By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

He doesn't have the campaign war chest his Democratic and Republican opponents have, and yet that's part of Topeka attorney Randall Hodgkinson's motivation for running for the U.S. Senate.

"I'm tired of being represented by special interest-funded Washington, D.C., insiders," said Hodgkinson, the Libertarian Senate candidate, during a stop in Salina on Thursday.

Hodgkinson, 41, is pressing his campaign against incumbent Pat Roberts, the Republican, and Democratic challenger Jim Slattery, by speaking in person to various groups and seeking the media's help in relaying his message.

His campaign is keyed on three issues: fiscal responsibility, environmental sustainability and personal freedom/protecting individual constitutional rights.

"A $10 trillion national debt is not responsible," Hodgkinson said. "We're sending hundreds of billions of dollars of interest, and a lot of that goes overseas every year."

"I haven't really thought about and studied a lot about how we get the revenue, whether it's flat tax, or fair tax or our current system," he said. "I've been more interested in the big picture that whatever system we use to get the revenue, we need to limit our spending to whatever we take in."

During the past eight years, Hodgkinson said he's been dismayed by seeing the Bush administration ignore constitutional rights, and Congress complying, for the most part.

"Congress is supposed to be a check on that, when an administration overreaches its authority, like this one has, in my view," he said. "That's not the kind of representation that I want in Congress."

Hodgkinson is making his first run at public office. He hasn't been a member of the Libertarian Party long.

"I've been a Republican most of my adult life," said Hodgkinson, an attorney with the appellate public defender's office. The office represents clients unable to hire their own attorneys for appeals to the state Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.

On environmental sustainability, Hodgkinson said he sees a role for the U.S. government to play in shaping energy policy toward western energy sources.

"Our federal policy, right now, is all about cars and oil," he said. "We need to be focusing our federal energy policy on more efficiencies, mass transit, and looking for alternative and clean energy sources. .... I'm convinced from a national security and an economic standpoint, that's the way to go."

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.

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