Republican Lucas Green to challenge in District 146 House primary

National Guard veteran and Cape Girardeau County native Lucas Green will challenge Republican incumbent Rep. Barry Hovis for the House of Representatives District 146 seat in the Tuesday, Aug. 6, primary election.

During his time in the National Guard, Green, who is running for office for the first time this year, was deployed to the 2002 Winter Olympics for security duties, spent 16 months in Iraq in 2003-04 when he received an Army Commendation Medal and was deployed with the Missouri National Guard for Hurricane Katrina relief in 2005. On the political side, Green helped with John Ashcroft's 2000 U.S. Senate campaign, as well as with George W. Bush's 2004 campaign.

"I worked on those but haven't done much since then because part of my consulting work was with the Department of Defense and some international military, and I had to maintain a security clearance," Green said. "I really needed to maintain the appearance of not being biased."

In addition to his military work, Green worked in the technology sector for 15 years and eventually purchased a small business, Sikeston Trade Fair, from his uncle, who was retiring.

When deciding to run, Green said something "woke up" inside of him after he was advised on how to respond when someone thanked him for his service.

"Everybody tells a veteran, 'Thank you for your service.' I've always struggled with how to respond to that," Green said. "Recently, I had somebody tell me, 'Tell people they're worth it,' and that woke up something in me that had kind of been asleep for a while. While I served, I did serve because people are worth it. The county's worth it, the people in the county are worth it, the country's worth it, and it made me realize there's a part of me that needs to get back into it."

Green said he began to research the area's issues and who was in what office, which compelled him to run.

"I just really felt the current representative wasn't meeting the needs of the constituents," Green said.

In addition to his research, Green said people in Cape Girardeau County also expressed displeasure with the current representative's body of work while in office.

"I started hearing that from people, and I can go through what I really think constituents are wanting and what he's not providing," Green said. "But it really made me say, 'Hey, we can do better.'"

On the issues, Green's platform is pro-life, limited government, the right to bear arms, technological advancement in the district to provide better customer service for constituents, small businesses, choice in education and the rights of farmers in the state. In addition, Green stated that voters in the region are looking for clarity and transparency from their representatives.

"Whether it's in your speech, in your debates or in the laws you make, bring some clarity because we've got way too many laws getting passed, but the very next year they're going back and fixing them because as soon as it got to the people that had to execute it, they're like, 'Yeah, we can't do this. There's a problem,'" Green said. "We need people who actually will look through bills and ask, 'Can this actually be executed?'"