Steinman launches US Senate race

Leonard Steinman is shown in this February 2015 photo.
Leonard Steinman is shown in this February 2015 photo.

Leonard Steinman II is running for the U.S. Senate.

He told the News Tribune on Monday he expects to run as an independent candidate.

Filing for county, state and national offices in the 2018 elections begins Feb. 27 and runs until March 27.

"This makes my ninth campaign running for an office," Steinman said.

While he doesn't have "the college degree everyone else does," Steinman said, "I have a 'hard knocks' degree - I've done a little of this and a little of that."

He cited his varied background, living in 38 of the U.S. states and working as a farmer, laborer, electrician, pipefitter, heavy equipment operator, bus driver and truck driver, among other things.

Steinman served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam era, and for years has been trying to get government officials to acknowledge that, while he was working as a Sea-bee at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1973, he was exposed to "Agent Orange," a cancer-causing chemical that was used as a defoliant in the Southeast Asia war.

He alleges the chemical also causes mental health issues.

If elected to the U.S. Senate, Steinman said, "There will be no more of this 'stuff' to put on crops, to kill weeds. Because it's not just killing weeds - it's in the air, in the water (and) everywhere - and if you've got any kind of an opening, you've got a chance of getting cancer."

He said Congress should do more to investigate issues like the proposed merger of St. Louis-based Monsanto with Bayer, the German-based worldwide drug and pesticides manufacturer.

The European Commission has a January 2018 deadline for its review of the $66 billion takeover.

"If you want to get rid of your weeds, it's not that hard to hire somebody," Steinman said. "There's a lot of people who are unemployed - you can give them a hoe, and they can hoe the weeds instead of killing everybody."

Another issue is "honesty in government," Steinman said. "Our government is nothing but a Ponzi scheme, when it comes to management."

Being elected U.S. senator also would help him be able to point out local government issues that would need to be changed, he said.