Rodrik Brosten runs for HD9

Flathead Valley native Rodrik Brosten has his sights on House District 9 with a three-fold platform based on education, creating a state-owned bank and improving Montana’s economy with local job creation.

Brosten said he put his name on the ballot last March since nobody else filed for the democratic position. This is Brosten’s first political endeavor.

“I just felt our country and Montana was going in the wrong direction, it seemed like they wanted to privatize everything,” Brosten said. “So when I got into it, I decided ‘gee, I need to do something here and get involved.’ If you don’t get involved, then nothing changes.”

Brosten attended Swan River School and Bigfork High School, and then helped his father and brother build houses in the valley. He said he joined the military and served for two years in the 25th infantry division of the Army as an 11-bravo infantryman.

Brosten said he also earned a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Montana State University before working for Siemens Allis, an electrical switch company in Portland, Ore. Brosten said when the company moved to Alabama, he decided to move back home to the valley in 2000.

Since then he has been busy working in his machine shop and doing carpentry work.

He said the first part of his platform, education, ties in with the job creation component. He also said he is opposed to charter schools.

“A person has to have a bit of education to make a good decision, so education creates innovators and entrepreneurs,” Brosten said. “If privatized, it’s just going to get more expensive.”

Brosten also said he wants to see smaller classroom sizes and increased wages for teachers.

“We have some of the best students that score high on tests, so we are actually getting the most bang for our buck,” Brosten said. “But I think we can do better.”

The second part of his platform, state-owned banks, is based on North Dakota’s model which generated $300 million for the state over the last 15 years. The way Brosten described it, money that goes into the state goes into the state-owned bank, which then works with the local banks to give loans to help local businesses start.

“The argument was it would put local banks out of business, but that isn’t true, it would bring them more business because the state-owned bank would help them finance,” Brosten said. “It keeps Montana’s money in Montana instead of going to Wall Street or the big banks.”

Another state-run program Brosten is in favor of is a single-payer health care system, which is essentially a single insurance pool run by the state, but is not the same thing as universal healthcare. The single-payer system functions by collecting the medical fees from privately run hospitals then paying them through a single government source, this would mean everyone in Montana would have medical coverage offered by the state.

Brosten described it as basically expanding Medicare to cover everyone in Montana.

As the Bigfork Eagle was going to press this week, Brosten and Scott Reichner participated in a debate at Flathead Valley Community College. Coverage of their debate will be available in the next edition of the Bigfork Eagle.