Pete Laney, Democrat

Pete Laney speaks for me ...

Let me ask you a variation of my earlier question: Did they leave their party, or did their party leave them? The only reason that a party leaves you is because you let it. It?s like being on the playground with the bully beating you up every morning. If you hold your hands behind your back and don?t ever say anything, you?re going to get beat up worse. If you work with him, work with the bully, you might make a decent person out of him. The course of least resistance is why they chose to switch parties.

You never switched parties. Did you ever think about it?
Nope. Did not.

Even though you?re quite a bit more conservative than a lot of Democrats.
I?m more conservative than a lot of Republicans.

Then why not switch?
Because there are a lot more people in the Democratic party who do what the Good Book says: Take care of the poor and the afflicted and the downtrodden. I took flak from some of my Republican colleagues for working with the mentally ill, for working with some of the underprivileged from the Children?s Health Insurance Program. That?s not liberal; that?s trying to use the assets of the state to produce the best economics you can. That?s to keep you from getting sick, to take care of the mentally ill so they don?t have to be institutionalized, to try to have an education program that educates people to be good taxpaying citizens rather than uneducated people who end up in our penal system and cost us $25,000 or $35,000 a year to take care of. I think all of those things?education, mental health, things like that?are conservative rather than liberal.

Remember what former lieutenant governor Bill Ratliff once said about why he?s a Republican? Because he agrees with the Republican party 51 percent of the time.
And that caught him a lot of flak, because they want 100 percent.

The Democratic party is any different?
I have never been criticized by the Democratic party for my philosophy or my beliefs. I?ve been criticized by some members of the party for some of the things I?ve accomplished or not accomplished or tried to accomplish. But a majority of them tolerate a lot of flexibility in what we think and believe.