By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Freshman Congressman Jake LaTurner says there is quite a bit of difference between working in Topeka and working in Washington.
LaTurner won election to the Second Congressional District of Kansas after serving as the Kansas State Treasurer. He describes his first few months in Washington as crazy.
“What I’ve been doing is what I should be doing,” LaTurner tells St. Joseph Post. “I’ve been digging deep in my committee work. I’m on the Homeland Security Committee, the Oversight (and Reform) Committee, the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. I’m really enjoying those experiences and working hard on the committee work.”
LaTurner defeated incumbent Congressman Steve Watkins in the Republican primary and then won the General Election over Democrat Michelle De La Isla, the Topeka mayor.
LaTurner says he has been enjoying his first few months in Washington.
“I am. It’s challenging,” according to LaTurner. “There’s a lot to do. There is no shortage of serious issues that need a lot of attention.”
LaTurner, who also served as a state senator from southeast Kansas, says he has found that things move much slower in Washington than they did in Topeka.
“You can show up in Topeka in January, introduce a bill, and within a 90-day session you can see that bill signed by the governor and implemented and become law,” LaTurner says.
LaTurner says he hopes to keep in touch with his district even while working in Washington. The Second Congressional District is a large one, hugging the Kansas eastern border from Nebraska to Oklahoma with a carveout for the Third Congressional District of the Kansas City metro area. LaTurner says his office has set up mobile office hours in every county in the Second Congressional District.
LaTurner says the pace in Washington has been hard to adjust to.
“And so, it can be frustrating. It’s one of the reasons, frankly, that I support term limits at the federal level,” LaTurner says. “You see folks that have been here in Washington, D.C. for 20, 30, 40 years. They are entrenched. They don’t want to fix Washington, D.C., because Washington, D.C. is not broken for them; it works like a charm. It’s broken for the rest of us.”