Call off the attack dogs, please …

A Spectrum, by Rep. Vic Kohring

Gilbert Lucero and Denise Helmann wrote long, confusing Spectrum pieces in the Frontiersman recently. Democrat Party operative, Lucero tries in vain to explain his reasons for trying to throw me out of office, while fellow Democrat Helmann bounces around in her column criticizing me for the very things many of my constituents support, such as cutting wasteful spending and promoting less government and a strong private-sector economy.

It's obvious my opponents are engaged in a coordinated letter and editorial writing campaign against me, with the goal of hurting my credibility with my constituents and thus boosting the chances of liberal Democrat union activist Peter Burchell. Burchell's hiding under the label of "Independent" and too afraid to come out of the closet and represent the party of Tony Knowles and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Nearly every recent edition of the Frontiersman contains "Vic bashing" letters or columns. These people are trying their utmost to make me out to be something close to a serial killer for simply doing the job I was elected to do. Almost all who are trashing me are liberal, pro big-government, tax-and-spend types, or those sympathetic to their flawed mission. You would think I was born with a birthmark in the shape of a target on my back with the way they're shooting so many arrows. It reminds me of a medieval battlefield where the enemy tries to overwhelm their opposition with thousands of blindly shot arrows in hopes they will find their mark.

The big government crowd gets heartburn when I work hard and successfully promote my free-market, limited government approach as outlined in my 10-point alternative budget plan that Helmann loathes, which is why they choose to attack me like a pack of rabid, crazed wolves.

Lucero is now being portrayed as a victim in all of this, when he's the one who filed the erroneous complaint against me with the Division of Elections charging me with not being a resident of my district. The complaint was subsequently dismissed without fanfare, but not without a waste of taxpayer dollars on a time-consuming investigation. Oh, boo-hoo. I'm now supposed to be the big, bad conservative who's picking on poor Gilbert. Excuse me?

Lucero whines that somehow I'm not a resident, despite the fact that I moved to the area with my family, nearly 40 years ago. I have lived in Wasilla for the last 26 years, own a house here, developed "Kohring Subdivision" off Lucille Street with my father in the 1970s -- where I lived when I was first elected in 1994, and where I'm currently living -- and have represented Wasilla in the Alaska Legislature for the last eight years. His claims are so off base, they're laughable. It's time for him to wake up from his long sleep and start paying attention to what's going on.

This whole circus-like charade is an obvious attempt to divert my constituents' attention from the important issues at hand. These issues are not about my personal life that my opponents love to ridicule, such as where I reside, what property I happen to own (in or out of Alaska), whether I live in a motorhome on a vacant lot in Wasilla, where my immigrant wife is from, and on and on and on. The focus should be on political issues of taxing and spending. Are we going to go down the road of even bigger government and pay for it with new taxes as my opponents and Burchell demand? Or should we, as I propose, reject new taxes and focus on reducing the size of our humungous, inefficient government bureaucracy that spends more per capita by far than any other state in the Union and over 10 times more than we did prior to the days of Big Oil?

My opponents need to stop attempting to rattle me with personal attacks just because I have a different philosophy than they do, and use their time more productively if they truly care about our community, state and future.

Vic Kohring represents Wasilla and Peters Creek in the Alaska State Legislature.