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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Austin Loquacious; Sterk Studied Candidates For 4th District Legislative Seat Demonstrate A Distinct Contrast In Their Styles

The contrast between the two candidates for the 4th District seat in the state House of Representatives, Mary “Chey” Austin and Mark Sterk, is striking.

Austin, a Democrat, is a free thinker and talker.

Stories and ideas burst from her with both intensity and a seeming lack of direction.

Engaging the 56-year-old woman in conversation is similar to shaking a bush full of small birds - words, thoughts and laughter gush out, sometimes flying everywhere at once.

“Personal responsibility, constitutional justice and equality, that’s me,” Austin said in a recent interview.

When asked to explain, she paused, then laughed.

“What’s that mean? I’m not sure,” she said, before launching into a lengthy soliloquy that included exhortations on doing no harm to your neighbor and being a good person.

Sterk, the Republican, is just the opposite.

Always prepared, Sterk, 44, picks his words deliberately, almost to the point of plodding.

He meticulously ticks off the planks in his campaign platform like a soldier stating his name, rank and serial number.

“Crime. Education. Taxes.”

Sterk cited detailed statistics to back up his arguments and most of the time maintains the same facial expression - eyes serious, lips rarely smiling.

He’s confident, too.

In a recent interview, Sterk started many sentences with, “In January …” and “When the session begins …”

His boldness may be justified.

Sterk raised more than $52,000 in campaign donations, and he garnered 66 percent of the vote in September’s primary.

As the GOP candidate, he has an edge in the conservative 4th District, which encompasses much of the Valley and part of Hillyard.

Austin has raised only $6,200 and finished a distant second in the primary with 21 percent of the vote.

The general election is Nov. 7. The winner will finish out the remaining year of Republican Mike Padden’s term.

Padden resigned earlier this year after being appointed a District Court judge. County commissioners appointed Sterk as a temporary replacement.

Both Austin and Sterk see education, crime and taxes as the main issues in the race.

Austin said she feels more money should be spent on education, that better schools would lead to less juvenile crime.

Schools in high crime areas should begin teaching anger management classes and have more programs to identify students who are at risk of falling in with gangs, she said.

In addition, school districts should open vocational-technical high schools for children who don’t plan to go on to college, Austin said.

The candidate said she is against raising taxes to pay for such programs, and is unsure from where the money would come.

“We can get to the moon. We can do this,” she said.

Sterk said he would like the Legislature to turn over more power to school districts. He said he supports giving state money to the districts and letting them decide how to spend it.

The sergeant with the Spokane Police Department had specific ideas on crime.

If elected, he said he would introduce two bills in the Legislature that would make it tougher on people convicted of sex offenses and vehicular homicide.

He said his sex offender bill requires people convicted of sex crimes to remain incarcerated before sentencing and while they’re waiting for appeals.

His vehicular homicide bill would be similar to the three-strikes-you’re-out bill passed in Washington recently.

Under Sterk’s proposal, anyone with three vehicular homicide convictions, or who has killed three or more people while driving drunk, would get life in prison.

He acknowledged that if the bills passed, there would be a need for more prison space.

On the tax front, Sterk said he believes in less.

He said he would unite with other House Republicans to try to override Gov. Mike Lowry’s recent veto of legislation that would have reduced state property taxes.

Sterk admitted such a move would strain the budgets of some agencies, but that it was time for lawmakers to make tough decisions.

The two candidates have generally refrained from attacking each other, but Austin has taken a few swipes recently.

She criticized Sterk for voting for the $325 million Mariners stadium proposal earlier this month.

Austin called the proposal “tax and spend.” The creative energy the Legislature used to come up the deal could have been better spent finding a way to increase education spending, she said.

Sterk said the vote was the right thing to do and compared the Mariners to the Boeing Co. and Kaiser Aluminum.

The three businesses bring a lot of jobs and income to the state, he said.

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