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The 50th district of the N.C. Senate includes Jackson, Macon, Swain, a smidge Haywood (namely Bethel and Cruso), Clay, Graham, Cherokee and Transylvania.

District 50 Republican State Senate candidate Susan Pons of Franklin said she is running for the office because Democrats have been in control of the state senate since 1898.

Pons, 60, said she and her husband have directed Christian Training Center International for 28 years, which, she said, is an organization that takes in families, mainly missionaries and pastors’ families, from around the world.

She said she and her husband also run Heroes of Today, a program that teaches children about America and how to deal with practical real-life issues such as credit cards and how to purchase a car and house.

Pons is facing Democrat incumbent John Snow of Murphy in the election.

Pons said she has never held public office.

She said there needs to be an amendment that says bills should be brought out of committees if two-thirds of the Legislature wants them brought out.

She said her opponent, Snow, voted against a bill that would have allowed that. The amendment is needed, because currently many bills that deal with important issues such as eminent domain and immigration die in committee, she said.

Pons believes in term limits of three terms and said many of the people in the Senate have made politics a profession. She asserted that senators are supposed to serve the people, not make a living being a politician.

She said she would support a bill to protect marriage so it is only recognized as being between man and a woman. She said she also supports putting year moratoriums on eminent domain and forced annexations.

Pons is opposed to taking land by eminent domain and also believes people should have a say on whether they are annexed.

Also on property rights, she said she is against steep-slope ordinances because they infringe on property rights by telling people what they can build.

“I believe government has gotten too big,” she said.

On another property rights issue, she said she opposes putting meters on wells that the government checks to see how much water is being consumed. And she said she favors a taxpayer bill of rights that would put a cap on taxes and a cap on spending.

She said that North Carolinians work six and a half months out of the year just to pay their federal, state and local taxes.

She said there was $646 million in “pork barrel” spending proposed for the state of North Carolina this year on items including an oyster hatchery, inflatable planetarium, and polar bear exhibit.

When it comes to immigration, she first noted that she and her husband have adopted three Guatemalan grandchildren. She says North Carolina needs to begin enforcing its immigration laws, adding that neighboring states do and as a result illegal immigrants are coming here.

North Carolina ranks eighth in the nation for the most illegal immigrants. She said illegal immigrants affect the tax system and healthcare and hold English-speaking students back in school.

Immigration is an issue that has been ignored by the Legislature and it is costing the state millions of dollars, she said.

The education system also needs to be improved she said, adding that 58 cents on every dollar spent goes toward education but one-third of the students don’t graduate.

Education should be governed more on the local level, she said.

When there are state mandates on how education is run a “one-size fits all approach” is the result, and it doesn’t work, she said.

For example, the way a school is run in Charlotte is not necessarily how schools in Western North Carolina should be run, she said.

Pons said teachers who do a good job should be rewarded financially, and she also said she supports school vouchers and charter schools.

She said there is a cap currently in place in North Carolina of 100 charter schools, and she supports lifting that cap.

She said many cities in the state would like to implement charter schools to give parents a better choice of where to send their child to school.

On the economy, Pons supports cutting the state income tax as well as corporate and gas taxes, saying they are the highest in the Southeast. She also said the high corporate tax rate of 6.9 percent makes it difficult to draw businesses here and forces others to leave.

Under Democrat Gov. Mike Easley state spending has increased from $10 billion to $21 billion, she said.

“North Carolina is almost $14 billion in debt and taxes keep going up,” she said. “It’s tax and spend.”

All the while she said North Carolina has gone from fourth to 48 in its ranking as a “good road state.”

On drugs she asserted that her opponent Sen. Snow touts that he was responsible for legislation that cracked down on methamphetamine in the state. But Pons said that Snow was just one of 25 senators who sponsored that legislation.

Pons also opposes abortion and said North Carolina ranked sixth in the nation in 2007 for the number of abortions performed.

“We still allow partial birth abortions in North Carolina,” she said, adding that parental consent is not required.

(To comment on this story email josh@smokymountainnews.com)