Second District Congressman Rick Larsen told students at Oak Harbor High School Friday that, while politicians choose the issues they want to tackle during a campaign, they rarely choose them when in office.

“You run on the issues, but when you get in office the issues run you,” Larsen said.

“They run all over you. You don’t get to choose.”

Larsen spoke to civics class students as part of a Whidbey Island visit that included a meeting with Oak Harbor schools Superintendent Lance Gibbon and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station leadership to discuss future base growth.

One question Larsen said he’s asked frequently is if partisan politics are worse now than than used to be.

“There’s a lot of partisanship,” Larsen said but added that its been that way since the country’s inception.

What concerns him more, he said, is what he called “hyper-partisanship,” when “people defend the party first and the electorate second.”

This is something he said he’s trying to combat.

Responding to a question from a student about the future of drones, Larsen said Congress is in the process of working on legislation addressing airspace regulation in regard to drones.

“We prefer to call them unmanned aerial vehicles,” Larsen said.

“It’s less threatening.”

The drone debate is one example of the type of issue Congress gets to address during a legislative session, Larsen said.

“It’s a really practical problem and it’s going to be tough to make this happen.”

But, he said, “if we do this right, you’ll never hear about it” in terms of criticism.

A couple of students asked transportation-related questions, addressing both the local bus system and the statewide infrastructure.

Those are decisions are largely made on a local and state level, Larsen replied, but Congress tries to support transportation improvements though funding.

“In Congress, we’re in the process of writing a transportation bill for surface transportation and it would include helping agencies like Island Transit,” he said.

In terms of infrastructure, Larsen said he’s hoping the country can transition to being more proactive than reactive.

“It’s about replacement before it falls down rather than using a collapse to indicate it needs to be fixed,” Larsen said.

“I think we’ll get there.”

A student asked Larsen if he’s ever thanked for his “good deeds” in office.

“It’s fewer times than the times I’ve been criticized,” Larsen said. “If you’re in this job to get thanked, get another job.”