Ballot City
Overland Park
Campaign Phone
816-729-6889
Personal Biography
I'm married, with two grown children, and have lived in Overland Park, KS for over 30 yrs, and in Kansas since 1977. I grew up in Palo Alto, CA, graduated from UC Berkeley (Botany), and worked in a wide range of jobs (mostly blue-collar). I ultimately decided that I wanted to become a doctor, and went back to school in Kansas (where I had relatives, and where my cousin was in medical school) for pre-med classes. I've been an oncologist in Kansas since 1988, and retired in 2021.
Education
1969: Palo Alto Senior High School. 1975: UC Berkeley (Botany). 1983: KUMC (M.D.). 1988: Completed oncology residency at KUMC
Community/Public Service
Board Chair, Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. Synagogue president, Congregation Ohev Sholom. Board member, KIFA (Kansas Interfaith Alliance). Team physician, KC Marching Cobras. Board Member, American Telemedicine Association. Board Member, Assoc of VA Hematology and Oncology (AVAHO). Board Member, Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Decades of hard-won experience as a cancer physician dealing with very complicated situations, with lots of different inputs, working with each patient and their family to find the very best solution for their unique situation. Those skills will translate to governance, where listening, respect, and collaboration are vital, where it is imperative to keep your eye on the real problem and not be distracted, and where treatment options are determined by rational science, not by passion or by the loudest voice. Likewise, my experience in multiple nonprofits has taught me a great deal about leadership.
1. Maintain/improve our superb public education, which is under threat by extremists who would take money from public schools (in the form of vouchers) and divert it to private schools, which don't have to take special needs students, which have minimal accountability, and which are not even available for over half of the counties in Kansas, which would be giving money to wealthier urban districts without any benefit to the (primarily) rural areas at all. 2. Preserve women's reproductive rights in Kansas. This continue to be under threat, even after the resounding "Value Them Both" ballot initiative was resoundingly defeated in 2022. 3. The problem of retirees/people on fixed income being unable to stay in their homes due to rising taxes.
The "Gut and Go" process is antidemocratic, usually a full-on misleading, diversionary one that thrives in darkness, in opacity, in undue urging to 'just speed the legislation along.' It depends on people not noticing changes as legislation approaches the last minute, and the last day, of the session. "The legislative process is not supposed to be a shell game the can only be followed by those in the know." (Brian Black, with the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest). The key to the solution is transparency, with mandatory wait times, adequate tagging of legislation as having been modified, etc.
Background: Since 2005, there have been exactly 18 convictions for voter fraud. One per year. That, despite extensive efforts of the Attorney General and of JoCo Sheriff Calvin Hayden. Only two of those 18 were identified by party, and both of them were Republicans. My point: The election system is not program. Our election laws are solid, as is our election process. THAT SAID, all efforts should be made to make voting easier rather than harder--by having more drop-boxes available; by having more polling stations (this was a big problem in Garden City); by easing mail delivery deadlines for mailed ballots, in the face of a crippled US Postal Service.
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