U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder revisits KU to talk politics

U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder visits with Sherri Turner, assistant director at the Lawrence Public Library, left, and Kathleen Morgan, development director at the library, during a tour of the facility Monday. Yoder also conducted a public forum on the Kansas University campus.

These days, U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder sounds like a Republican.

At a public forum on the Kansas University campus, he talked about a lot of Republican stuff. How the country needs to rely on the private sector to create jobs, how there shouldn’t be any “sacred cows” protected from budget cuts and promoting the 10th Amendment, which limits the powers of the federal government.

It was his second such event since becoming a congressman and marked a return for him to the campus where he served as student body president.

Back then, however, he said he had different ideas. He was a registered Democrat, once, he said, but Kansas’ 3rd District representative now runs on the Republican ticket.

“My ideology changed here at KU,” he said.

As students munched on pizza and peppered Yoder with all kinds of questions — friendly and unfriendly — the congressman stressed how it was important to promote civil dialogue.

He encouraged all students — both those who identified themselves as liberals and those who called themselves conservatives — to listen to what the other side had to say.

“We’re all smart people here,” he said, and sometimes smart people disagree.

Trent Boultinghouse, a KU junior from Girard, who caught part of Yoder’s presentation, said he probably leaned a little to the left politically. He said he didn’t mind Yoder’s political shift since his college days.

“Obviously, if the man’s got a change of opinion, he’s not one that would rush into things, but he probably has researched his positions,” Boultinghouse said. “Obviously, he’s not the same person he was when he went to school here. I know I’ll probably be someone different five years from now than I am today.”