An astronaut, the president, a princess, a firefighter…all common responses children give when voicing their future occupations. However, senior Cameron Meinholdt has always had a different vision. “I knew when I was younger that I wanted to run for politics when I got older.” And this is exactly what he’s doing.
In Kansas, no minimum age exists to run for office. However, he doesn’t want to be dismissed because of his youth. He has very definite goals.
According to his website, Meinholdt’s goals are to create more jobs, get the funding back to our schools, and end the corruption of today’s politics.
Meinholdt stresses , “The things Brownback has done are not permanent, and we, together as Kansans, can change that and can make things better.”
One well-known struggle Kansas faces is that of our budget. When this issue was brought up, Meinholdt stated, “I believe that you’d have to make a tax reform and change the way taxes are being put into the government. I don’t think tax cuts are the answer, but I also don’t think raising your taxes are the answer either. Our sales tax is extremely high compared to other countries, so that is one place we could take a look at cutting. Then, you have to give the money back to education, and you have to raise teacher salaries, because they’re training our youth, who are the next people to go out there and do the job.”
Where does Meinholdt get his inspiration? “As an independent, Greg Orman is someone that I look up too tremendously. He is proposing the same ideas as me, and he is a true independent. He sees both parties as negative and both parties as corrupt just like I do, and he’s just someone I look up to and someone that I aspire to be like.”
One of the many questions Meinholdt’s peers have, is about his decision to run independent. “Both political parties are horrible. They’re both corrupt, they’re both about money. It just goes to show you that if you want to win in either of those political parties you have to have money, and you have to have friends. But, as an independent you don’t have to have anything. You just have to have a message that can reach across to both voters. So, I think that my message can reach to both Republicans and Democrats, and I think that I can make a change.”
Due to running as an Independent, Meinholdt must raise his own campaign money in order to be eligible to run. One attempt at raising this money, is through the selling of t-shirts. You can purchase one of these shirts directly from Meinholdt, for only $15, in support of his run for governor. As well as t-shirt profit, any campaign donations will help Meinholdt in his strive to bring Kansas back to the people. However, Meinholdt is trying to run his campaign on as little funding as possible.
Before he can become eligible for governor, Meinholdt must obtain 5,000 petition signatures from citizens of voting age, by March 31. To sign this petition, find Meinholdt in person, on his campaign facebook page ‘Cameron Meinholdt for Governor of Kansas,’ or on his website camein2000.wixsite.com/meinholdtgov2018.