Businessmen compete for District 81

The state House District 81 Republican primary is a race between two businessmen who said they moved to Crawford County more than three decades apart largely to give their children a better life.

Bruce Coleman of Mountainburg will face Derek Goodlin of Rudy in the March 1 primary. The winner will face Democrat Susan K. McGaughey of West Fork in November. Sitting state Rep. Justin Harris, R-West Fork, is not seeking re-election.

Coleman was born "three miles from where I live now" but left home and became a nutritional biochemist in St. Louis. Then he and his wife, Mabel, had children. Mrs. Coleman is also a Mountainburg native.

"We believed we could give them a more wholesome life in Mountainburg," Coleman said of his three daughters. The Colemans moved back in 1973 and acquired a butane business.

Goodlin was a manager with an industrial engineering degree overseeing an automobile components plant in Sallisaw, Okla. The job required extensive out-of-state travel. He accepted a friend's offer to manage Stein LTC, a Fort Smith company which provides therapy services and consulting for long-term care patients and facilities. The job is allowed his family to acquire some acreage he could come home to every night. Goodlin has seven children.

Both candidates said the state faces great challenges and opportunities.

"Today, I feel like, is one of the greatest opportunities Arkansas has ever had to make positive changes," Coleman said. "If I can help, I feel I should."

Crawford County was heavily Republican long before the rest of the state, Coleman said. State government is finally embracing the conservative, small-government values his constituents have always held, he said.

"Good government is more important than party," he said.

Coleman resigned as head of the Crawford County Election Commission to run for this seat. He and his wife sold their business, Coleman Butane Gas Co., five years ago. His children are grown, and he has the time to devote to the office, he said.

Crawford and other voters in his district oppose the federal expansion of Medicaid and the state's "private option" program. Private option uses taxpayer money to subsidize private insurance.

Coleman would encourage changes to the program to make it less of an entitlement, he said.

"Our money is going to pay for it. We should get as much back as we can. I think people should be more self-reliant and independent."

Goodlin said his combined experience as a plant manager and in health care was particularly suited to finding savings and inefficiencies in the health care system, a major challenge of the state's.

"No supervisor who I ever asked 'How can we do this with less?' ever said 'Oh yeah, I can do without this or that,'" Goodlin said. "You have to find savings yourself, and you can't just make across-the-board cuts. That's always a bad solution. You'll always cut something that you needed to make you efficient and not cutting enough of something else.

"I can dig into numbers," Goodlin said.

On private option, Goodlin said the people of his district and him are all opposed.

"No one has an issue with helping people who are really in need, but they feel like they're carrying the load for others who can work," he said. "There's a lady who lives less than a mile from me who saw her health plan go from $56 or $59 a month to $500 a month."

Goodlin said he would wait to see what kind of waivers the governor would be able to get from the federal government to change the program before making a final decision.

Goodlin has young children at home "who I want to have a servant-type heart," he said. "If that's what I really want, they should see their dad doing it."

NW News on 02/07/2016