OPINION: Bernard Schoenburg: Backers say McCarter a good fit for Kenya ambassador

June 11--State Sen. KYLE McCARTER, R-Lebanon, says he's long wanted to be ambassador to Kenya, and he's glad the Republican members of the U.S. House from Illinois are trying to help make that happen.

"I just see this as an opportunity for me to be in a place of influence to help a lot of people, and I'm excited about that," McCarter told me last week.

In a May 11 letter, the seven Illinois Republicans in Congress, including Reps. RODNEY DAVIS of Taylorville and DARIN LaHOOD of Peoria, urged President DONALD TRUMP to consider McCarter, who they said would be "an exemplary choice."

McCarter and his wife, VICTORIA, operate a school and clinic in Kenya through their organization called Each One Feed One. McCarter's parents, former Air Force chaplain CALVIN McCARTER and his wife, LINDA, who worked as a teacher, founded the organization. They are now retired in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

According to the congressional letter, Sen. McCarter and his wife operated the agency in Tharaka Nithi County in rural northeastern Kenya from 1986 to 1989 and from 2011 to the present.

McCarter is international director while his wife is director of education. The clinic serves up to 18,000 people in a year, and there are about 200 children in kindergarten through eighth-grade, McCarter said.

"And then we have about 40 children that live on campus, that are either orphaned, abandoned or abused -- some that are HIV positive," McCarter said. He said other work involves providing needed drugs and food to other HIV positive individuals and families.

McCarter's wife is a Collinsville native, and they met while in school at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He got a degree in accounting there, and Victoria finished school at Northeastern Oklahoma State. She is now in Kenya about three months a year, trains teachers and is head of curriculum for the Christian, faith-based organization. The senator said he takes two or three trips to Kenya yearly, "typically a couple weeks at a time."

McCarter, a former member of the St. Clair County Board, owns two manufacturing companies in Lebanon, Illinois. They are Custom Product Innovations and Custom Coating Innovations, with about 25 employees combined. Products include coatings for power transmission lines, fitness equipment and emergency respiratory equipment used on aircraft.

Those businesses "would really have no connection with Kenya," he said. But, he added, "The United States has missed a lot of opportunities to invest in countries like Kenya," including help with infrastructure. He said better relations can help fight terrorism. And he said the Chinese have been ahead of the U.S. in infrastructure work in Kenya.

"We have opportunities to help electrify Africa through power plants, even if those power plants are built by the Chinese," McCarter said. "We have ways that we can invest with them, and use Illinois coal."

McCarter takes heart that U.S. Rep. JOHN SHIMKUS, R-Collinsville, who McCarter challenged in a primary last year, is among people who signed the letter to Trump. "I think he knows that it would be something I could do and do very well," McCarter said.

McCarter is fiscal a conservative who helped propose a state budget fix this spring called the "Taxpayer Bargain" with no tax increase and across-the-board state agency cuts. And he introduced now-stalled legislation this spring, Senate Bill 78, that would have blocked state agency contracts or grants from any entity that performs abortions -- such as Planned Parenthood.

BRIGID LEAHY, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said that while it is nice to have someone with experience in a country being considered for ambassador, and she doesn't question McCarter's work in Kenya, she does question if he "would be a leader who would champion comprehensive health care for women including access to a complete range of reproductive health care. ..." She said Kenya "has high rates of unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortions resulting in serious complications."

McCarter said the criticism must be from someone who "hasn't seen how we care for women."

"Each One Feed One is too busy rescuing young girls who have been victims of physical and sexual abuse -- and FGM (female genital mutilation) -- to be caught up in the divisive issue of abortion," he said.

Issues like the politics of Planned Parenthood "never come up when we're trying to save a young girl or a woman who may be bleeding to death from FGM," he said.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, which promotes sexual and reproductive rights, Kenyan law since 2010 allows abortion when a woman's life or health is in danger, but unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion remain common.

McCarter notes that Kenyan law generally prohibits abortion, and said family planning, including oral contraception, is part of the "comprehensive health care we provide for women on a daily basis."

If chosen ambassador, he said, the job "would be about promoting cooperation between our two countries and Kenya's continued freedom, not undue political influence by a guest country over its host."

McCarter has been in the Senate since 2009, but isn't running in 2018 because of a self-imposed term limit.

Senate President JOHN CULLERTON, D-Chicago, considers McCarter's work in Kenya admirable, said Cullerton spokesman JOHN PATTERSON. Cullerton is friends with Indiana's Senate president, who is friends with Vice President MIKE PENCE, and Cullerton was planning to put in a good word for McCarter, Patterson added.

McCarter and his wife moved to Kenya two years out of college, and spent two years building a clinic. He says his parents are "servants of other people."

"Growing up ... we always had people in our house that they were helping out," McCarter said. "So the thing that I started with was two great role models. ... I'm very grateful for that."

-- Contact Bernard Schoenburg: [email protected], 788-1540, twitter.com/bschoenburg.

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