8th Dist. Democratic Candidates Sit Down for Forum a Week Before Election
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DULUTH - With the primary election just around the corner, 8th District Democratic congressional candidates sat down to talk about the issues most important to voters Tuesday.
Jeff Anderson, Tarryl Clark and Rick Nolan gave their thoughts about why they were the best candidate to run against Republican Chip Cravaack in November.
While Tuesday's forum lasted only an hour, a range of issues was discussed between all three candidates.
One of the hot topics: their take on transportation.
"Transportation is so critical so important for our businesses, for our comfort, for our future and that there's where I want to spend the preponderance of my work if elected to Congress," Nolan said.
"We have the opportunity to help shrink the distances our districts if we can do some of these things right," Clark said.
"It puts people to work immediately and in a down economy I think we're three, four, five years too late to invest in a large scale transportation bill," Anderson said.
The candidates also discussed the topic of health care and their view on the recent Affordable Care Act.
"I strongly favor a single payer, universal national healthcare plan that covers everybody in America," Nolan said.
"I really do believe that it's critically important that we continue to work on access and affordability," Clark said.
"Any reasonable person would say we have a healthcare problem in this country; the way we deliver healthcare, the way we pay for healthcare," Anderson said.
Before things wrapped up, each candidate had the chance to explain their driving force for running in the election.
"We have got to stop letting this be about the polarization and frankly about the money that we were talking about earlier, but we also have to start thinking about what we're going to do to move our country forward," Clark said.
"Clearly the country's in trouble, it's in big trouble and most would agree that we're at a tipping point. We've reached a state of gridlock that is untenable and threatens our economy, threatens our future," Nolan said.
"To me, this election is about northeastern Minnesota, it's about jobs and the economy, investing our natural resource–based economy, mining, timber and things that will put people to work today," Anderson said.
One of the three candidates will be chosen to move forward in the election during the primary on Tuesday, Aug. 14.
