State Senate, District 2
The race for one state Senate seat has candidates debating over issues from decreasing government regulations to ending field burning.
A Democrat and a member of the American Heritage Party are challenging Sen. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum, for the chance to represent much of Kootenai and Bonner counties. The Democrat, Larry Kenck of Post Falls, lost the election to Boatright two years ago.
The American Heritage Party member, David Stelly of Careywood, is a political newcomer.
One of Boatright’s primary concerns is getting tough on criminals. He helped pass the law that makes it easier to find out the names and addresses of sex offenders.
He’s also a supporter of Head Start, a preschool program for disadvantaged children. He wants the state to help pay for more of it.
His experience as a veteran from the Navy and as a businessman and his conservative views make him an ideal representative for the district, he said.
“I’m very satisfied with what I’ve done in the Legislature,” he said, referring to his support of issues like the sex offender registration, Head Start and efforts to garner funding for U.S. Highway 95 improvements.
Kenck, his Democratic challenger for the second time in a row, is not impressed.
Boatright doesn’t do enough for North Idaho, he said. Since Kenck is not in the majority party, he would not follow the Republican leadership, he said, but would speak out for this area, he said.
Kenck said he wants to find more ways - like tax incentives for small businesses - to provide liveable wages for families.
“I represent working families and working people,” he said.
He also wants to protect their drinking water, he said, and that’s why he fought against a diesel refueling depot for a railroad being located over the aquifer.
He wants to end field burning, an idea neither Boatright, a hay farmer, nor Stelly, like.
Stelly wants fewer government regulations and said that would lead to better jobs.
The Idaho Legislature, he said, passes so many bills the legislators can’t possibly know what they should about all of them.
He wants to keep public lands open to the public to use, he said, including for logging.
“This is why the forests are here. The forest service is supposed to keep forests open for harvests,” he said.
In his campaign brochure, Stelly, a conservative Christian, thanks God for his blessings and beseeches God’s aid to “restore and preserve this nation as a government of the people, for the people and by the people.”