By BRENNA BRAATEN

For Kandi Matthew-Jenkins, the urge to enter politics first hit her when she read an
advertisement saying the city of Missoula was going to raise fees for business licenses.
As an owner of a small business, she went to City Hall to check it out.
What she found was that wasn’t much she could do about it at the time. She didn’t
know the process or the people. So she started going to City Council meetings, and for 10
years she’s been a familiar presence at City Hall, speaking her mind on a range of issues.
She’s made unsuccessful runs for the Legislature in 2000, 2004 and 2006. In 2001,
she ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Missoula.
This fall, she’s running on the Constitution Party ticket in Senate District 50, an open
seat since Sen. Greg Lind, a Democrat, decided not to seek re-election. Her lone
opponent is Democrat Cliff Larsen.
The Constitutional Party’s goal, she says, is to limit the government to the functions
that are outlined in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. For
Matthew-Jenkins that means less government and more power to the people.
Matthew-Jenkins says she wants elected officials to respect the people. She wants to
help residents of her district speak out on the issues that affect them.
“All I (would be) is management, and the people are the boss,” she says.
She wants to make more government information available to the people and make
sure they have a say in everything government does.
“If you want (information), you make one phone call, you get it,” she says.
She also says she believes government spends too much of taxpayers’ money, much
of which goes into accounts taxpayers never see. She also believes that if government
controlled its spending, there would be plenty of money for necessary services. She
prefers only raising taxes when there is a good reason.
“I’m not going to charge Sam down the road for 50,000 paperclips you aren’t going
to use,” she says. “That’s taxes for me.”
On the issue of energy, Matthew-Jenkins supports the idea of “Montana First,” where
any oil, coal or natural gas taken from Montana ground goes to Montanans before anyone
else. She wouldn’t tolerate businesses that gouge customers.
“(Montanans) get the cheapest. They get the best,” she says. “Make your profit
elsewhere.”
She also believes in less government regulation. For example, she says, many houses
in her neighborhood used to have wood stoves. Now those stoves are being taken out by
real estate agents before the house can be resold. That mean buyers have few alternatives
to offset winter energy costs.
Matthew-Jenkins describes herself as relatively open-minded about environmental
issue. But, she says, because she is a Christian, she doesn’t worship the environment –
she worships the Creator. But taking care of what was given by God is also important, she
adds.
She says that if scientists can prove humans are directly harming the environment,
she is willing to reconsider her view on environmental regulation. But without scientific
proof, no one can really predict what is going to happen and some guesses might be
wrong, she adds.
 All of her six children, who range in age from 17 to 35, were educated in Missoula
County schools. Matthew-Jenkins says Montana should reject the federal No Child Left
Behind Act, and return control of education standards to local residents.
She also says she’d rather see the public invest in teaching rather than buildings.
Teachers, she adds, should be more important than school administrators.
“So I’d take a good look at (the education system),” she says. “Get it back to local
(control), where parents can be involved.”
She says her highest priority in the Legislature would be to cut out fraud. From her
work for the last several years, she says she has come across too many instances of fraud,
corruption and horror in the government. Too many politicians act like as if they were
nobility, she adds.
She is especially critical of the state’s Child Protective Services, which she believes
does more harm than it does good. She says that this organization takes away more
children than it has the right to.
Although Matthew-Jenkins has run for many offices, she has yet to win state office.
Even so, she says she is determined to continue trying to make the changes she believes
government needs.
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