Full interview with House District 59 candidate Vic Rackers
Alison Patton
ABC 17 News is interviewing candidates heading into the Aug. 4 election. On the Republican ticket for the Missouri state house District 59 seat, The race is between Blair Oaks School Board member Glenn Reynolds, former Jefferson City Mayor Carrie Tergin and retired engineer Vic Rackers. The seat represents Cole County. ABC 17 News reporter Alison Patton interviewed all candidates. Read the transcript of the interview with Rackers below.
Editors note: A small portion of repeated information was cut from transcript. The video is lightly edited to cut out and fix lighting issues.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
ALISON PATTON: Why don’t you go ahead and tell me a little bit about yourself?
VIC RACKERS: I’m a native of Cole County. I grew up on a farm on the east side, and we currently live on a farm on the east side, and married to my wife of 37 years. We raised three adult children who are also married, and we have seven grandchildren. I’m a retired civil engineer from the state of Missouri. We farm, we maintain two different farms, and we raise a commercial herd of 30 cattle, and we make hay, and I’ve been trying to be a good citizen. I’m active locally on several boards. I volunteer on several different organizations. I’m proud to say I’m a member of the Cole County 250th Committee, which we’ve been very active lately, and just through this past weekend. I have been active in Republican politics and working for campaigns for quite a while. I was elected to the Republican Central Committee in 2024, and that sort of spurred me on to seek a representative district 59.
PATTON: Why are you running for House District 59?
RACKERS: Yes, I’m running mainly to protect our rural way of life in Cole County. I’m also running to protect the lives of the innocent unborn, I’m running to limit government, and I’m running to protect our personal freedoms and our way of life that I grew up with and that I currently enjoy, and that I want to see extended to our children and our grandchildren.
PATTON: OK. And you’re on quite a few boards. You’re locally active in the community. How do you think that experience will help you if you are elected to this position?
RACKERS: I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people, to work with a lot of people, to volunteer for veterans. I’m on the Bugle Boy, which is a tremendous organization for our veterans. We do a veterans’ appreciation night every year. I’ve been very active in laying wreaths for heroes, and I’m active in our Knights of Columbus. I’m a member of our Mizzou Cole County Extension Board. Just, it sort of builds– it builds a toolbox of networking, and also how to work together to get things done. How the processes of getting things done, working together and sharing ideas using your background. I’m proud of what I have accomplished in my life, and with my wife and my amount of general knowledge that I think I maintain with being a civil engineer, being a hunter, being a fisherman, being a landowner, owning property. And I think those are just good tools that would serve me well, were I’d be fortunate enough to be elected and to be serving here in this building.
PATTON: OK. And if you were to be elected, and maybe, hopefully, you’ve kind of looked into this a little bit, but what kind of committees would you be interested in serving on?
RACKERS: Yes, I have for sure. I’d like to serve on the Agriculture Committee, Natural Resources and Conservation, Transportation and Infrastructure and possibly Energy. And those work into my background. And I think I would be a good advocate on those committees.
PATTON: OK, and you mentioned you wanted to serve on the energy committee. Now, Amazon and Google have some plans to settle down in Montgomery County. What are your thoughts on data centers in general and how they affect the environment and local economy?
RACKERS: I definitely have some concerns on the data centers and why they’re coming here. For one, I’m not totally sold on our need for them in Missouri for one. I’m concerned they’re taking up so much rural farmland or our cropland for another. I’m very concerned about how much energy they’re going to demand; there may be electricity, water, natural resources. And then I’m concerned about this loss of supply and demand, when if the demand goes up for energy, how it’s going to affect all the local citizens in the area and in the state of Missouri. And, I just wonder and question what these data centers—how are they going to help our average Missouri citizen and how they’re going to affect them? Other than possibly raising the price and the cost of their cost of living.
PATTON: And then one of the other things that I guess we can kind of shift gears to talk about is what’s happening right now, especially with this past legislative session. The budget, it has taken kind of a center stage after Governor [Mike] Kehoe signed it off; he froze certain things and vetoed other expenses. And he says that the state has a spending problem. What’s kind of your take on the state budget?
RACKERS: I agree totally with that statement by the governor. I believe, or I want– One of the other reasons I’m running is to limit the growth of government. I want to make sure government lives within its means, like all, every everyday Missourian and has to, as he said, we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. And that is controlled by the supermajority Republican Party. And we need to, we need to take care of our own house, and we need to, and act conservatively and limit the growth and take care of needs, take care of needs, and not necessarily all at once. So I definitely agree with that, and want to limit the growth and cut spending.
PATTON: And one of the things on this on the August ballot is eliminating or phasing out the state income tax. What are your thoughts on that?
RACKERS: I am wholeheartedly in favor of the concept of eliminating or reducing income tax. And I believe people can spend their own money better than giving it to the government to reallocate and spend. But I do have reservations with the execution. And I believe that the execution of the sales tax and the implementation is undefined. So I encourage all voters to be educated and informed when they go to the ballot box, and make an informed decision on that issue. I’m in favor of the concept, I wish it was better defined, better defined, for us to vote on.
PATTON: OK. Some of the other candidates you’re running against have said that they’ve gone out and door-knocked, and they’ve had these conversations with folks in the community or district. Have you had these conversations, and what are your constituents or potential constituents thoughts on this?
RACKERS: Yes. People sort of have the same feeling that I just mentioned. They definitely have reservations, and they’re concerned about sales tax running, you know, running out of control that we could get into 10s, 11s in sales tax [percentage]. But I trust the people that have developed it and the limitations, but still it’s sort of undefined until it gets back into session and is set in stone and set in concrete to what actually will be implemented.
PATTON: OK. And then the other budget question is public school funding– it was supposed to stay stagnant, and then, one of the other candidates told me that the lottery, the money from the lottery, didn’t quite come in as high as it’s anticipated to. But do you think that it’s fair that public schools either were supposed to receive stagnant funding or even a little less money this year compared to last?
RACKERS: I believe they’re working on redoing the foundation formula, and that should hopefully take care of that. But just like everyone and the government, I believe that the schools need to live within their means. I believe schools need to be held more accountable and produce a better product. I believe they need to have more focus on the fundamentals of academics and make sure that they are teaching our children to read. The statistics are troubling, that a lot of children, a lot of kids can’t read by the time they get out of fourth grade. And I just think we need to have more accountability. I mean, we had more interaction with our parents. I support the Parents’ Bill of Rights. And we just, we need to work together. Parents need to be more responsible and accountable, but they need to work as a team with their school, because I believe in my kids and my wife, and our kids are the absolute–the best thing that we have to invest in, and their quality, their education, and the environment which they are getting that education.
PATTON: OK. We have two more questions left. We’re gonna go ahead and get this one out of the way. I told you I wanted to talk about Amendment 3 today, it’s not on the August ballot. It’s on the November ballot, so we’ll switch the question around. Tell me about–you work with pro-life groups. What are your thoughts, opinions on it, and we can extend it to Amendment 3 in November, or we can talk about it just in general.
RACKERS: Sure. I am a strong proponent of Amendment 3. Once a baby is conceived, we need to do everything to nourish and protect that innocent human, unborn human life. Just like we do with other animals, puppies, eagles, we need to cherish human life, and I agree, but we need to plan or we don’t want unplanned pregnancies. We want planned pregnancies. But to that end, there’s always going to be unplanned pregnancies. But we need to sponsor adoption rather than abortion. We need to make every child wanted. But if that child is not wanted, bring that child available for adoption. In 2026, I don’t believe we should be killing our unborn, innocent unborn children.
PATTON: And then with the other candidates, we’ve talked about Amendment 3. It turns out it’s in November. So we kind of switched that one to Amendment 4 as well. Are you familiar with this?
RACKERS: Yes, I’m familiar with all the amendments. It took to follow up with Amendment 3, and Amendment 3, it also limits transgender surgeries. And I don’t believe any, any child, any minor should be getting any type of sex change, any type of transgender surgeries. I believe the parents shouldn’t be advocating that, and no one should be advocating. I think that a person should be a full adult to make those decisions when they’re an adult. But I don’t think we should be doing those type of experiments on our youth. But Amendment 4. So, I mean, I haven’t advocated for initiative petition reform for a long time. We wouldn’t have abortion legal in Missouri currently. And we wouldn’t have marijuana legal in Missouri currently, if we would have had some sort of initiative petition reform in the past. 50% plus one, only one vote, to me is way too low of a threshold to change our constitution. I would have been all right with 57%, 60%, just a larger majority to change our Constitution. And also Amendment 4 will limit initiative petitions and make it harder for them to get passed on the ballot. But it also limits out-of-state participation and funding into those. So, for example, if the voters, hopefully, decide to limit, curtail abortion in November. Well, if we don’t pass Amendment 4, well, initiative petition could be brought up again next year or the year after that, just to override or redo this current Amendment 3. So, I just think the legislator is elected to vet laws. And, you know, there’s a difference between the process of the initiative petitions that come through a referendum and then ones that come from the legislature. And so I’m all right with that. Our Constitution is larger than the United States Constitution. Marijuana has 44 pages of our current Constitution, which is 20% of our Constitution. So, I just think that the outside groups and that special interest groups are controlling our initiative petition process. And I don’t believe that the average Missourian has a burning desire to change our Constitution, other than that which I do today to get legalized abortion out of our Constitution.
PATTON: Some of the other candidates I’ve talked to today have said that initiative petitions need to be reformed, but they have some reservations about how strong that Amendment 4–or how hard it is to change. Is that a concern for you?
RACKERS: It wouldn’t have been my choice to do eight out of eight districts. But I’m OK with that. Like I said, 57, 60% or even two-thirds majority, I would have been all right with that. This current plan wouldn’t have been my choice, but I’m in favor of it. We need to limit outside interest and just repeat initiative petitions, getting on the ballot, and being passed by 50% plus one vote. I mean, marijuana only passed, abortion only passed by 51.6 [percent]. And marijuana passed by a simple, smaller, simple majority also. So, I’m OK with and I’m definitely in favor of it.
PATTON: I’ve got two more questions for you. You’re coming in after long-standing Rep. Rudy Veit. How do you think that you will kind of fill his position?
RACKERS: I will be more conservative than our current representative. I think I reflect better with the values of our rural Missourians. I’m a farmer and an engineer. Where our current is an attorney and nothing against attorneys, but I think I just reflect and share the same values of our rural Cole County residents.
PATTON: OK, and then last question, I’ll open it up to you. Is there anything else that you would want to talk about today that we– I didn’t ask you, or we didn’t get to?
RACKERS: Yes, we are invested in Cole County, and, I want to advocate for the citizens of Taos and Wardsville and all the other, Saint Thomas, and towns in between. And I wanted to be an accountable and accessible representative at the Capitol for all for residents of rural Cole County.
PATTON: All right, thank you so much.
RACKERS: Thank you.