Congressional candidate Shamel visits Dem. committee

— By BRADLY GILL

Staff writer

The Ouachita County Democratic Central Committee heard from 4th Congressional District Candidate Hayden Shamel at its Thursday night meeting and also discussed the importance of voter registration.

Chairman Robert White also impressed upon those present the need for fundraising and said that they would need to host an event for David Fielding in the future.

The group also spoke of hiring an individual to sign up voters and said that rather than an hourly wage, they could possibly pay that person by the number of voters registered.

“What we’ve done in the past and what we’ll try do this year, we normally open a headquarters. We’ll have a central location to work out of. We typically hire a person to coordinate that. We’re looking at two different ways of doing that. We might pay a person based on the number they register, or we just might hire a person just to coordinate it and then get volunteers,” White said.

White said the group usually works with churches and other organizations. The drive would go up until the end of registration for the general election.

One of the people hoping for a high voter turnout during the election is Hayden Shamel, the Democratic Candidate for the Arkansas 4th Congressional District Seat, currently held by Republican Bruce Westerman.

According to Shamel’s website at www.haydenforcongress.com, “As the daughter of a Texas cattle rancher, Hayden grew up in Texarkana where she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English. Her career in secondary and higher education has allowed her to work all over the Fourth District of Arkansas, giving her unique insight into the educational and economic needs of the people of this state.​

“Before moving to Hot Springs, Hayden worked at the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope, where she was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Award by the Arkansas Association of Two Year Colleges in 2011. Currently, Hayden works as an English and Spanish instructor at Lakeside High School. Hayden lives in Hot Springs with her husband, who is an athletic director and high school football coach, and their three-year-old daughter Ella. As a mother and a teacher, Hayden emphasizes the importance of learning from your mistakes and striving to be a better person today than you were the day before.

“Hayden has been active in politics since 2013. She was recently named a 2017 Emerging Leader by the Democratic Party of Arkansas for her political activism and work on issues that directly affect Arkansas families. Under her leadership as the chair of the Democratic Party of Garland County, Hot Springs has seen overwhelming success with its membership, fundraising, and community outreach rallies. She was a delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and served as treasurer for the Virginia Clinton Kelley Women’s Democratic Club.”

Hayden told the assembled that she has three central issues that prompted her to run

The first being health care. Shamel says that when picking up prescriptions for her four year old daughter even with educators insurance it can cost several hundred dollars.

“I have to think about the person who goes to pick up that prescription, who has to make the decision between picking up that prescription that their kid can’t do without and putting food on the table at night. The reality is we have people living in our district that have to make that decision,” Shamel said.

She said that a few solutions to the rising healthcare cost is allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmacies.

She also advocates ending pay for delay tactics, in which a pharmaceutical company will pay the manufacturer’s of a generic drug to withhold shipments.

Finally, she says that importing prescriptions from places like Canada is a simple solution supported by 70 percent of Americans.

Her second platform is education.

Shamel said.“All of our kids, regardless of where they are from, whether they are from that very very rural school district where I first started teaching or if they are from a more urban area...all of our kids deserve the same access to a superior education.”

She said that improving rural broadband access is key to improvement and also hopes to improve cell service in rural areas.

Lastly, she touched on the economy saying that Arkansas is 49 in terms of wages and that every Arkansan deserves a living wage. She said she believes one of the failings of the education system is that it ignores technical vocations and that more emphasis should be placed on secondary schools.

Shamel said she plans on returning to Camden during her campaign, “I’m very excited to be here in Camden. I’ll be back. I want to meet as many people as I can and talk to as many people as I can to learn about the issues that are important to this area. I think it’s time to return to focus on South Arkansas. I believe we can truly make a difference if we work together.”

Upcoming Events