BULLARD: Time for serious change

Here we have Idaho! A state that has been controlled by Republicans since 1964. A state that ranks 50th in state funding for education at $6,931 per pupil. A state with an incarceration rate that ranks 16th in the U.S., spending $20,965 per inmate. A state with average weekly wages ranking 48th in the U.S., just one notch above Mississippi.

Idaho women face some of the greatest gender-based pay inequities in the country and 89 percent of Idaho's job openings don't pay enough to support a family. While Governor Butch Otter was bragging about how he'd get businesses to move from other nearby states to Idaho, Washington state announced a $100 million carbon-fiber production plant for BMV would be built in Moses Lake.

Political in-breeding has resulted in a one-party government with limited imagination and sound-bite ideology that is destroying Idaho.

Marge Chadderdon has represented District 4A in the Idaho Legislature for six years. In a newspaper interview she basically stated she is running because she is still healthy. I've listened to her speak and she says nothing but generalities. She has introduced only one bill in her six years in the legislature.

We need new ideas and people with the desire to better our state representing us in Boise. Mike Bullard is one of those candidates. He wants to represent District 4A and has ideas for increasing revenues, an understanding that a good education produces a good citizen rather than a prison inmate and he will actively participate.

JANET CALLEN

Coeur d'Alene