong?” he said, adding that jurors have been wrong in their verdicts.

According to Krawchuk, for every one white person who receives the death penalty, a dozen black people die by capital punishment.

“This war on drugs is racist, the death penalty is racist, and I’m against both of them,” he said.

The talk also turned to education as a student from the audience asked Krawchuk what he would do about the rising tuition at Pitt and Penn State.

Krawchuk’s answer instead focused on K-12 schools. He said the government holds a monopoly on schools, giving students and their parents little choice.

“As a Libertarian, I believe in separation of school and state,” Krawchuk said.

Krawchuk wants to introduce competition by allowing parents to choose which school to send their children to. The chosen school would then get the funding for that child. This way, better schools would get more students, and thus more funding, and would prosper.

At the end of the forum, an audience member who wished to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said he has “been watching the Democrats and Republicans at the polls for years, and there’s a lot of corruption.” He suggested having a Libertarian at every polling place to avoid voting fraud.

Krawchuk said he agreed fraud has occurred, but added that there are 10,000 polls, and the Libertarian Party can’t watch them all.