With just a few days left until Election Day, we introduce the two candidates running for the Iowa House District 47 seat.

Republican incumbent Phil Thompson of Jefferson served in the United States Army for eight years, following high school graduation, and then served another three years in the Iowa National Guard. He currently works in his family’s construction company. If re-elected to the Iowa House, Thompson wants to tackle issues such as access to timely EMS response and skilled workforce.

“We’ve got a lot of jobs available to us here, we just don’t always have people with the right training to do those jobs. So I want to continue to put money into the governor’s Empower Rural Iowa and Future Ready Iowa programs, and make sure that we’re incentivizing businesses to get people trained to do these jobs, so they can make a steady income, and raise their families here in rural Iowa.”

Democrat challenger Shelly Stotts is a 1980 Boone High School graduate who has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in education and school guidance from Iowa State University. She currently teaches fifth and sixth-grade math at Boone Middle School. As an educator, Stotts wants to address public education, as well as affordable healthcare and increase the minimum wage.

“When I started looking at running, I decided that I’d look up minimum wage, because I was trying to remember what my first job was, I think it was $2.75 (per hour). I found out that minimum wage hasn’t been raised in ten years. I’d like to spend some time on that, and discuss that with Republicans and Democrats because I know a pound of hamburger has sure gone up ten years, but it’s the same amount of money that they bought the hamburger with ten years ago?”  

Click the link below to hear more from either candidate, as well as all of the other contested races in Greene County to the Special Edition Meet the Candidates In-Depth News Magazine.

https://www.raccoonvalleyradio.com/2020/10/07/special-election-program-on-kgra/