August 26-September 1, 2004

cover story

Down With Bureaucracy

by Dan Keashen

Jim Clymer has some big plans for the future of America's schools.

"I'm directly opposed to the federal agency of the Department of Education," says Clymer, a Lancaster County native who's running for U.S. Senate against Arlen Specter and Joe Hoeffel. "My party's platform is to limit the size of the overall government and abolish federal agencies like the Department of Education."

Now the national chairman of the

Constitution Party, Clymer was raised a Mennonite in the farm-country town of Quarryville. One of 10 children, he went to a Mennonite high school and, because of servitude to the family farm, did not start college until he was 21.

Having graduated from Millersville University with a bachelor's degree in history in 1972, Clymer pursued his law degree from the Washburn University School of Law in Kansas and now has a firm in Lancaster.

Ramping up for the campaign season, Clymer proclaims himself a "conservative alternative" for traditional Republican values. And to that end, he thinks the Department of Education is a sham agency.

"This department was not created through a proper function of government, as defined by the Constitution," says Clymer, who's also gets agitated when he hears the words No Child Left Behind Act. "When the federal government introduces its bureaucracy into education, you get programs like this. This legislation of one size fits all is ridiculous and just doesn't work. I know there are a lot of angry teachers out there who are fed up with it."

Clymer, 56, says the alternative to federal regulations and national education programs lies in giving power back to locals. He says communities are able to run their own school districts without having the threat of federal funding pulled away based on test scores.

"Let the parents and governments closest to the community decide what needs to be done to teach their children," says Clymer, who earned a spot on the ballot just before the Aug. 9 deadline. "These are issues for states and town governments — not Washington.

"The difference between me and Arlen Specter is that he thinks the Constitution is a living evolving document and I think the document contains the 17 enumerated powers in its original form," says Clymer, who has five children and five grandchildren.

Clymer idolized Barry Goldwater and remained a staunch Republican until 1992, when he left the party because he felt it was moving too close to Democrats.

"The Republican platform on education was to abolish the department, until 2000," he says. "Now our [Constitution Party] platform will keep this issue on the table."