Creative thinking will break gridlock

Either Breck Withers or I would be a great improvement over the incumbent, Rep. Stan Lee, who does not even show up to debate the critical issues facing Kentucky.

However, I would be able to start making positive changes in Frankfort more quickly than Withers.

Like Chris Tyler, Lee's Republican challenger in the May primary, I am a mechanical engineer with experience in energy-efficient technologies and design methods. As the former assistant director of Kentucky's State Energy Office in Frankfort, I also have experience helping analyze, develop and implement Kentucky's energy strategy under our last four governors.

Because cheap natural gas is now outcompeting coal, that inflexible, coal-centered strategy needs to be amended and modernized.

The way I have approached the abortion issue during this campaign illustrates how I will operate as a member of the House.

My investigation of the issue showed that the legal strategy adopted by the GOP — making all abortions illegal by enacting a "Fetal Personhood Amendment" to the Constitution — would vastly increase the number of unsafe, illegal abortions without saving the life of a single unborn child. I challenge the right-to-life movement to reexamine its legislative strategy and focus on making contraceptive services more widely available.

Someday every child will be a wanted child, and abortion will be safe, legal and much more rare.

It is this kind of creative thinking that Frankfort urgently needs to break the partisan gridlock and make real progress on solving our most serious issues.

Vote Green!

Geoff Young

Green Party candidate, House 45

Vote for efficient, honest government

Albert Einstein famously said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results."

Well, it doesn't take a genius to understand we have some real problems here in Kentucky, and it's time for a change.

Over the past decade, we've lost over 80,000 manufacturing jobs. Nearly 160,000 Kentuckians are unemployed. Debt per man, woman and child is over $2,000. Forbes Magazine ranked Kentucky 40th of 50 states when it comes to fiscal responsibility.

But at a time when most Kentuckians were cutting back, my opponent was voting to give himself a full-time pension for part-time work as a state legislator.

He also voted to give himself and his family lifetime health care benefits.

Then, he voted to raise our taxes by $500 million, earning a 17 percent out of 100 rating by a Kentucky taxpayer watchdog group.

I understand that raising taxes hurts job growth.

So, if elected, I will not raise taxes because ensuring a robust economy firing on all cylinders is the only way our commonwealth can grow itself out of this fiscal mess. Instead I will fight for a more streamlined, efficient government, stop the special-interest handouts, cut through unnecessary and outdated bureaucratic red tape, ensure quality education and work for a competitive tax policy.

After nearly 20 years in office, we know what we'll get if we reelect my incumbent opponent. And frankly, we can't afford the big-spending, big-government status quo in Frankfort.

Matt Lockett

Republican candidate, House 39