Knight, Hill talk Cemex, foreign policy
25th Congressional District candidates face off in debate
The two candidates vying to represent the 25th Congressional District — Rep. Steve Knight, R-Palmdale, and his Democratic challenger Katie Hill — met inside the studio at College of the Canyons for a debate Saturday hosted by The Signal.
The format — each candidate was given a minute to answer a prompt, and then a 30-second rebuttal period — gave the candidates an opportunity to lead the
discussion, as well as allowing each to contrast their different approaches on a subject, which became evident from the start.
Since the original respondent had the option of a 30-second rebuttal, it was often during these responses that the two candidates challenged each other on their answers and past statements.
The opening prompt called for both candidates to list their No. 1 priority if elected.
Hill, who went first, answered that politicians’ accountability to the public has to be the No. 1 priority, “and part of that means really restoring our faith in people, in our politics, in our government
and in our institutions,” Hill said. She cited campaign-finance reform, voting rights and corruption as the highlights of a legislative package that would be introduced right away, if there was Democratic Party leadership in the House.
Knight responded by saying he didn’t go to Washington, D.C., to find an issue, he’d been working right here in the district. “And for the last 24 years, Cemex has been the No. 1 issue,” Knight said, touting his work with the SCV’s local representatives with the goal of stopping a mining operation proposed by the international mining company on the city’s eastern border.
“Congressman Knight keeps saying that Cemex is the No. 1 issue, and I hate to say it, but that’s
not the case,” Hill said, adding that it’s an important issue, but one she wasn’t aware of until she started running for office, and that most people weren’t concerned about.
The discussion continued, ranging on topics from bipartisanship to immigration to trade policy, with Knight continually pointing to his work in the district, and Hill repeatedly pointing out what she perceived as problems with the federal government and the nation’s direction.
Hill, in her opening, said the choices facing 25th District voters presented an opportunity to change “politics as usual.”
“I believe we’ve had representatives in Washington who have been accountable to big corporations and special interests,” she said, “and have failed to put the need and concerns of all of us at the forefront.”
Knight argued the election was on an issue of “results vs. resistance,” which was a phrase he used a couple times during the hourlong discussion.
“I think that you’ve got a candidate that wants resistance,” he said, referring to Hill, “and a candidate that’s got results.”
When the topic of Social Security came up, Knight defended comments made at a Signal forum in 2016, in which he referred to the program as “a bad idea,” noting that was only part of his answer, and his actual dialogue with seniors in the district has been productive.
When prompted for what was the nation’s greatest national security threat, Knight said it was about five-fold, focusing on Russia and in particular, China, due to the sheer impact of its economy, the amount of money it can put into new technologies and the buildup of its defense. He also said North Korea doesn’t come up in that same conversation, because while some difficult diplomatic measures have been made, they’re working, and that’s one of the results.
Hill countered that while the talk is no longer focused on North Korea, the nation was still a potential threat, and that the United States’ biggest security threat is its own erratic foreign policy.
A video of the debate can be found on The Signal’s Decision 2018 web page: https://signalscv. com/decision2018.