Brooke Lunsford, Republican candidate for governor of West Virginia, talked about his jobs program in a special West Virginia 2020 interview on the Richard Urban Show on May 9. Mr. Urban begins his show by asking Lunsford to introduce himself.”
“I am Brooke Lunsford. I am from Cabell County, which is in the western end of the state. I graduated from Marshall University. I went to college at West Virginia Tech,” Lundford said.
Richard asks “Could you tell us your three most important campaign platform points that you’d like to accomplish as a governor of West Virginia?”
“My number one thing is a jobs program that we developed through a non-profit that I founded and the job grant is for anybody that wants an opportunity to own their own business and it’s a business situation where we would teach them office procedures and things like that. The grant has already gone in to the Appalachian Regional Commission, which is responsible for taking care of this Appalachian regional poverty corridor. You have people that would love to have an opportunity maybe to learn some office procedures or maybe to learn about the insurance industry. We’ve got some great partners in this. My number one partner in the grant is Progressive Insurance,” Lunsford said.
Richard: “What do you think about things like some people have been advocating for removing the business inventory tax? Other candidates had talked about that. Is that a good tax? Why do we have that tax? And I understand, most states don’t have it. Should we get rid of that?”
“We should get rid of every tax. But here’s what happened when they brought it up this past time. And that’s why I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know if they flip a coin on what issues they’re going to bring up at the capitol. I don’t know how they derive what they’re doing but when they get this close to passing, they start looking around and all these counties start realizing how much money they’re going to be losing and they’re like, “Well hold up here, we can’t do this, we can’t eliminate this tax because the money, we can’t replace the whole in the budget.. I want to build tourism up to such an extent that we can get rid of a personal income tax right now,“ Lunsford explained.
Richard: “I wanted to ask you about what do you think about the constitutional issues like the governors locking down their states and that includes Gov. Justice. I think they way overstepped the constitutional bounds. What’s your take on that?”
“In my opinion, I would use this as a catalyst, as you said, to take the governors from all these states and say, “Look, federal has been overreaching, for a long time, we’re going to come together as states, Convention of States is out there trying to organize this kind of movement anyway, we’re going to come together as a state, we’re going to take the power back from the federal government. It doesn’t matter what it costs and what we’ve got to do,” Lunsford responded.
Richard: “I’m working on the issue of constitutional person freedom. Specifically, I’m very much concerned about West Virginia’s forced vaccination, meaning no vaccines, no school. I think that’s very wrong. People need to have a choice.”
“Well, that will be great to go either way on this but here’s your problem
When people come in with these kind of issues, I mean they’re going to fight and argue forever on this, you know, what I’m saying? It takes so much cooperation for this. And the thing is, it’s not like it’s gotta be the majority of the vote on some of this stuff to turn over some of these things. I mean, you gotta have two-thirds of the people to do this or three-fourths of the people to do that. And the problem with our state is that we can’t get two out of ten to agree on something,“ Lunsford said.
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Richard: “What would you like to say in summary about why voters would vote for you, and what you’re presenting?”
“I think a lot of these guys that are running are probably going to have to be loyal to the people that put them there, which is their home town. So what I did to combat that is I’ve got a plan, I talk about it every day, to have something for every county. And the last thing I would share with you is a weekly 50-50 draw. It drives the hard shell Christians crazy, and I am a Christian. But what it does every time you go to a Friday night football game, they’re passing around a 50-50 drawing you go to a Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates Washington Nationals baseball game, and they have a 50-50 draw, I called those people that do that and I said, “Hey you know what I’d like to do for West Virginia is I’d like for each of the 55 counties to have a weekly drawing where the winner has to be from the county and the rest of the money has to stay in the county.” Lunsford continued.
“You mean as a lottery of sorts?” Richard asked.
“It’s a lottery, but you know the lottery has ruined a lot more lives than it’s helped because the prize is too big and there’s not enough winners and it helps our state because I think about a third of our revenue comes from the lottery in the State of West Virginia. People want to gamble. So, I’m not for or against it on that ethics but I’m saying to you, Jefferson County is no different than Cabell County. We’ve got to learn to pool resources. Let’s all put in a dollar every week, let’s pool that. And just like in the insurance policy, we all pay in an auto premium, then all that money is pooled. Somebody has an accident, the money is there to pay for the accident, t’s no different than what a sweepstakes would do.” Lunsford said.
But who would administer it? Isn’t that problematic?” said Richard.
“Any non-profit can administer it, that’s the thing about it, “Lunsford responded.
Richard:”So it would be just like a lottery. Pick a number thing?”
“Yeah, anybody can do it, but the tickets on the sweepstakes, can be sold through the internet,” Lunsford said.
Richard: “Okay, Thank you for being on and we’ll make this available on our video and podcasts and try to help as many people as possible to hear what you’re saying.”
“Absolutely, and my number is 304-638-6563. I take calls, find me on Facebook, because I try to do a morning broadcast. I do Sunday school first every morning. Because for obvious reasons, I think Jesus is first because he won’t be co-equal with anything else. And then secondly, we try to do a campaign speech here where we talk a little bit about things. My website is Lundford4Governor.com.” Lunsford said in conclusion.
