TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — It’ll be less than a month before we know who voters will choose for Tucson Mayor. When we talked with the various candidates for Mayor this week, most of them talked about using the powers of the City of Tucson to deal with various thorny city issues. When we talked with Libertarian candidate Arthur Kerschen, he talked about how he thinks some things are just none of the city’s business.
"We Libertarians believe in minimal government. We want to privatize a lot of services that the city is currently engaged in like the public transportation system, the parks and recreation departments. And it may be possible to privatize more that the city is currently taking responsibility for.”
Arthur Kerschen wants to be Mayor of a city that does not try to do so much to manage our lives.
“Certainly the police department is something that Libertarians believe in general is something that should be the sole responsibility of government and the court system. And those are things that the city does have right now. But I believe there's a lot less prosecution than probably needs to be done.”
He thinks more prosecution of relatively small crimes like shoplifting would deter more serious crime.
He wants more support for police and calls some current city priorities “silly”.
KGUN9 Reporter Craig Smith asked: “Silly things. In political terms those are fighting words. What are some of those things?”
KERSCHEN : “Well, programs to plant trees by the city. (Incumbent Mayor) Regina Romero has made it a policy that she wants to use the city government to fight climate change, rather than doing what the city's responsible for.”
Kerschen says the city’s encouraging homelessness, and closing productive businesses when it buys motels to house homeless people. He thinks churches and charities should operate the shelters and work to discourage drug use in those shelters.
But he says people have the right to self destructive behavior like taking drugs as long as they do not hurt anyone else.
“That's one thing the Libertarian Party has always been very strict on is that people have the right to use drugs if they're only impacting themselves, even if they're destructive, even if they're toxic. People have liberty, the right to make their own decisions.”
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.