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From tiny Plainville, Kan., to the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., Senator Jerry Moran has seen it all. And despite his job in Washington, he likes to stay close to his Kansas roots. Moran was not on the ballot November 5, he was deep in the heart of Southwest Kansas speaking at the Ulysses Rotary Club meeting at the Grant County Library.
Moran maintains a home in Manhattan and served 14 years in the House of Representatives and 14 years now in the U.S. Senate. He’s been visiting the Ulysses Rotary off and on for 28 years. In addition to speaking in Ulysses, he also visited students in Moscow.
“You all have been kind, I appreciate the opportunity I’ve been given to try to do a job on your behalf in the nation’s capital,” Moran said. “I’m happy to have conversations about those issues.”
Moran said he appreciates what civic clubs like Rotary do.
“We often look someplace else to solve our problems,” Moran said. “And we can look to Washington, D.C. or the county commission or the school board or whoever is the solver of our problem, and yet the reality is that we solve more problems one person at a time.
“What civic clubs do in communities is really important.”
Moran joined the Lions Club right out of college and it was a path forward for him to get acquainted with people and engage in the community.
“I want to tell you that you have something that I think is really important that I miss,” Moran said. “I know a lot of people in lots of communities across Kansas, but i don’t have the connection with the community in the way that hometown folks do and there’s a sense of satisfaction and an amount of joy that comes with what you do as Rotarians, what you do as citizens of Grant County, that’s totally different than what I can garner from what I do as a United states Senator.”
Moran sad it’s difficult to get another generation interested in the things that Rotary and other civic clubs do that makes a difference the community.
“While I have, we have, everybody in this room has no choice but to deal with the national and international issues that our country faces,” Moran said. “I want to make sure that I do the things that - in addition to try to take care of those things - that we do the things necessary that increase the chances that your hometown is around for a long time to come.
“So I am a lot about rural. I now represent the entire state and I struggle sometimes in trying to make sure that the folks in Western Kansas don’t think I’ve forgotten them while at the same time trying to convince the people in eastern Kansas that I’m taking care of their interests, as well.”
He said that the demographics of Kansas are changing, saying that Western Kansas used to be the place to be from if you wanted to run for state office, but now Johnson County, which borders Missouri in the Kansas City metro area, makes up 26% of his voters.
“It is changing but I’m still about trying to make sure that Kansans have a bright future in the places they call home,” Moran said. “And so, we pay a lot of attention to agriculture, whether or not our farmers and ranchers are having success is a huge component of whether or not our community has success.”
Moran is also concentrating on hospitals and pharmacies.
“We begin to lose our community if we don’t have access to healthcare,” the Senator said.
Moran is concerned with keeping the cost of doing business down in order to keep businesses open. Education is also on Moran’s list, mostly trying to reduce the role of the federal government in education.
“We ought to mandate a lot less things,” Moran said. “Those mandates that we don’t or can’t get rid of we ought to pay more for the cost it causes our school districts to incur. Otherwise we’re taking money away from from a certain set of students to give to another and we reduce the capability of our schools surviving difficult times.”
Finally, on the list of taking care of rural America is communication and technology; trying to make sure rural America has access technologies that allow communities to retain and attract people who can do things in the community that they otherwise would have to do somewhere else.
“There is billions of dollars that are being spent trying to make sure every Kansan, every American, has access to broadband,” Moran said. “And if we’re unsuccessful in accomplishing that with the amount of money that is being spent, shame on us.”
He said a reason for the country to support to support rural Kansas is the quality of life.
“But it’s also important to the country that this middle section of the nation from North Dakota to Texas doesn’t go away,” Moran added. “Otherwise we’re left with the coast. The things that value are the things that are really important to the country.”
Moran serves on the U.S. Department of Defense Appropriations Committee and on the Senate Committee on Intelligence and said the external threats to the United States from Russia, Iran. North Korea and China are real.
“And those countries are organizing in ways that pull them together to work at this effort to diminish the role of the United States in the world,” Moran said. “There’s a reason for Americans to work together, there’s a reason for elected officials to work together to try to figure out how to combat what our challenges are.”
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