By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Lauren Reinhold, Democratic candidate for Kansas’ 1st District, said she is running to make government work for people rather than corporations.
Reinhold was in Hays on Thursday for a fundraiser and spoke with the Hays Post.
Reinhold worked 29 years as a lawyer, including immigration practice, legal aid and 16 years in federal government administration working for the Social Security Administration.
Reinhold said she had thought about running for some time. However, her position at Social Security prohibited her from doing so. When the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began severely cutting the staff at the agency, she said, I knew that I would likely be asked to do things that were non-compliant with the law, and I knew I wouldn't be able to tolerate that.”
She opted to resign her position and run for Congress.
She added, “I felt more or less backed into the corner to leave, but when I did, I also was appalled at what they were doing to the federal government, not only our agency, which lost a lot of really important staffing that they needed to replenish, resulting in long wait times.
“I also saw when DOGE came in and stole our Social Security data, and they did the same thing in the IRS. They have our data on drives that they have given over to companies.”
Other agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, lost experts who were tracking diseases. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which provides many important services to farmers in western Kansas, also experienced cuts, Reinhold said.
Although Reinhold is a Lawrence resident, she said she would work to represent the whole district, including interests in western Kansas.
“I will represent all of this district by listening to the people and listening to what they need on the whole, and really emphasizing the issues that western Kansas is needing to address: the water shortage, the ag issues, the bad agricultural policy that needs to be fixed, the immigration that needs to be fixed, and really focus on what we have in common too,” she said.
Farming and rural Kansas
She said she would champion a New Deal for rural America that focuses on investments in infrastructure, including water, sewer, roads, bridges, and public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
“I think it's time that we give priority to rural America as a nation to keep our rural communities strong,” she said.
Congress needs to take back the reins on tariffs, Reinhold said.
“The executive cannot just unilaterally enact tariffs, and especially enact whiplash tariffs that don't make any sense and create instability in the market and ruin markets that our farmers worked decades to achieve,” she said.
The war in Iran also continues to hurt farmers as it has driven up the price of diesel fuel.
She said the U.S. needs to end the war in Iran.
“This Congress, including our current congressman, has let this president go to war in an unnecessary way, unrecommended. All the war experts have said this is the worst thing you could do, the worst way to deal with Iran,” Reinhold said.
She added, “I know that Roger Marshall claimed at the debate at the state fair that gas would be down to $3 a gallon again soon. No, it's not going to be that quickly. I want to see it happen really fast, and all we're doing is we're seeing it go up.”
Reinhold said current national policy is making farming, already a difficult and risky profession, even harder.
“It's amazing to me that this current congressman and our senators too, that they can justify what this president is doing,” she said.
“Leadership-wise, they are not prioritizing regular folks like us in Kansas, whether we're on the east side of the state or the west side of the state. They don't care about regular people, and they think that our vote doesn't matter apparently. But I hope more of us get out to the polls and vote against this nonsense.”
The Farm Bill has passed out of the Senate Ag Committee and is headed to the full Senate. Member Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, lauded several key aspects that he said would benefit Kansas farmers, but Democrats have opposed cuts to SNAP.
Reinhold said she opposed the SNAP cuts and will work to reverse those cuts if elected.
Immigration
Reinhold, who worked in immigration law, said, “The current administration's immigration policy is flat-out illegal.”“When Congress passes laws, that's how they're supposed to be followed,” Reinhold said. “For them to allow the enforcement side, the internal enforcement, and the border enforcement to basically turn into a militia instead of staying in its lane. It needs to be doing enforcement in the U.S. humanely. It’s unbelievable what they are doing.”
Reinhold called out some of what she said were troubling immigration policies.