Joseph Rahenkamp nominally answered questions at a candidates forum at the Greensboro Historical Museum on May 1. Rahenkamp was the only candidate for an at-large Guilford County Commission seat in the Republican primary to attend, although Wendell Sawyer answered the same questions in writing. Along with Rahenkamp and Sawyer, former Ku Klux Klan exalted cyclops EH Hennis, Guilford County Planning Board Chairman Larry Proctor and Rudy Binder are also on the ballot.
The two candidates who win the most votes in the Republican primary will advance to the general election in November, where they will face Democratic incumbents Paul Gibson and John Parks.
Asked whether he favored the property tax or the sales tax as a means to raise revenue, Rahenkamp responded that more prize money should be paid out by the North Carolina lottery to increase ticket sales.
Rahenkamp: “I don’t approve of either one. You’re going to have to start working and getting smarter and make what money you got work out. If you go back and check, every year, there’s greater and greater monies coming in and raising the tax base. We’re going to have to start making it work out. People right now, a lot of them are losing their homes, losing their cars and losing their trucks…. You’re going to have to hold the line and get smarter. [This] is and it is not going to answer your question. Come back to raising this money with this school bond. You need to take this lottery, where they’re taking 50 percent right now for the schools, drop it back and put 10 percent in it, and by doing that… you’re going to have more people buying tickets, and it’s going to generate your revenue. It’s going to be more than it is right now.”
Note: About 35 percent of the proceeds from the North Carolina lottery go to the Education Lottery Fund at the Office of State Budget and Management, while at least 50 percent is paid out in prizes.
Rahenkamp did not respond to a question about whether he supports a proposed jail bond, except to say that he opposes raising taxes. He also did not respond to a second question about whether the county was adequately pursuing alternatives to incarceration such as funding drug treatment programs.
Rahenkamp: “I’m not for raising taxes for anything…. It comes right back to what I just said. People are hurting. They’re losing their homes. They don’t know how they’re going to make it. And I do not believe when someone is drowning you take and push ’em down…. We’re going to have to get smarter. That’s where it comes back with the school board we were just talking. Education… you’ve got to get smarter in all of your categories. You’d be surprised what you can do with stuff when you have to do it.”
Rahenkamp suggested he favors a lenient approach to illegal immigration, but did not answer a question about whether he thought it was a good idea for the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office to participate in federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g), which authorizes local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law.
Rahenkamp: “Well, you’ve got a big problem there. You’ve got an awful lot of people in this country that are in here illegally, okay? What you’ve got to do is take the bull by the horns. They are in here. Let them start paying their way like everybody else. You’re not going to get away from it. You turn right around, you put them across the border, they’re gonna come right back in here, maybe come back in another way. Maybe they might not come to Guilford County; maybe they might come to LA County. Let ’em start paying their way like the rest of us.”
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