He spent almost two decades in the U.S. Navy – and now he’s running for governor of Illinois.

Libertarian candidate Kash Jackson has Southern roots. He’s from Louisiana originally but has called Illinois home for the past six years. He rents a small farmhouse in Lake County – he used to own a home from 2009 to 2015 but he says the property taxes caught up to him.

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“My property taxes doubled from $4,500 to $9,000 in that time frame,” Jackson said.

State spending is one of the key issues Jackson is focusing on, as his campaign website outlines. He wants to stop the Illinois government from continuing to raise taxes.

As a Libertarian candidate, he’s a proponent of limited government.

Jackson was raised by his maternal grandparents and joined the Navy at age 17. As a minor, he needed his grandparent’s written approval to officially join.

When he was a junior in high school, his grandfather had a stroke. The medical bills piled up and eventually the bank took their house.

He says he watched his family struggle financially his entire life, and realized he didn’t want to live like that, so turned to a career in the military.

Jackson plans to apply his experience from the Navy to the governor’s office.

“The people that I respected the most in the military weren’t the ones that just issued orders down the chain of command. They were the men and women who were boots on the ground. That’s what I want to be doing,” he said.

As governor, Jackson said he would live in different communities “from the South Side of Chicago, all the way down to the southern end of the state, into as far as the Northwest border and down the Mississippi.”

Jackson said his biggest hurdle has been changing people’s perceptions about third-party candidates.

But he said the Democratic and Republican parties only represent a minority of constituents. Jackson is trying to reach Illinois citizens, who he said represent a majority of the population, “who feel they don’t have a voice,” he said.

Jackson joins us to discuss the new political direction he envisions for Illinois.

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