Beattie hopes third time's the charm in effort to unseat District 30 incumbent Phillips

Republican Bobby Beattie would like to change history when it comes to his race for the District 30 state House seat held by Democratic incumbent Olin Phillips.

This marks Beattie's third try to unseat Phillips, who has served 30 years in the Statehouse. In 2006, Phillips got 57 percent of the vote to beat Beattie, 4,213 to 3,242. Phillips also won the 2004 election by a comfortable margin.

But Beattie is hoping this time things will be different.

"I'm optimistic," said Beattie, a small business owner and licensed residential homebuilder. "I feel like with the presidential election that we'll have a great turnout and I encourage everybody to vote."

The candidates agree on the same top issues facing the state - job creation, education and health care. But they differ on how to tackle those issues.

Phillips, who went along with the House Ways and Means Committee's recommendation to reduce appropriations to the Department of Commerce, suggested lawmakers need to re-examine the budget process to better track spending. The result would be more money for the Department of Commerce to attract industry.

"We need to have a better way of knowing what we can spend," Phillips said.

Beattie would emphasize a better-trained workforce through education and tech schools to attract industries.

On the issue of education, Beattie believes in rewarding quality educators.

"I feel that our teachers need to be paid as well as possible," he said. "We need to reward the good ones and remove the bad ones."

Phillips, on the other hand, would continue to direct as much funds as possible toward education.

If elected, Beattie said another top priority will be to address the lack of affordable and accessible health insurance. Beattie insists removing governmental impediments would reduce costs.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know there are too many people who don't have it," he said. "But I don't believe our government should control our health care. It should be up to the individual."

Phillips claims that more money would be available for health care if the state began to identify all the cigarettes purchased in the state by stamping each pack. If that happened, the state would increase its share of money it receives from the national cigarette tax settlement, he said.

"Stamping cigarettes would allow us to track all the bootleg cigarettes and we'd have an accurate number," Phillips said.

Phillips also supports a slight increase in the cigarette tax to go to health care.

As for ways to curb wasteful spending, Phillips called for the creation of an ad hoc committee to review the agency and department budgets.

When asked about the SLED investigation of Veterans Affairs Officer Sammy Willard, Beattie said he doesn't know enough about it to comment. Phillips replied that he is awaiting the SLED report.

The Cherokee County Legislative Delegation, which includes House seat District 30, has the power to appoint and remove the VA officer.

Beattie vowed to be accessible to his constituents and be an active member of the State House.