Republican candidates vying for the U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi met at the Hernando Golf & Racquet Club Tuesday, Feb. 27, for an open debate hosted by the DeSoto County Republican Club.
Representative Dan Eubanks currently serves in the Mississippi House of Representatives for District 25, Desoto County. He is the son of John and Ruth Eubanks, residents of Tate County since 1988. Eubanks sat down with Tate Record following the debate for an exclusive interview.
“I’m really blessed to have my family. They are the reason that I’m doing this. I’d try and fail that to watch something crumble and know I did nothing to stop it,” said Eubanks.
Eubanks takes a firm stand on national security and protecting American lives.
“I’m probably the most pro-life guy in the Mississippi Legislature, but I’m not just pro-life when it comes to the womb. I’m prolife from the womb to the grave. That means not funding foreign wars to kill more Ukrainians and Israelis and Palestinians or allowing 100,000 of our countrymen die every year because of Fentanyl.”
According to Eubanks, one of the largest challenges and greatest immediate threat to American lives is Fentanyl.
“The Fentanyl issue is about supply and demand. We have to shut off the supply,” said Eubanks.
Several law enforcement agencies both locally and nationally have traced the source of most Fentanyl coming into the country from China and crossing the Mexican border.
“The greatest national security issue we have is our southern border, and China knows exactly what is going on. We have 100,000 Americans dying every year because of Fentanyl,” Eubank said. “How is that not a national security issue?”
The border crisis is one that Eubanks said he isn’t afraid to face.
“We have a country with an open border. A country is only as sovereign as its borders. What does that tell you about our country. It’s not just the Fentanyl. It’s not just Latinos looking for a better way of life. We’re talking thousands of bad actors that are now imbedded in our country. The greatest national security threat we’ve faced as a nation and yet we get a response that the reason we must give another $60 billion to the Ukraine is for national security. We will be into them for a quarter of a trillion dollars by the end of next year. Remember that when you get your notice that your Medicare part A & B are going up. We’re putting everybody else before America,” said Eubanks.
Eubanks faces Colonel Ghannon Burton, a retired U.S, Marine Corp F/A-18 pilot and TopGun graduate with five combat deployments; and Incumbent Roger Wicker in the Republican Primary set for Tuesday, March 12.
Eubanks said he chose now to seek election because he didn’t like how the country was currently controlled on the federal level.
“Why am I in this race? We see it. We feel it. We sense it. We watch the news and see our country headed in a trajectory straight for a precipice and wonder why? Why is this continuing, and you see the political elites putting everybody else first and putting America last. So, I felt this tugging, and it was tugging hard at me,” said Eubanks. “I was watching my current Senator side with the Democrats more than just about any other Republican Senator. So, the summer before last, my wife and I started praying about this because I started feeling that tug. The same tug I felt when I was called in to ministry. The same tug when I was called into public service the first time. And it was like I’ve got to do something. And I was like ‘Lord how can I be successful?’ There’s no way I can be successful against a 30-year member of the swamp with more special interest money than just about anybody. And this is what His word was to me, ‘Danial, I didn’t call you to be successful, I called you to be faithful. You let me worry about outcomes.’ This is as much a leap of faith for me as it is me standing up and fighting for the country that I love.”
A looming issue on the national stage is the continued spending and increase added to the national debt each year.
“The debt is out of control. We cannot continue to run a debt at the way we are doing it. And I’ll tell you, our current Senator doesn’t have a problem with raising the debt ceiling. He doesn’t have a problem with voting for Biden’s plan when it came to funding all the Green New Deal stuff, and the hundreds of millions of dollars towards diversity,” explained Eubanks. “I want my child to have what I had growing up. I want your children and your children’s children to have what we had growing up. If we don’t send strong men and women of courage to go up and fight, we are going to lose our country. We are losing it right now.”
Maintaining his conservative values will be of the upmost importance to Eubanks.
“I have the highest lifetime average conservative rating of anyone serving in state government right now. I tell you that just so you’ll know that I know what it’s like to be in the fight. I know what it’s like to charge the line with nobody else behind you. To be the lone red light on the board. I don’t just wear the conservative banner at election time. I am conservative every day that I have been representing you guys down in the Mississippi Legislature, and I will be just as conservative, just as doggedly determined and just as much of a fighter when you send me to D.C.”
The State of Mississippi has recently made headlines for two large economic deals with the Amazon.com Data center and the announced battery plant in Marshall County; however, Eubanks said the deals are not as large of a victory as people may think.
“The first two things we did this session was give away almost a billion dollars of your tax dollars to private corporate ventures. There’s a problem when government starts taking your tax dollars and giving it to private companies. They are picking winners and losers,” said Eubanks. “I know a gentleman in Senatobia. He’s got 62 employees. He said ‘You know what? I don’t get exempt from my property tax for 30 years. You know what? I still have to pay all of my corporate taxes. Why is Amazon, one the richest companies in the world, getting a free pass from here to forever?’
Eubanks said state and local decisions on tax breaks aren’t that different from federal decisions.
“It’s the same thing at the federal level. Corporate welfare is all out,” explained Eubanks. “When you plant a garden, what do you do? You make sure the soil is ready to receive the seed. If you prepare the soil, you’re going to have a good crop. If you’ll remember with President Trump, before he was in office, we had a problem with all of these giant companies like Apple, keeping around a trillion dollars in their profits out of America because they didn’t want to pay the corporate taxes that America charged. Everybody else had lower taxes than us, and we wondered why all the companies and the industries were leaving. Then we lowered the corporate tax, and oh guess what happened? Everybody started bringing it back to America. That is what we have to do for economic development. We must create a level playing field. We do not build, picking and choosing winners and losers on the backs of homegrown Mississippi businesses, the mom-and-pop shops, the people that have three employees who don’t get a single credit.”
Eubanks said his loyalties and efforts will be on behalf of Americans and Mississippians.
“You won’t have to worry about where my loyalties are, they are to America and Americans first, and you can take that to the bank,” he said.
Eubanks currently has several national and state-level endorsements including the National Rifle Association, Pro Life Mississippi and Right to Life.
All Tate County voting precincts will be open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 12.
