In the last election cycle, Democrat Lucy Baxley received 40 percent of the vote in St. Clair County in her run for President of the Public Service Commission. St. Clair County Democratic Chairman Herb Kuntz said that shows that the county is becoming more diverse than it has been in the past.

“This county is changing, albeit slowly,” he said. “The big issue and concern in the last election was the economy. It wasn’t the peripheral issues; it was the economy.”

He said that with people still worrying about their jobs and their family’s well being that the Democratic vote count this November might surprise some people in a county that is traditionally heavily Republican.

Kuntz shared his thoughts on how he thinks this election year will fair for the race to the governor’s mansion.

“I think the big issue in this gubernatorial election is another facet of the economy: job creation,” he said. He said that many of the things that took place during the fiscal collapse two years ago were set in place during the Republican dominated years leading up to the financial crisis.

“Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs across this country and it’s going to take time to get back to even where we were before,” Kuntz said.

He said with the economy collapsing that many people who are 50 or 60 years old will have a hard time getting a good-paying job as they might have had before the economic crisis.

“Many single parents are living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “I think that issues like these are going to be very, very important issues not only on the national level, but at the state level, too.”

He discussed the jobs creation efforts that Democrats have been striving for in the past year. “In economics there is a trickle down effect where large companies have to become profitable before they are able to ad jobs or prospects into the queue.”

Large and medium sized companies are starting to report better than expected profits, Kuntz said. “As profits improve, they add shifts and they ad people and projects that were put on hold… Unfortunately that hasn’t happened as quickly as people wanted.”

He cited several restaurants that have shut their doors in the Pell City area alone as a sign-of-the-times of how the economy on a large scale has hit close to home. “But, as the economy improves, then so will business,” Kuntz noted.

He said that people will want leadership that will take advantage and fight for jobs for Alabamians and said that Democrats have a track record of doing that in the state.

“Democrats brought the car industry to Alabama,” he noted. “And it opened up a whole new range of big business to the state.” He said the trickle down effect from the auto industry included the many medium sized companies, several of which are located in the Pell City area and employ local workers.

“I think that it is important that our elected leaders place incentives to companies to get businesses that have located offshore to come back to the U.S.”

He said that having tax incentives on the front end would help that. If not, then penalizing companies that have fled the states to go offshore when they try to sell their good at home would be another way to keep jobs stateside. “We have to first provide incentives for them to come back,” Kuntz said.

He said that a bipartisan effort needs to happen in order to get that done.

Kuntz noted that 40 percent of people in Alabama are now saying that they are voting on an independent ticket. He said Democrats offer a way to have an educational shift in the classrooms that make high standards of education available for all children by rewarding educators who stand out in their teaching methods.

On healthcare reform he said, “We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we’re ranked 34th in the industrialized world. Costs are spiraling out of control. Everybody agrees that we need insurance reform.”

He continued, “It’s shameful that a prosperous country like ours can’t provide healthcare options to people. It’s a system of pay me now or pay me later.” He referred to the fact that someone who puts off a health need until a crisis emerges will be a burden on the taxpayers because when they finally go to get treated, the symptoms have worsened.

On the federal stimulus bill that Democrats passed last year, Kuntz said that for projects such as the newly proposed V.A. nursing home in St. Clair County, that federal money will pave the way to providing better jobs for people as the hospital is built. “That’s economic stimulus right here in St. Clair County,” he said.

For voters who have seen their saving deplete in the past year or are worried about the direction the country has headed in recent years, Kuntz asks for them to consider voting Democratic on their ballots in November.