Lt. Gov. candidate details positions

The News-Letterasked Admiral Charles Larson, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, about his motivations for running.

News-Letter: What made you decide to join the Townsend campaign?

Admiral Charles Larson: I've got an extensive background in Homeland Security, education, particularly in higher education, technology, business development, job creation and I've done a lot of work with large budgets. The largest budget I ever had to put together in the Navy was $12 billion dollars, about the size of a medium state.

I had to structure it, defend before the Congress and go back and execute it. [As an admiral], I have 20 years of very senior executive leadership and management experience running large organizations and making decisions.

N-L: Earlier in the campaign, you received some criticism for being a one-time member of the Republican Party and then joining the Democratic campaign for governor.

CL: My wife and three daughters are Democrats and have been always. And I've always described myself as a conservative on national defense, foreign policy and fiscal issues and moderate to liberal on domestic and social issues.

And I think there is a legitimate role for government to help people make their lives better. And I have found that over the last five to ten years, I've watched the Republican Party move farther to the right and away from me.

And there was never a defining moment that said, "Go change your party registration," because I wasn't active in Democrat-Republican politics. But it finally came to the time that when it appeared that there might be a role for me in the state government, I said I'm much more aligned with the values and the ideals and the priorities of the Democratic Party in the state of Maryland than the Republican Party. So I switched.

N-L: In the past two days, television ads for the Townsend/Larson campaign have been putting a lot of emphasis on gun control and the environment. Are these going to be two priorities of your administration should you be elected?

CL: Our really top priorities are education, healthcare, public safety and the environment. But we do believe that there are legitimate differences between us and our opponents, certainly in the area of safe communities and enforcing reasonable gun laws that are on the books. There's a difference there, and there's a big difference on the environment where [Congressman Bob Ehrlich] was given a failing grade by the League of Conservation Voters for his very poor record on the environment.

So we've got to face 2004 without that money and he won't talk about alternatives. Where's he going to get his money? Is he going to raise taxes and he's just too afraid to say so? And where's he going to make his cuts? He just said a four percent cut across the board. But at the same time, he's protected over 80 percent of the budget from cuts.

So if he makes that four percent cut and he can only make it in 20 percent of the budget, that's a 20 percent cut. You know, what's in that 20 percent? Higher education. Higher education will get gutted under the Ehrlich plan and under our plan it will continue to move forward. We will do an agency-by-agency review looking for programs that are redundant, no longer necessary.

N-L: With education in mind, what does the Townsend and Larson team have to say to Johns Hopkins students?

CL: We would say to Johns Hopkins students specifically that we [Democrats] have given you a 76 percent increase in funding over the last eight years. The amount of money you got from the state in fiscal [year] 2003 was $19 million. We are not cutting higher education. We are increasing it. Higher education is a high priority, because higher education is the thing that feeds economic recovery.

We need to have a trained workforce and an educated populace in order to bring business this year.