My Page: Audrey Dutton

New West Feature

The real estate market may be struggling to recover, and loans may be hard to come by for many Americans, but veterans’ loans are helping some Westerners snatch up houses while mortgage rates are still low.

Jessica Bjerke-Owens, a 28-year-old Montana native who served in the U.S. Navy before starting law school in Missoula, is one of them. When her approval came in the mail from the VA, she became the second person in her family to take advantage of the loan program. Her father used it back in the 1970s, she said.

New West Feature

Walt Minnick is an outlier: a Democratic member of Congress who might avoid being kicked out of his seat by angry, recession-weary voters. A new poll shows Minnick in the lead—even though he’s an incumbent Democrat in a solidly red state during an election year when that’s a formula for defeat.

People from both parties say his voting record is about as unassailable as it gets for an Idaho Democrat, and his campaign is flush with money from supporters who want him to keep voting that way.

Still, the race tightened last week. His Tea Party-backed opponent, Raul Labrador, has increased his sway with voters; another recent poll showed the candidates in a statistical tie. Election experts are calling the race a toss-up. Money is flowing into the campaigns from surprising sources. And both sides are jockeying for undecided votes by running attack ads—Minnick implying nefarious deeds by Labrador and Labrador linking Minnick to Pelosi and Obama.

“Walt Minnick is flying against a tremendous head wind,” one Republican observed. “It may just have to do with people in the middle not knowing what they want, but they’re not happy.”