Former big city mayor Kay Barnes has been all over Northwest Missouri lately. She would like you to think she is just another country gal who understands the problems that we face up here. I live in the 6th District and have worked in Kansas City for 25 years, and I can tell you she doesn’t get it.

Kay Barnes served two terms as mayor and likes to tell everyone about all the good things she did for Kansas City. You know, things like the Sprint Center and the Power & Light District. Impressive, yes, but only a small part of K.C. One only needs to drive a few blocks south of there to see what Kansas City really is like.

What Barnes really has done for Kansas City is leave the city with a huge budget deficit and crumbling infrastructure. Under her administration the streets used to be covered with metal plates for months on end. Rather than taking care of the average citizens, she was taking care of wealthy businessmen and special interests. Money was diverted from police, sewer and other essentials to be paid out in the form of tax increment financing deals that made her rich lawyer friends very happy.

She did nothing about the high crime rate and the mass exodus of small businesses out of Kansas City.

She now goes by the name of Kay Cronkite Barnes to emphasize her local ties. But we knew her as Mayor Kay Waldo Barnes, the typical limousine liberal. Why the name changes? Simple, she is following the same model that worked so well for Claire McCaskill two years ago. Claire convinced enough regular folks that she was just like them to narrowly defeat Jim Talent for the Senate. Kay is trying to do the same even though she only has lived in our district for a few years.

Liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and other left-wing groups attack Sam Graves and present Kay Barnes as the solution to our problems. In one mailing, there is a page dedicated to all the “pork” that Congressman Graves has supported. But someone has not done his homework, as one of those projects is the C-130J, a newer version of the C-130 transports that we see flying around all the time. Kay and her pals may think that is pork, but residents of St. Joseph recognize it as an essential tool for our Air National Guard.

With all the uncertainty we face in our economy today, it’s best to have a congressman who is in touch. Sam Graves was one of the few who stood up to oppose the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street. Kay would like you to believe that she would stand up for you too, but her record in Kansas City proves otherwise.

Timothy Dike

Plattsburg, Mo.