FUTURE: Ideas to live, vote by

Legislative District 2, like much of Idaho, has voted Republican for a very long time. This has led to a state agenda that has moved away from policy based on a spirit of compromise. But in my experience canvassing extensively in this wonderful place I have called home for 32 years, I discovered that most people are more interested in solving a problem than they are in winning an argument.

This has been a most gratifying discovery. We get better results when we listen to each other more, and distrust each other less. Our lives are better when we respect one another and recognize that the majority of us share common values: family, home, community, opportunity and a desire for peace with prosperity.

My goal as a resident and citizen of Kootenai County is the same goal I would have for our nation: to leave the world a better place than we found it, and to promote solutions that create mutual benefit in this community. Notions about who “deserves” our respect and consideration tend to be biased. We know this because we all feel like we deserve to be respected and considered, no matter what we think, or what we have done.

Ultimately, I think we tend to be creatures of habit, and this is especially true of how we vote. We tend to decide that a particular party represents our interests, and then, more from laziness than anything else, we vote “straight party” without ever stopping to consider the actual details of what individual representatives are up to. This fact is more destructive of effective, meaningful, government than any other.

Most people you talk to consider themselves to be “free thinkers.” It is my hope that this “free thinking” will manifest itself in future elections as a more discerning examination of the individuals we choose to write the laws that govern our daily lives.

STEPHEN D. BRUNO

Vice Chair

Kootenai County Democratic Party