Each of the three women vying to represent the more than 120,000 people of the 10th District in the state House of Representatives have distinct issues at the top of their agendas.

For State Rep. Barbara Bailey, the incumbent Republican from Oak Harbor, improving the business environment and ensuring government transparency are at the top of the list.

Ann McDonald, a Democratic challenger from Greenbank, is focused on the need for transitional housing in the region for homeless military veterans and improving education in the schools.

Patricia Terry, a Democratic from Camano Island, said health care is her top concern, though she also stresses the importance of fiscal responsibility in state government.

The three candidates will face each other in the Aug. 19 primary, which will eliminate one of them. Theoretically, both Democrats could advance in the new “Top 2” primary.

When Terry was recently campaigning in the Arlington area, a woman at one of the homes asked her for a very unusual favor. Realizing that Terry was a registered nurse, the woman pleaded with her to remove stitches from her arm. She explained that she couldn’t afford to go back to her doctor.

“I really need to tell you how bad things are out here,” she told Terry.

Terry couldn’t perform the procedure, but she did help the woman contact a clinic for low-income folks.

For Terry, the incident reinforces her conviction that the health care system needs drastic improvements. And when it comes to the solution, she doesn’t mince words. She wants the state to provide “health care for all,” at least until the federal government gets its act together and creates a national plan. She said a California bill for health care has a lot of good ideas that Washington state can borrow.

When it comes to paying for the program, Terry believes there are a lot of places in the state budget that can be pared. But moreover, she argues that such a plan would ultimately end up saving everyone money.

“We are all paying for other people not having health insurance every day,” she said. “Uninsured people end up in the ER. Emergency medicine is the most expensive, inefficient kind of care.”

Also, the state would be able to negotiate much better prices on medication and medical equipment. And more access to preventative medicine means fewer major ailments.

Terry said her 30 years of experience as a nurse in intensive care units and in quality improvement provides her with insights that would be valuable in state government.

She’s “a big believer” in performance audits, having a great deal of experience in auditing programs in the health care field. She said the audits can save a lot of money by ensuring that departments are run efficiently and that every program is examined.

Terry was endorsed by the 10th District Democrats.

McDonald, the other Democrat in the race, is a former Realtor and a present commissioner for the Coupeville Port District. She and her husband run a commercial, general-contracting business in Everett.

McDonald said one of her greatest concerns is that the government is not taking care of the country’s military veterans. She’s particularly focused on homeless vets, a problem she said many officials refuse to see.

“It’s a problem in every inch of the United States,” she said. “They’re living in cars, abandoned buildings and cardboard boxes.”

Her proposal is to build transitional housing in the area, which would be modeled after Building 9 at the Veterans Campus in Retsil, near Port Orchard.

“I would like to work with a number of different agencies to make that happen,” she said.

McDonald said she would like to see improvements in classrooms. She’s pleased that the math portion of the WASL is being phased out. She hopes that the “conceptual style” of teaching math will go the same way.

“It was really ineffective,” she said. “What I would like to see is a back-to-basics, tried-and-true math curriculum.”

She’s also a proponent of art in the schools. She’s a former PTA president and a coordinator of the Art Docent Program in the South Whidbey School District.

Bailey, a longtime Oak Harbor resident, is seeking her fourth term in the position. She is very well known for her involvement in the community. She was president of the Oak Harbor Area Council of the Navy League, as well as a member of a plethora of committees, including the county’s lodging tax committee, the Island County Joint Committee on Tourism and the Oak Harbor Chamber of Commerce’s executive committee.

For a woman with Bailey’s background, it’s probably no surprise that she’s interested in helping business strive, particularly small business. She was a professional in the hotel industry for many years. In 1990, she was named Eastern Virginia’s Business Woman of the Year. She currently runs her own management consulting and training firm.

Bailey stresses the importance of strengthening current businesses, bringing more to the state and aiding start-up companies. She said the quality of life in the state is a big draw.

“We need to make doing business easy,” she said. “And not just doing business, but making a profit.”

The bad news, she said, is that the state is “not far from being the first in the nation for business failures.”

She said the faltering economy is tough for all businesses and the government shouldn’t make it worse.

“This is not the right time to raise taxes on businesses,” she said.

When it comes to promoting government openness, Bailey has shown that she can be very gutsy. She was unhappy about the vast number of “emergency clauses” that are tacked onto bills, an obvious misuse of their intent. These clauses mean the bills go into law immediately after the governor signs them, denying the citizens the right to challenge it through the normal referendum process.

Bailey sponsored a bill requiring a 60-percent vote for emergency clauses. After her bill was stalled in committee, she took matters into her own hands. She made amendments to take emergency clauses off each bill that had one. The practice was so prevalent that she ended up making amendments to more than 50 bills.

“I didn’t care whose bill it was or what it was about,” she said, adding that she took heat from members of her own party. “I was making a point to say we need emergency clause to be justified.”

As a result, people started paying attention to all the emergency clauses. Legislators struck many out of their own bills and the governor even crossed some out.

“Now there’s more thought and more transparency,” she said.

Bailey said she has a long list of accomplishments while in office, but among the most important was bringing money to the district. She helped make sure there was some money for such projects as the Wildcat Stadium, a covered playground in Coupeville, conservation easements, expansion of a medical clinic on Camano and more.

She’s sponsored and co-sponsored a mountain of bills over the years. One of her favorites is a bill that named orca whales as the state marine mammal, a proposal from Crescent Harbor elementary students in Oak Harbor. Another added four extra islands to the boundaries of Island County.

But for the typical Oak Harbor resident, her most astute bill was probably HR 4646, honoring the Oak Harbor High School football team.

The all-mail primary election is in process. Return ballots must be postmarked no later than Tuesday, Aug. 19.