Legislative candidates debate issues

SANDPOINT — Cutting school funding, eliminating abortions and prisons, and re-establishing a government of Christian principles is at the forefront of Steve Tanner’s message.

Tanner, of Boundary County, is running for the District 1 legislative seat of Republican incumbent Sen. Sean Keough in this month’s primaries.

 He was among local and state candidates who met the public at Sandpoint High School Thursday during a forum in the school auditorium.

Tanner, who works in the logging and construction industry, said if elected he would do away with the prison system, installing instead a system of capital punishment.

“We need to hold people accountable for their actions,” Tanner said. “There is no reason for jails except to hold people until trial.”

The public school system is broken, he said, overfunded and misguided.

“We need to cut the budget by 80 percent,” he said. “Our education system is an incubator for socialism.”

The nation, Tanner told the audience of about 130, was founded on the Christian principles that should be the guiding force of officials and the state.

If the government follows Muslim principles, he said, “we’ll have slavery. With Christianity we have freedom.”

Additional state candidates, including Dennis Engelhardt and James Stivers who are vying for the District 2 Senate seat held by Joyce Broadsword, did not attend the event.

Broadsword told the audience of about 130 that she and fellow legislators passed several state sovereignty measures including one that sent a message to Washington that state representatives think the federal health package is unconstitutional.

She opposed abortion as a measure of birth control, she said, but in cases of rape or incest, “it’s between her and God, not her and me.”

She also supported a measure to prohibit texting while driving that died in the House.

“We need to make sure people are not inattentive, doing make-up, eating or texting while driving,” she said. “They need to be concentrating when they are behind the wheel.”

The issue will be re-addressed next session, she said.

Keough, whose husband is a teacher, said despite the budget cuts to education funding this year, state schools still got more than 50 percent of state revenues.

Keough said that North Idaho water adjudication — establishing private and public water rights to prevent other entities including neighboring states from claiming them  — which was stalled for at least five years in an earlier session, will resurface in the future.

“We pushed back that timeline,” she said. “We need to find a process which works best to secure our individual and collective water rights … so our North Idaho water is not taken from our lakes and wells and flushed downstream for whatever use downstream interests might have.”

Sandra Deutchman of Sandpoint disagreed with Tanner’s statements.

She  said his views were not in line with the intent of government.

“He does not represent the rights of individuals to have diverse religious opinions,” Deutchman said. “He does not understand the segregation of church and state.

Chuck Fishburne, also of Sandpoint, said the forum brought out the best in the candidates, which included 10 for Bonner County seats.

“I was impressed,” he said.