In the race to fill the open state house District 30 seat, perhaps the most competitive race of all Hamilton County legislative seats up for election, East Ridge Councilwoman Esther Helton faces public policy nonprofit director Joda Thongnopnua.
The winner will be the sixth different office-holder of the seat in the last 28 years, the delegation's most turned-over post.
Helton, 56, a Republican, won a bruising primary by 141 votes in August against businessman Jonathan Mason, while Thongnopnua, 25, a Democrat, was unopposed in the primary.
For voters who espouse the traditions upheld by this page - fiscal conservatism, smaller government, lower taxes and less regulation - choosing the Republican candidate is the sound move.
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Helton, a licensed practical nurse by training, will be a loyal, dutiful, party-line voter.
Elected to her current position less than two years ago, she touts East Ridge's successful economic development at Exit 1 off Interstate 75 - because of Border Region Act legislation - in an endorsement interview with the Times Free Press. While she spoke knowledgeably about East Ridge, she offered only vague talking points about state issues such as health care, education, guns and payday loans.
She previously said, for instance, she wants to put health care back in the hands of patients but outlined few ways to accomplish that. She says "school safety is a huge issue" and wants a student resource officer in each school but offers only to "look and see where there's waste" to pay for it. Of the issues facing the fast-growing eastern part of the district, she says only the improvement of an unspecified road into Georgia will help.
Thongnopnua takes traditional Democratic stances of expanding Medicaid for some 200,000 Tennessee residents and increasing the minimum wage to $10, but he says the key to making any progress is forging relationships, compromising and having a vision. He names Howard Baker and Bob Corker, former and current U.S. senators from Tennessee, and Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam, former and current governors of Tennessee, as the type of "moderate, pragmatic, problem-solver he'd be in Nashville.
He further says he wants to examine, among other things, the state's teacher training pipeline, state nursing shortage and predatory lending practices.
The public would have been well served by a debate on the issues between the two candidates, but Helton said her campaign decided a better course for her was neighborhood meet-and-greets, the same course she followed in the primary.
"I would have everything to lose," she says, knowledgeable the district has more Republican than Democratic voters.
"Campaigns are job interviews," Thongnopnua says. "You make a commitment to show up. I consistently showed up [at dual candidate events]. I'm proud of that."
Helton vows she won't be a representative who votes "whichever way politicians will tell you to go," as her opponent described her.
Likewise, Thongnopnua hardly seems like the "radical leftist" his opponent paints him in her advertising.
District 30 residents will have to determine with their votes what they believe.