Many first-time elected officials go into office with plans to push for major changes they promised during their campaigns. Then their experience in office leads them to moderate their views. For others whose ideas were more mainstream, the evolution as an elected official is more nuanced.
Second-term Idaho state Representative Eric Redman is a big, soft-spoken guy who spent 44 years in private industry. Most of that was in the insurance and real estate sectors. But serving in politics?
“It was never on my bucket list, to be quite honest with you," Redman said. "But here we are.”
Redman was approached before the 2014 election to run for a state House seat in Idaho’s District 2. That covers much of Kootenai County. He decided to run, driven in part by a desire to blunt the effects of the Affordable Care Act on health care in Idaho.
“I had an insurance agency. I did not like what was going to happen and it turned out pretty much what I thought was going to happen," he said. "Costs have gone up. We have a lot of mandates we didn’t have in Idaho.”
In May 2014 Redman won his primary and was unopposed in the general. It gave him an uncommon luxury, an extra half year more than most successful candidates get to prepare for his term in office. That meant more time to deal with the first-timer’s information overload. You know the cliche about drinking from a fire hose.
"In your second term, it actually reduces down to a garden hose,” Redman said with a laugh.
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