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District 44 race assured of local winner Tuesday
One thing is certain in the District 44 state representative race on Tuesday’s election ballot: You don’t need a crystal ball to predict that the winner will be a local resident.
That’s because incumbent Republican Jim Baird, seeking his fourth term in the statehouse, is being challenged by Democrat Kim Fidler, a first-time candidate. Both Baird and Fidler reside in Greencastle.
A lifelong resident of Putnam County, Baird was first elected to the statehouse in November 2010 when he defeated incumbent Democrat Nancy Michael, the former three-term Greencastle mayor.
A lifelong resident of Owen and Putnam counties, Fidler resides in Greencastle. A Spanish teacher at South Putnam High School for 16 years, she has been a UniServ director for the Indiana State Teachers Association for the past 10 years.
A Vietnam veteran, farmer and small business owner, Baird says District 44 residents are concerned about jobs, education, infrastructure and substance abuse.
“The main component of all of these issues is the financial integrity of our state,” he told the League of Women voters recently. “It is extremely important and has an impact on all our citizens and businesses.”
Education, Baird said, is “essential for the world competitiveness of our students and their lifetime success.”
“We have added almost a billion dollars to K-12 funding over the last decade,” the incumbent said of the Legislature, “increased per-student funding for schools and created a pre-K pilot study.”
Baird, who served as a Putnam County commissioner prior to his election to the House of Representatives, also pledged to work toward “developing a long-term plan for funding our infrastructure.”
Drug issues are also important, he said.
“There is increasing concern about meth/drug and substance abuse,” Baird noted, saying he will continue to search for “ways to strengthen law enforcement and the criminal justice system to rehabilitate, including appropriate mental health support, and help these individuals return to productive citizens.”
Fidler, meanwhile, has established three priorities in representing the district:
-- Preserving public education for students and teachers.
-- Preserving the civil rights of all citizens in District 44.
-- Representing the best interests of citizens, not a political party.
“I hear that constituents are upset about public education,” Fidler stressed to the League of Women Voters. “The excessive and punitive use of standardized testing is unacceptable. Teachers should not be punished for unreliable test scores. A-F letter grades assigned to schools are not transparent and negatively affect businesses and families.
”Indiana spends millions of dollars on testing companies,” she added. “Additionally, the diversion of public school funding to private and charter schools is unacceptable.”
Fidler also said she hears complaints regarding Internet and cell phone service in rural areas.
“There is a state-owned fiber-optic network (I-Light) that could bring affordable internet and cell service to rural areas for individuals and small businesses,” she said. “During Mitch Daniels’ term as governor, a bill passed preventing the use of I-Light for anyone other than higher education universities. I would work to eliminate this restriction to provide Internet and cell phone service to individuals and small businesses in rural areas to prevent families from moving out of the area, which in turn, results in a loss of students that causes our rural schools to close and our rural communities to wither.”
Overall, she said she would represent the best interests of District 44 constituents.
“I’m tired of the current legislators’ need to ‘fix’ messes in Indiana that they have created,” Fidler said. “A good legislator listens to constituents, votes the wishes of constituents, and does not need to fix laws that they have passed.”
At the Statehouse, Baird is a member of the Ways and Means Committee, Agriculture and Rural Development Committee and Statutory Committee on Interstate and International Cooperation.
House District 44 includes all of Putnam County as well as portions of Clay, Morgan, Owen and Parke counties.
The polls are open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday.