Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Shacter seeks Dem nod, cites D.C. experience

GARRY DUFFY

Tucson Citizen

Francine Shacter wants to return to Capitol Hill, not as an employee of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, but as a member of Congress.

Shacter, 77, in November announced her candidacy for the Democratic nod to run against Rep. Jim Kolbe.

That was before the Republican congressman made his own announcement that he would not run for a 12th term.

Shacter yesterday said she knows the nation's capital well. She worked for five years for the House Natural Resources and Power Subcommittee.

Shacter said she also has worked for the U.S. Census Bureau, managing its San Francisco office during the 1970 census, and later returned to Washington, D.C., to manage a Census program on industrial statistics.

After that, Shacter was a division manager for the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.

She is running for Congress to try to help change the country's direction, which she said is adrift with the war in Iraq, disappearing private pension funds, a burgeoning deficit, diminishing health care coverage for many and a faltering public education system.

"I feel very strongly that staying the course is not an option," Shacter said.

"The war is making a wreck out of our economy," she said. "It's making a wreck out of our people."

Congressional "shenanigans" such as cutting taxes for the wealthy and approving legislation benefiting special interests come at a cost to taxpayers and consumers, she said.

Problems stemming from illegal immigration will not go away until the cause of the stream of migrants from the south is addressed, she said.

"You have to take the incentive out of it," she said, criticizing American businesses that knowingly provide jobs to illegal immigrants.

OTHER CANDIDATES

Six people previously announced their candidacies for the congressional seat held by Rep. Jim Kolbe:

• Republican Randy Graf, a former state legislator who lost to Kolbe in a Republican primary in 2004. He is from Green Valley.

• Republican Mike Jenkins, a Tucson auto shop manager, who has run twice for the state Legislature and once for City Council.

• Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, a Tucsonan who resigned from the state Senate to run for Congress.

• Democrat Alex Rodriguez, a Tucson Unified School District Board member who served under then-Defense Secretary William Cohen while in the military.

• Democrat Jeff Latas, an airline pilot who served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force flying fighters and working in planning at the Pentagon.

• Democrat Eva Bacal, a deputy county public defender and former TUSD board member who ran unsuccessfully against Kolbe in 2004.