Two well-known and respected Mount Vernon residents are contesting the District 83 House race: incumbent Pat Jones, a Democrat, and Republican Clyde Dyar.

Dyar has been an active and much-involved economic developer for many years, a man dedicated to the concept that the best way to help people is to give them a job. He believes, as he says often, in "thinking out of the box," but also emphasizes the need for deep analysis.

Those mostly admirable traits can also be contradictory and make it hard to pin him down on issues such as school consolidation and Dirigo. He believes in lowering the cost of government, but wants to achieve 55 percent K-12 school funding and is opposed to the bond issue for the university system -- to us, that's starving Maine's future and that's not good economic development.

Jones has served one term in the House, filling the seat that had been occupied by her husband, who died early in his first term. In some ways, she seems too much of a doctrinaire Democrat, such as her vote for the beverage tax to fund Dirigo. But her time in the Statehouse seems to have persuaded her that the usual liberal prescriptions are no longer realistic and that a fiscally moderate or even conservative attitude will be needed in the next Legislature.

Also, Jones has done an exemplary job of paying attention to her district and its day-to-day needs. We endorse her return to the Legislature.