Voters will decide which candidate will be elected to the open Senate seat in the Nov. 6 general election, as the seat is currently held by term-limited Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba. The 38th District encompasses much of the Upper Peninsula, including all counties except Chippewa, Luce and Mackinac.

Dianda is currently the state House representative for the 110th District. Prior to his election to the House, he owned a retail business in Calumet and worked for the Michigan Department of Transportation.

McBroom is a former state House representative for the 108th District and runs a dairy farm in Vulcan.

Questions were presented to the candidates by Public Radio 90’s news anchor Nicole Walton; Don Ryan, host of TV6’s “The Ryan Report”; and Jaymie Depew, staff writer at The Mining Journal.

From left, panelists Don Ryan, host of TV6’s “The Ryan Report;” Public Radio 90 news anchor Nicole Walton; and Jaymie Depew, staff writer at The Mining Journal, are at the candidate forum. (Journal photo by Cecilia Brown)

Each candidate had 90 seconds to deliver a response to the questions, with an additional 30 seconds for rebuttal.

Questions covered jobs, health care, education, ballot proposals and many other major issues in the campaign — one of the questions posed during the forum regarded the cost of auto insurance, with Walton asking the candidates what they would do to “keep costs under control” in Michigan.

McBroom replied: “This is one of the biggest issues going on during this campaign, it’s been one of the biggest issues since I have been involved with politics — the No. 1 call to my office when I was in the House. We need serious reform to Michigan auto insurance and 49 other states have figured out ways to deliver insurance — some well, some not so well, but we can go to the ones that are doing well and see they’re doing it for less money than we are. It’s critical that we provide consumers with the choices of how much coverage that they want to purchase. It’s critical that we allow senior citizens the opportunity to opt-out and use Medicare, it’s critical that we put fee schedules in place, fair fee schedules for our health care providers so that it’s not $400 for an accident in your bathtub but $4,000 in a car accident, the exact same injury, and it’s very critical that we go after the trial attorneys who are currently creating their own business enterprises around bilking the auto insurance system. And the bill that was voted on last fall in the House, did those things and could have saved users over 40 percent, an average of 40 percent savings, because the bills — which were not supported by the trial attorneys and not supported by the insurance industry — mandated a 40 percent average return back to users. This was a good package of bills and it should have been passed.”

In turn, Dianda responded: “The car insurance was outrageous, all costs of car insurance is outrageous. It’s the comp and the collision that’s the worst part of the bill and when we start looking at what the car insurance bill was going to do, it was going to give those folks a carve-out for the people that chose to have lower coverage. And what we need to do with the car insurance is be able to come up with the best that is across our nation, because we all know that bad things happen when we get in a car accident and we should have the opportunity as a Michigander to pick what is needed for us. And we need a rate that’s going to keep us in our homes when we get done, when we have a bad accident. And I think the biggest part with the car insurance that I want people to understand, when we have a bill that was written by the car insurance companies for their benefit, that’s why it did not pass. when we had Sam Bernstein, the ambulance chaser from Detroit, and the mayor of Detroit, who was the author of the bill, the U.P. was not going to have the savings that my opponent keeps talking about. There was going to be harm to us, and like I say, when people are driving down the road drunk, and people are causing accidents and things are happening, we want to see something that’s going to be there for us, the customer, not just to benefit the insurance companies. They got enough people looking to protect them; it’s called a lobby corps, they got attorneys, they got everybody on their side. You have to have people as elected officials that are going to stand up for our benefit to make sure when you’re in an accident, that the hospital bill is covered because they’re not going to take a chicken, they’re going to have to be paid, and somebody’s going to have to pay that.”

After the initial responses were delivered, both candidates had an additional 30 seconds for a rebuttal to the other’s response.

McBroom responded: “The thing is, that bill wasn’t supported by the trial attorneys, and it wasn’t supported by the insurance companies, they were both unhappy with it. And the bill provided those savings and still maintained Michigan auto insurance as being the best coverage in the whole country, five times better than the next state. It protected us and it did deliver savings to us. Sure Detroit, which is paying $5,500 a policy, 40 percent off for them is more cash, but I don’t know any Yooper who is paying $2,000 for their kid’s minivan who wouldn’t like to get 40 percent off of that coverage too.”

In turn, Dianda delivered his response to McBroom’s rebuttal, saying: “I think what has happened out there is we have had this discussion about car insurance for so long that people just lose the facts. And it comes down to one thing, if we’re not going to address the problems about charging women 40 percent more for auto insurance, when you’re laid off of your job and you’re getting charged more because you missed a credit card payment, and if you have a Ph.D., you’re going to be charged less than the person that graduated from high school. When we change insurance, it’s got to be good for the consumer. And those things have to be addressed.”

The candidate forum will air from 7 to 8 p.m. Thursday on TV6. The forum also airs on Public Radio 90 from 1-2 p.m. Sunday, repeating from 3-4 p.m. Nov. 2.