Joel Funk
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Joel Funk (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Illinois' 12th Congressional District. He lost in the Democratic primary on March 17, 2020.
Funk completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Joel Funk earned a bachelor's degree from The Military College of South Carolina in 2006. He earned a master's degree in Security Studies from the United States Army Command and General Staff College and Kansas State University in 2017. Funk’s career experience includes working as an aviation officer and special operations aviator with the U.S. Army and as a financial representative with Northwestern Mutual.[1]
Elections
2020
See also: Illinois' 12th Congressional District election, 2020
Illinois' 12th Congressional District election, 2020 (March 17 Republican primary)
Illinois' 12th Congressional District election, 2020 (March 17 Democratic primary)
General election
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
Democratic primary election
Republican primary election
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Joel Funk completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Funk's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am from southern Illinois and was raised on a small family farm that has been in my family since the 1840s when the Funks immigrated from Germany. My primary education was in Mascoutah Illinois. I went to college on an Army ROTC scholarship to The Citadel, the South Carolina Military College. I earned two Bachelor of Arts and a commission in the US Army as a Second Lieutenant in Aviation Branch.
Upon graduation I attended the US Army Flight School where I was awarded the Army Aviator Badge and qualified in the chinook series of army helicopters. I have served in the 10th Mountain Division, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), and 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). I have been deployed in support of combat operations to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria as well as a Joint Combined Exchange Training with the Colombia military.
I graduated from the Army's Command and General Officer Staff College and K-State in 2017 with a Master of Arts in Security Studies. I left the Army in order to be closer to my family, assist with the family business, and to serve as a leader in my community.
- Personal liberty is the fundamental principle of the enlightenment that our government is founded on. Liberty and its preservation against tyranny in all its forms must be assured and strengthened.
- Prosperity is the cornerstone of our community and country. We must achieve sustainable growth that benefits all instead of a few, which will yield a more stable and just society.
- Life is not a zero sum game. We all benefit by lifting up those that are less well off. Pursuing policies that ensure a person's opportunities in life are not determined in large part by their zip-code at birth will accelerate entrepreneurship, innovation, and prosperity for all.
International relations, foreign policy, and national security affairs is what I am most passionate about. The greatest threats to our planet and our continued existence as a species are global. The rise in violent extremism, authoritarianism, and unsustainable industrial expansion dependent on non-renewable sources of energy threaten to engulf our world. Our approaches to combat these threats at the national level are myopic and must be retooled to look to the future and not near term quarterly earnings reports. In order to lead on the world stage we must be strong at home as well. Our gravest threat domestically is a socioeconomic system that further entrenches wealth disparity and leaves all except the very wealthy shackled and indentured to debt. Our economy is currently a house of cards built upon a mountain of debt and unfunded liabilities that we must address before it is too late.
I've had many great examples of leaders and selfless servants in my life to learn from and emulate from my own family, educational institutions, and my military career. My favorite President and a person I've looked up to not just for what he achieved, but the person he was is Theodore Roosevelt. His tenacity, drive, and pursuit to build a more just and moral society are without a doubt worthy of echoing. As a person he was complex and most certainly flawed, but how he pushed through those flaws and sought to understand and relate to everyone in order to communicate that he was fighting for their best interest made our country stronger and more just. Someone in his likeness is what we need at the helm again.
Victor Hugo's work "Les Misérables" is my favorite book. Not only is it masterfully written, but it examines and portrays the human condition in a way that I've not seen anywhere else. It is a story of loss, redemption, love, forgiveness, and devotion to others. It shows what it is to be impoverished and enslaved to a system of exploitation. It narrates the story of just revolution and the heartbreak felt by those fighting for liberty. It shows how life and humanity exist within a web of interconnectedness and influence. It is an excellent novel that I highly recommend that teaches the reader not what to think, but how to think. It was instrumental in widening my perspective about the world we live in.
Qualities and specific characteristics such as intelligence or charisma alone are not sufficient to determine a person's qualifications to be a leader. I am fortunate in that the institutions and organizations I attended and served in fostered development that grew the whole person. I am driven and ambitious, but not for my own sake and pure self interest. I am learned and educated, but am not condescending or elitist. I enjoy reading and working with my hands equally. I think the single most important quality I possess is the ability to use reason fueled by passion to examine our world and those in it in order to craft actions and plans to make it better and more just.
I want to leave the world to the next generation better than it was handed to mine. I refuse to just sit back and watch the world and our county deteriorate and not do everything I can to alter course. To whom much is given, much will be required.
My first memory of a historical event was the Gulf War in 1990. I was 6.
My first job was helping my dad on our small family farm alongside my grandpa. My earliest memory was helping him bundle firewood to be sold at the local farmers market in Belleville, IL when I was 6. My grandpa has since passed, but I'm still working alongside my dad and am heading to that exact same wood shed in a few hours to get more firewood ready to sell. My first W-2 producing job was working at McDonald's in my hometown of Mascoutah when i was 16. I worked there for about six months until i finished lifeguard training and became a lifeguard at our community pool.
Luke Skywalker: I can relate to a farm boy looking up to the sky wanting to fly and do his part to make a difference in the world. Being a force wielding Jedi would be pretty cool too.
I had a serious speech impediment as a child and horrible acne as an adolescent. The resultant insecurity of those problems coupled with a resistance to conform and being a divergent thinker often put me outside the norm and lead to a difficult childhood. We are a product of our environment and how we respond to it. I would not be who I am today had those challenges not been there.
It is beneficial for representatives to have been in a position of public service in one form or another. This is not limited to just elected office, but the full range of public servants to include police, teachers, firefighters, emergency medical services, and the military. Selfless service, giving back to the community, and experience serving something greater than oneself are essential elements of being an elected official. Otherwise we run the risk of electing officials that put their own self-interest and their friends ahead of the public good.
Our greatest challenge is twofold. The United States has overextended its power and resources globally in order to manage and control the world as the sole superpower. A paradigm shift is occurring and instead of strengthening alliances, utilizing international organizations, and using all elements of national power the current administration has alienated allies, used unilateral action, and has almost singular focused on military power and the threat of using it to influence geopolitics. This has weakened our position globally, ballooned our debt, and puts the world in a perilous position. We must realign our priorities, mend relationships with allies, and accept the reality that we are not the world's police force or we will follow the footsteps of other failed hegemonic states.
The committees I join should be representative of not just my strengths and expertise, but should represent the needs and characteristics of my district. My educational and professional background having grown up on and am once again working on a small family farm, having served in the military and special operations community, and am still in possession of a top-secret security clearance puts me a unique position where I can be a strong voice on multiple committees. The House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Committee on Agriculture would all be excellent committees to be a member of, which would benefit our district. I am a strong position to be selected to serve on any one of them.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
External links
- ↑ ’’Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on January 27, 2020’’
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