Jason Plummer said he turned up early to file his papers with the Illinois State Board of Elections so his name will be on the ballot for the primary election in Senate District 54.
“We filed with a lot of signatures,” Plummer told the Metro East Sun. “We collected over 2,500 signatures. I think that speaks to support that our campaign has. I think it speaks to the fact that people agree with what I am saying.”
What Plummer, an Edwardsville Republican who ran for lieutenant governor in 2010, has been saying is that southern Illinois has been neglected by state officials.
“You can see that neglect when you go into our communities," he said. "here are a tremendous amount of businesses leaving the area. Obviously jobs are leaving the area. People are leaving the area. Our towns are generally shrinking and we really need to reverse that trend.”
As a businessman, Plummer said what he sees has been bothering him. He also said he knows how to fix it.
“I know what it takes to create careers," he said. "I know what it takes to create quality jobs. I know why those jobs also leave the areas. Right now, Illinois is doing a really great job of driving businesses and people out of the area.”
He said he felt the main factors behind the downturn were taxes, regulatory burden and frivolous lawsuits.
“According to some studies, the people of southern Illinois incur the highest tax burden in the country when you look at sales taxes, gas taxes, income taxes, business taxes, real estate taxes; we just have a significant tax burden and that needs to be reduced,” Plummer said.
He also said education needs to improve.
“We are not doing enough when it comes to vocational and career training. We are not doing enough to support our community colleges,” he said. “When our youth graduate, they need to have the education and the skill sets to jump into a job and jump into a career and start taking care of themselves and start providing for themselves.”
He described the residents in southern Illinois as good, hard-working, common-sense people.
“What they desire most is a person who is sincere and a person that has shown they are in this fight, they have been in this fight; they know what they are doing and when they go to Springfield they will be a strong, independent and effective conservative voice for southern Illinois,” he said.
Plummer is running in the 54th District, as Sen. Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) is not seeking re-election. The district includes parts or all of Bond, Clinton, Effingham, Fayette, Madison, Marion, St. Clair and Washington counties.
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