Kane’s broad policy agenda should appeal to voters
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when government-mandated shutdowns forced many of Caroline Kane's friends and neighbors out of work, she began thinking seriously about running for office.
Kane, 53, had never run for anything before. She dutifully voted in every election, including in midterms, yet mainly kept her head down, paid her taxes and focused on running her business managing multifamily properties. Yet something about how the state and federal government decided which businesses were “essential” during the pandemic irked her. Why should she get to continue working while others she knew suddenly lost their jobs through no fault of their own?
“I was one of those people thinking, where's the Constitution?” Kane told us. “Everybody's business is essential, we've all got to put food on the table.”
So Kane started doing her research. Even in a congressional district that voted for a Democratic incumbent, U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, by 27 points in 2022, she reasons there are plenty of independent, Republican and even some Democrat voters who don't like the direction the nation is headed. Kane believes she can connect with people who care about reducing government spending, securing the U.S.Mexico border and curbing illegal immigration and energy independence.
In fact, on energy it's easy to see where Kane could have some cross-party appeal. She's in favor of investing heavily in hydrogen as a potentially clean fuel source. She also wants to make nuclear power a bigger part of the nation's energy portfolio, particularly with the advent of smaller modular reactors that are easier to build.
“I would love to have a whole lot more new nuclear,” Kane said. “I think it's the cleanest and cheapest thing that we have that's available right now, and it's environmentally responsible as long as we're not putting it anywhere near a coast or a fault line.”
On other issues, Kane is clearly trying to appeal to her Republican base. She is anti-abortion, although she said that she would prefer the issue be left to the states rather than supporting calls for a nationwide ban. She is a hard-liner on border security, telling us she would push to fund the completion of the border wall and institute a two-year immigration moratorium in order to “assess what our needs are” as far as jobs that are available and which immigrant applicants can best fill them.
Kane and all of her primary opponents are first-time candidates, yet she had by far the most detailed policy platform. Kenneth Omoruyi, 41, is a first-generation Nigerian immigrant and accountant who is passionate about driving down the national debt but lacked specifics on how to do so. Tina Blum Cohen, 65, owns a furniture store in Houston and believes strongly in border security and revamping the immigration system. Carolyn Bryant, 61, is a sports nutritionist running primarily on one issue: to protect Title IX from what she called the “gender mutilation agenda on our children.”
It will be challenging for any of these candidates to swing this district red but we believe Kane stands the best chance. Republican voters should back her in the primary.