Come for
pizza,
stay for politics
Finding
out where candidates for office really stand is difficult, unless you’re
lucky enough to live in Blaine County.
Tonight
at 6 p.m. at the old Blaine County Courthouse in Hailey, voters can
question candidates running for state representative, state senator,
county assessor and the Blaine County Recreation District Board.
Voters
never should have to choose a candidate unseen or unheard. The Pizza and
Politics forum ensures they won’t have to.
While
big-budget state- and federal-level candidates spin their positions
depending on the results of the latest poll and tailor expensive Boise
TV advertising to what they think voters want, candidates at the
grassroots level have no such luxury. They must earn every vote with a
handshake and a frank discussion of where they want to lead.
Tonight
is the valley’s best bet for voters who want to do election research
in person and who refuse to treat elections as a nasty multiple-choice
quiz for which they are totally unprepared.
Two hot
legislative races are brewing between District 25 candidates Sen. Clint
Stennett, D-Ketchum, and challenger Tom Faulkner, R-Bliss; Rep. Tim
Ridinger, R-Shoshone, and challenger Donna Pence, D-Gooding.
The
evening’s non-partisan forum will be a good time to ask candidates how
they think the state can resolve its growing budget crisis without
strangling public education or penalizing the state’s poorest and most
helpless citizens, its kids.
Two hours
is all it will take to ensure that the best leaders around are chosen in
November. It will be time well spent.