Oct 28, 2014 2 min read

The two candidates in the race to represent the 39th District in the state House agree they couldn’t be further apart on the issues in the campaign leading up to Tuesday’s election.

The Republican incumbent, Rick Saccone, said he opposes an extraction tax on the Marcellus Shale natural gas industry, while his Democratic challenger, Lisa Stout-Bashioum, said she would support using such a tax to fund public education.

“She’s for Obamacare. I’m not,” said Saccone, 56, of Elizabeth Township. “We’re totally opposite on just about all issues.”

Bashioum, 53, of Somerset Township, said she’s familiar with how much state education funding cuts have hurt schools as a member of Bentworth School Board. She said Bentworth is a small district with an annual budget of $15 million that has lost $500,000 in state funding in recent years.

“These budget cuts were very real to these schools,” she said, adding the extraction tax would address property tax reform. “Education is the biggest issue.”

Saccone has proposed increasing the state wage tax and adding a sales tax to some tax-exempt merchandise as a way of reforming property taxes. He said Harrisburg also needs to focus on the state’s pension fund crisis.

The candidates are facing off in a district where 54 percent of the voters are registered Democrats and 22 percent are Republicans, said Saccone.

He said the first thing he typically hears while knocking on doors is how much his constituents are “mad at (President) Obama.”

Bashioum, meanwhile, said she has been hearing a lot of negativity about Gov. Tom Corbett on the campaign trail.

She said Saccone has voted in line with Corbett “95 percent of the time.”