Letter to the Editor - Van Horn: Consider candidate’s voting record at the ballot box

The District 2 candidate forum gave voters a useful look at where their representatives would focus if elected to the state senate. State Representative John Sjaarda, now seeking the district’s lone Senate seat, brings a record worth examining against the affordability pressures most South Dakota families are actually living with.
Consider the math facing a full-time minimum-wage worker in this state. At $11.85 an hour, 40 hours a week comes to $1,896 a month before taxes – roughly $1,607 after Social Security, Medicare, and federal withholding. Subtract a $1,150 rent payment and $457 is left to cover groceries, gas, utilities, medical bills, and anything a child might need. That is not a budget with room in it. It is a budget that depends on every other support holding steady.
One of those supports was HB 1082, the school lunch bill that would have eliminated meal costs for roughly 10,000 South Dakota students already enrolled in the reduced-price program. For a family running on $457 a month after rent, a school lunch tab is not a minor line item. Rep. Sjaarda voted no.
That is the vote District 2 voters should weigh. Not the speeches, not the forum talking points – the recorded vote on whether a working family in Sioux Falls, Tea, Harrisburg or Brandon should keep paying for their kid’s lunch while everything else gets more expensive.

Sawyer Van Horn

Brandon