The Republican candidate for the 122nd District seat in the Missouri House of Representatives wants to improve education by increasing pay for teachers.
Realtor and pumpkin patch owner Tara Peters is new to politics, but she won a contested primary to represent her party in the newly drawn district that includes the eastern two-thirds of Phelps County including Rolla and St. James. In addition to raising teacher pay, she wants to put armed retired veterans in schools to prevent mass shootings.
Peters is facing Democrat Lisa McCarthy on Nov. 8. McCarthy is a retired math teacher and also new to politics. She also recorded an episode of Politically Speaking that you can hear here.
Here’s what Peters had to say during the show:
- She thinks Missouri has lost its entrepreneurial spirit and wants the state to do more to encourage and support small businesses.
- Peters supports the tax cut the legislature passed in special session, but also cautions the state can’t lower taxes to an extent that it risks running out of money.
- It should be more difficult to get ballot initiatives onto the ballot, as she said it’s too easy for well-funded interests to change the state constitution.
- There are many problems with the ballot initiative to make recreational marijuana legal, but even without those problems she has issues with the idea and calls marijuana a “gateway drug.”
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