Havre district gets Democratic primary

Will Rawn, a retired Montana State University-Northern professor, is running as a Democrat in Montana's 28th House District.

Rawn filed Monday to launch a bid for the seat held by state Rep. Stephanie Hess, R-Havre, who is seeking a second term.

In order to take on Hess, however, Rawn will first have to survive a primary where he will face Havre High School senior and Hill County Democratic Party Vice Chair Jacob Bachmeier.

"I think, in this case, I don't think of myself as running against Jacob," Rawn said. "As I see it, we are both running for the same thing."

He said he and Bachmeier disagree on few if any issues, and that voters should make their choice based on who has the best chance of winning the election and being effective in the Legislature.

Rawn, an Ohio native, holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and a doctorate in English.

He worked as a newspaper reporter and social worker, before entering the world of academia. Rawn also has taught at colleges in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In 1990, he moved to Havre to take a position as an English professor and has held an assortment of positions at Northern including library director, dean of arts and sciences and interim dean of education, arts and sciences and nursing.

He retired from Northern in July.

Rawn served as president of the Northern chapter of MEA-MFT, a union representing faculty, and has been on numerous boards.

He said his experience working with and persuading people, listening to and compromising with others, are skills that would serve him well as a representative.

Ensuring tax dollars aren't used for charter schools would be "a pretty high priority" for him.

Rawn said using public money for charter schools would come at the expense of public schools.

Like other Democratic and many Republican state lawmakers, Rawn said he applauds the state's Medicaid expansion. However, he said he wishes the state would have accepted the original deal from the federal government which would have paid to expand health insurance to even more Montanans.

"It was interesting that even on that compromise our local representative voted against that compromise," Rawn said, referring to Hess's vote against the plan.

He said that doing so would ease the burden on medical facilities such as hospitals which have to provide care to the uninsured,

"So there is an economic impact also." he said.

Rawn is against turning over public lands to state control, because he said. the state lacks the money, personnel and other resources to effectively manage those lands. Many of the strongest proponents of doing that, he said, are lawmakers unlikely to support expanding state powers and funding that would be necessary to do that.

"So there is no question that any move to transfer public lands will end up depriving most of us access to those lands."

Rawn said he supports moves such as the passage of the Disclose Act during the last legislative session. The legislation requires that Super PACs publicly release the names of their donors.

Rawn said he also would favor other measures aimed at reducing the role PAC money plays in the political process.

"We need to look at a way of doing more public financing of this stuff," Rawn said. If we could that would be ideal."

Rawn said he also supports additional funding for infrastructure improvements, however, he said, he would likely oppose using funds from the state's rainy day fund.

During the last legislative session, Gov. Bullock backed a bipartisan compromise that would have funded infrastructure improvements through the issuing of state bonds. Many Republicans however, wanted to use money from the state's rainy day fund to pay for the projects.

The compromise failed to muster the two-thirds needed in both houses to approve the issuing of bonds.

Rawn said it is because of the state's ability to issue bonds to pay for state projects that Montana is in such good fiscal shape.