York gets into state rep race

Thursday, February 16, 2012

A 58-year-old east Vernon County woman will enter the Republican primary to seek the Missouri General Assembly seat being vacated by the term-limited state Rep. Barney Fisher, R-Horton, at the end of this year.

Barbara York said Tuesday night that she was recruited for the 125th District contest by the Vernon County Republican Executive Committee because the only other announced candidate, Republican Bates County Northern Commissioner Randy Pike of Butler, is insufficiently conservative.

"The committee felt like they needed someone more conservative in the race and that I would be a better candidate," said York, a former nurse who works as a dog breeder and in her husband Don's farming and trucking businesses.

Announcing that she will make her candidacy official when the filing period opens Feb. 28, she said, "I have thought about it for a couple of years and decided I could do a very good job of representing the people of Vernon and Bates counties.

"Barney has represented the district well. He looks at everything from the angle of how it will impact the people of Vernon and Bates counties. He tries to do the right thing."

Vernon County GOP Chairman Jerry Wadel of Richards confirmed Tuesday that his committee had interviewed York and asked her to seek the two-year term.

York said she is particularly interested in preserving Missouri's $1 billion a year dog breeding industry, which would have been severely damaged by the Proposition B state constitutional amendment passed in 2010 that the General Assembly rewrote last year.

"The U.S. Humane Society started with the dogs in Missouri to gain momentum and then go after agriculture," she said from Jefferson City.

The eldest child in an Air Force family, York graduated from high school in Roswell, N.M., took a degree in nursing at Yuba College in Marysville, Calif., and worked as a licensed practical nurse from 1982 to 1997. She and her husband have three children, Kim Brandt and Karee Wood of Nevada and Donny, who works in the family businesses. They have been married for 41 years and have five grandchildren.

York's father Sandy died in 2004. Her mother, Jane Sanderson, lives in Missouri. She has two brothers and a sister.

Noting that she lives 17 miles east of Nevada and 2 1/2 miles south of U.S. 54 in Virgil Township, York said, "We're as far east as you can get.

"That's why we have an El Dorado Springs address. If you walk across the street to the mailbox, you're in Cedar County."

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