‘Open Mike’ tour paints Spokane red

The United States should drill for oil in the Arctic and refuse to set a political timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, Senate candidate Mike McGavick said Tuesday.

Social Security might be fixed, in part, by asking prosperous Americans to give back their benefit checks in years when they can afford it, he said. Immigration problems might be fixed, in part, by improved barriers on the border.

The GOP Senate hopeful brought his traveling road show, which the campaign calls “Open Mike” and features a bright red RV, to Spokane on Tuesday to answer questions from anyone who’d show up for a free lunch and some political talk at a parking lot along North Division. With the Republican red campaign T-shirts and red skirts, shirts and scarves, the lot looked like Pullman on a Cougar football Saturday.

A handful of Democrats in yellow shirts with “Mike Check” logos ringed the crowd, but exchanges between the two campaign staffs were generally good-natured. After the session ended, two of the Democrats stopped to wish McGavick well, even though they said they wouldn’t vote for him.

At the noon event, as well as an earlier coffee hour with Safeco employees in Liberty Lake, McGavick fielded questions about energy policy and the war in Iraq.

Why not push conservation rather than drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to feed the country’s oil addiction, he was asked. Drilling in ANWR is a major point of difference between him and Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell.

“ANWR is a small piece of the puzzle … a piece of how (oil prices) don’t get horribly worse,” he said. He supports higher mileage standards for cars “if they are based on science,” more money for research and development of alternative fuels, and government intervention to make sure the big oil companies don’t hamper the market for those alternatives.

“We will not be off of oil any time soon,” he said. “I’d rather send (money) to an Alaskan than a Saudi Arabian.”

While he said the decision to drill in ANWR was a close call, he criticized Cantwell, for “leading the fight” against drilling because it angered powerful Alaska lawmakers: “What did we get out of that besides ruptured relations in Congress?”

Asked at both stops about the war in Iraq, McGavick said he opposes any timetable set by Congress to withdraw the troops. That should be made by U.S. commanders in the field and political leaders of Iraq, he insisted.

“The least moral choice is to suddenly leave,” he said. “That would absolutely leave Iraq in civil war.”

McGavick has said his position on Iraq isn’t significantly different from Cantwell’s, who voted to give President Bush the authority to invade the country. Democrats point out, however, that Cantwell recently voted for an unsuccessful proposal in the Senate that urged troop withdrawal to begin by the end of the year.

Democrats also accuse McGavick of blindly supporting Bush on Iraq, but Tuesday he said the country should “have a debate” over Iraq policy – whether the United States should be there, whether the administration painted a too-optimistic picture for the public, had bad intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and didn’t plan adequately for the aftermath. But that debate should wait until the troops return, he said, so it doesn’t “divide us at a time we need to be united.”

To keep Social Security solvent, McGavick said, he wouldn’t change the program. But he would support a “voluntary means test” where people who are well off would be asked to return their benefit checks each year, and the money would go back into the system. When a questioner expressed skepticism that wealthy people would do that, he said he believes Americans would be willing to help save the system. If not, Congress could look at mandatory means tests – a system that would restrict payments to upper-income seniors.

Younger workers should be allowed to put some of their Social Security payments into personalized accounts managed by the government, not Wall Street, he said, and accept greater rewards for greater investment risks.

On immigration, McGavick criticized both chambers of Congress for inadequate proposals. The Senate bill needs to consider stronger barriers along the border, while the House bill is nothing but a barrier proposal, he said. He called for a strong guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for immigrants who have been in the country and working for about five years, while learning English and not breaking any laws except immigration.

The country needs a viable guest worker program and reliable identification system “before jumping on employers” for hiring illegal immigrants, he said.