My name is Rob Wasinger. I am a husband, a father to nine wonderful children, and a conservative. I want to introduce myself to Red State readers because I want to be a part of the conversation about moving our party and our country forward. And I think Red State will be a big part of that discussion.

Next year, the voters of the First District of Kansas will decide who will succeed Jerry Moran to represent them in Congress. I believe I am the right person for the job. I have worked for the people of Kansas for almost 15 years - in both Kansas and the nation’s capital - I believe I am uniquely qualified to do the job, and do it well from day one.

We are all products of our upbringing, so let me tell you about who I am and how I got here. I was born in Hays, Kansas, to parents who believe in the traditional values of hard work, honor, and answering the call to service. I tried to live by those values and was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to go to Harvard. I took advantage of that opportunity. And when I finished college, I came home to Kansas.

When I returned, I went to work for the people of Kansas - first, for Governor Bill Graves, then for Jerry Moran, who then was state senate majority leader, and finally for Senator Sam Brownback. I was Sam’s legislative director and ultimately his chief of staff.

This, as you might imagine, has given me tremendous experience working on both Kansas and national issues. Along the way, I gained a reputation as an effective expert on budget and life issues, and I have an abiding interest in rural health care and economic development. From education to Social Security and a dozen issues in between, I know the impact the federal government can have on all our lives, for good and ill, and especially how Washington affects our rural Kansas communities.

But do you know the most important thing I learned along the way? That knowledge, experience, and values are not enough. They are just the starting point. If you cannot maintain and defend what you know and believe, all of the knowledge, experience, and values in the world will become shifting sand in Washington, DC.

Our nation’s capital needs reform right now, precisely because too many of our elected officials have been unable to maintain and defend our values. I have seen first-hand how Washington works, and I have seen why it fails. The sands have shifted for many of the people in Washington, DC. It sometimes seems we have more convictions than conviction. Our country is paying the price for that.

We need conservative leaders who have values and conviction. But we also need vision.
I have a vision of how conservative values and policies will help our country, and especially aid rural and small town America. I believe in a set of policies aimed at breaking down the barriers to prosperity for rural America, unleashing the ingenuity and productivity of the American worker, and rejecting the old, failed policies of high taxes and burdensome regulation. We cannot prosper when the government demands more and more of our money to sustain Washington, DC.

We have two simple choices. We can choose prosperity for Washington, DC or we can choose prosperity for the rest of America. I will always choose Kansas and America.

Prosperity for rural America is the right choice. As the late Paul Weyrich said, “Agriculture has always been a conservative culture.”

That is who I am and why I am here. I hope you will give me the chance to prove my values, my conviction and my vision as the Representative from Kansas. I hope you will join me in the fight we have ahead.

For more information, to donate, or to sign up as a supporter, please visit my website.