- Terry Harder, Steve Conway and Ken Paulson are competing for the 29th District Senate seat
Lower taxes, education, and safer neighborhoods.
These are some of the issues that three candidates running for the state senate seat in the 29th District (south of Tacoma) want to get busy with if elected in November.
Senator Rosa Franklin, who announced in May that she is retiring from the district after 20 years, warned that the 29th is no longer the economically bustling community it used to be. “Right now, people are hanging on to meet basic everyday needs,” she said. “With the recession, full-time jobs are high on the agenda.”
Democratic State Rep. Steve Conway, who boasts the highest campaign contributions to date ($23,340, according to the Public Disclosure Commission), and his two competitors, social activist Ken Paulson and small business specialist Terry Harder, have all identified job creation as one of their top priorities. Conway, who has been endorsed by Franklin, did not respond to our interview request. Neither did Harder.
Paulson, a Tacoma resident, has run for public office before—including a failed attempt for City Council—and will run as an Independent in the senate election. He spoke passionately about a desired change in state law to protect future victims of stalking, a cause he took up after the tragic shooting death of his daughter Jennifer Ann Paulson on Feb 26 by a man who had been stalking her for years. Paulson wants offenders violating protective or anti-harassment orders to wear GPS ankle bracelets that would alert the victim and other people nearby by making a noise.
“I decided to run because my state did not have a GPS monitoring device,” he said. “That would have saved my daughter’s life.” Paulson has already written to state legislators and the state attorney general’s office about his idea.
“It was very shocking,” said Franklin, whose house is walking distance from where Paulson’s daughter was murdered. “We’ve had issues with people violating their restraining order. We keep going back trying to find out what more we can do and this will be another follow-up. But it’s important to remember that you can’t just put in a GPS and not have the other tools to go along with it.”
More after the jump
Fixing Olympia’s budget woes is also something Paulson cares deeply about. “Our budget is not sustainable, we cannot go on doing what we do,” he said. “We cannot keep raising taxes for businesses, we cannot let the state go bankrupt—that means taxpayers have to foot the bill.” He views Conway as part of the problem. “He’s an 18 year incumbent in the State House,” Paulson said. “Do we continue with the same people or do we want change?”
While Conway has said he wants to focus on family wage employment, education and training opportunities, and health care reform, among other things, Harder wants to help small businesses and veterans and is against a state income tax. A resident of Pierce County for the last 44 years, Harder works in sales at a national bank.
Franklin, asked if she thinks Conway is going to win, replied: “I have always said the race belongs to the one who works the hardest. When I ran for Senate I got out and knocked on doors, attended community meetings and was very active in the Democratic Party. The candidates have to go out and meet the voters face to face.”
Franklin, who started her career as a nurse, said she’s worried about the negative change in her district over time. “I don’t see the vitality that was there when I took office 20 years ago,” she said. “I want young people to become more active and have a voice. I want people who have English as a second language to be able to contact their legislators. Citizen engagement is extremely important.”
Healthcare reform is another important issue in her district. “A high number of kids in my district are on Medicaid and free and reduced lunches,” she said. “In this atmosphere, a reduction in the state budget would be disastrous.”
When asked why she wasn’t considering running again to fix all these problems, Franklin replied: “I love public service, but it’s time.”