Over the past couple weeks I had received many messages from Francis Gibson, incumbent State House Rep. for District 65. At first it was a little annoying since I didn't have the time to meet with him and he seemed desperate in some way. However, after speaking with him for the first time on Wednesday night at 10pm I found his actions not that of a desperate man, but a result of his persistence and desire to serve and meet all of the delegates face-to-face.
During our meeting at Jonathan Bond's house (a county delegate from our precinct) he began by trying to diffuse allegations that have been made by the incumbent he beat a little over a year ago. Personally, I wasn't too interested since I wasn't involved in a lot of the interchange before I was elected as a delegate. However, he adequately explained his response to the allegations of raising fees for registering vehicles and the reduction of a planned scholarship among other things.
He is currently part owner of a surgical facility and mentioned that he opted to not serve on a committee that would be involved in policies that would affect his industry. He is also an assistant football coach at Mapleton High School, and had played football at BYU during college. Currently he resides in Mapleton and had served on the city council there for a few years.
Throughout my discussion a couple things were clear: that he was accessible and is willing to talk about issues. He had expressed the desire to learn and didn't seem to try to make things up as we dug into education and the proper role of government.
He appears to want to provide more incentives to be creative with cuts in spending and change the baseline budget going into each year. We had expressed to him the waste that we see on a district level and how it seems that district jobs are never cut while teachers are being reduced. He mentioned plans from different school districts throughout the state that had done more with less and limited the firing of teachers. He contrasted that with Jordan School District that failed to do so and cut back upwards of 200 teachers. He is proposing to start with a budget of 85% of the previous year's budget and bring in every department that is requesting money to justify why their allocation should increase.
Overall, I was impressed by my meeting with him. My initial impression was much better than that of his challenger Mark Jarman. If you want a candidate that is approachable, will listen, and who acknowledges that he makes mistakes then you will find him refreshing.
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