County coup

Kootenai County wants new blood.

With an overall voter turnout of 22.35 percent at Tuesday's primary election, both county commissioners whose seats are up for election this November were defeated by Republican challengers."It's been a good run," said Commissioner Rick Currie. "Now here we'll be moving on to something else."

Currie, District 2 representative since 2002, lost by a close margin to Jai Nelson. Nelson scraped ahead with 4,684 votes, or 36 percent. Currie totaled 4,212, or 32 percent.

The other District 2 candidate, Chris Fillios, finished close behind Currie with 4,079 votes, or 31 percent.Commissioner Rich Piazza, who has held his District 3 seat since 2006, was beaten soundly by Dan Green. Green finished with 7,086 votes - 55 percent - while Piazza netted 3,958, or 30 percent. District 3 candidate Kevin Ratigan had 1,762 votes, 13 percent.

As there were no Democrats running for either seat, Nelson and Green will run unopposed in the general election, unless someone launches a write-in campaign.Green, a retired businessman who has been on the county Planning and Zoning Commission since 2003 and chairman since 2005, said he was excited to get to work.

"I like to think that I'm objective and a critical thinker, and people respected that," Green said. "I think people were ready for a change in the direction of the county."His plans involve pushing forward with creating regulations and ordinances to carry out the new county Comprehensive Plan, he said, which he anticipates will be completed by the time the new commissioners are sworn in next January.

He also wants to pursue a public vote on restructuring the county government, and he plans to analyze the county's audited financial statements to make better use of taxpayers' money."I want to thank Rick and Kevin. We ran a clean, civil campaign and I appreciate that very much," Green added.

Nelson said she was thrilled to win after losing the commissioner race two years ago.She attributed her close victory to a long and vigorous campaign that included rural areas.

"Momentum was increasing throughout the campaign," said Nelson, who owns Studio J. Interior Design, and is also a registered nurse and an interior designer.Her plans include taking politics out of land use planning, she said, as well as freezing property tax-based budget increases for two years.

"Some of my fundamental, foundation issues are just to rebuild trust, leadership and vision," she said.Currie said he thought the election outcome was affected by rumors about the current county government's decisions.

"There a tremendous amount of misinformation in reference to our solid waste department," he said, though he declined to go into further detail.Currie said he was disappointed by the election results, and was unsure if he would run for office again.

"I don't anticipate anything, but I'm a firm believer that as one door closes, another door opens," he said.Piazza could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

The District 2 seat will be a 4-year term, and the District 3 seat a 2-year term.The three commissioner seats are up for election on alternating two and four year terms.

Commissioner Todd Tondee's District 1 seat is not up for election this year.