Juan Luengo is the Democratic Party candidate running for the Kansas Treasurer post in the November 3 midterm elections . Luengo spoke exclusively to HT.com about what motivated the former CEO to make a pivot to politics, and his views on the duties and roles of the state treasurer. His campaign manager was also present at the meeting.
“I’m going to have to work with both political parties. He added that both sides needed to ‘get back to the table’, noting this was more of a ‘need’ than a ‘want’ given current circumstances. He felt there were many wrongs that needed to be corrected, and the key moment came in May, just before he filed the papers expressing intent to run for the Treasurer’s post.
This partisanship that’s going on, it’s not good, it’s hurting everybody,” Luengo said. When asked about what made him want to run for the Treasurer’s post, Luengo said it was a mix of what was happening all over the world and in Kansas. Luengo said that for him becoming the Treasurer meant “not only being able to help the younger generation, but also small business, farmers, women-owned businesses, and disabled too. In the past, Kansas Treasurers have gone on to the US Congress, but Luengo said he had not thought that far ahead. “Right now, I’m focused on this race,” the Democrat said. The candidate said that he wanted the four years to prove to the people of Kansas that they’d made the right choice, if he were to become Treasurer.
He added that he wanted women at the table as well as the trade unions. He indicated that they’d help draft the policies which Luengo would try to get passed by the legislature. Luengo also noted that he’d work with the governor’s office and the commerce department, saying they’d bring the ‘bigger deals’. Luengo called himself a ‘responsible capitalist’ noting that the US was founded on ‘freedoms and capitalism’.
Because of the rising costs, however, he said that times were tougher now for people.
Luengo said that he’d want to establish a non-partisan economic council where he’d have the ‘government, private sector, small businesses and farmers’. The candidate noted that ‘capitalism’ was not a ‘bad word’ and said it was created to push ‘people from the bottom’ up.
