Potential voters packed themselves inside one of Lake Michigan College’s auditoriums to witness the two candidates in Michigan Senate District 21 race debate Thursday evening.

Republican incumbent Sen. John Proos and Democratic challenger Bette Pierman faced off in the League of Women Voter’s candidate forum, which was moderated by Ted Hartzell, the former editor of The Herald Palladium. The two were joined by Rep. Al Pscholka and Eric Lester, the candidates in 79th State Congressional District race, answering the same set of questions about critical issues facing Michigan.

The debate was originally scheduled to be first of two held that evening, with other being held between Republican Rep. Fred Upton and Democrat Paul Clements in the race for the Michigan District 6 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. However, the congressman sent organizers a notice he would not attend on Wednesday night, due to his participation in a hearing on Ebola crisis in Washington that afternoon.

Upton’s opponent still attended Thursday’s forum, which drew the applause of many in the audience at the beginning of the proceedings.

The 21st senate district is comprised on Berrien, Cass and a portion of Van Buren county; however, following this year’s election cycle, the district will lose Van Buren and will gain St. Joseph County.

The upcoming election, which takes place on Nov. 4, is Proos’ first bid for reelection since winning the senate seat in 2010 over Democrat challenger Scott Elliott. The resident of St. Joseph had previously served the 79th district in the Michigan House of Representatives from 2005-2010 before stepping down due to term limitations.

In his opening statement to the audience, Proos said he will carry forward his priority of growing the job market in southwest Michigan into his second term, if elected.

“The doors I knock on throughout St. Joseph, Cass and Berrien counties tell me that we don’t have people back to work,” Proos said. “We have work to do make a strong economy, one that is competitive, and one that can compete with other states across the nation, because they would like to take our jobs.”

Pierman, a native of Benton Harbor, is a retired language arts and writing teacher, project manager and technical writer. Though this is her first candidacy for public office, she served as chair of the Michigan Safe Energy Future-SH Chapter, and is currently a member of the Two Rivers Coalition and the Berrien County Commission Solid Waste Committee.

During the hour-and-half long debate, the two candidates shared their stances on a number of issues, answering questions devised by both the League’s sponsors and members of the audience.

Among the most contentious of these questions was about Michigan’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Pierman said she supported the passage of the 2010 healthcare reform legislation, and that the government has a role to play to ensure that expensive medical insurance bills won’t force families to lose their homes.

“I have a problem when I hear people say they voted against the Affordable Care Act because, in effect, they’re saying that people with preexisting conditions that couldn’t afford to get insurance don’t deserve to have insurance,” she said. “The Affordable Care Act allowed them to sign up and get insurance.”

Proos, on the other hand, defended his stance against the legislation, saying that many are shouldering increased insurance costs since its implementation in the state.

“Michigan was absolutely in a good position to handle the uninsured, had we had a Michigan plan put into place, where we instituted our own catastrophic care,” Proos said.

Another hot button topic the two were asked about was the government’s role in women’s health, particularly about abortion. In response, Proos reiterated his long held stance against abortion, while saying that the government had a responsibility to oversee the safety and sanitation conditions of these facilities.

Pierman, expressing minor amusement in her opponent’s answer, shared a much stronger opinion on the matter.

“I have a serious problem, as a woman, having anybody think that the legislature should mandate, regulate, interfere with, my body and my personal decisions with my physicians about my health care,” she said, eliciting a positive response from a few members of the audience in front of her.

One area that the two candidates shared a similar opinion on was the state’s adoption of Common Core educational standards in 2010. Though both agreed that the idea of shared standards for mathematics and English curriculum would benefit the state’s K-12 classrooms, the state’s implementation of these standards has raised some concerns.

“Common Core, in and of itself, is not the problem,” Proos said. “The problem is that the implementation needs to happen at the district and local level, where it is best implemented.”

Pierman, drawing on her years of experience in education, said that holding children to a strict, grade-by-grade learning criteria fails to take into account the realities of the current education system. Not only do districts have different classroom sizes and funding levels, but the students themselves often learn at different rates from one another, Pierman added.

“I don’t have a problem with having benchmarks. I have a problem when you use those benchmarks as a tool for evaluation,” she said.

In his closing remarks for the evening, Proos expressed his optimism in the future of southwest Michigan, saying that job growth continues to rise in the region, especially in manufacturing. The senator asked that voters cast their ballot for him on Nov. 4 so that he could continue to carry that progress for the next four years.

“We make things, we grow agricultural products,” he said. “We should be proud of that.”

Pierman, though, said that many in the district feel that their current representation in Lansing is not serving their current needs. Her experiences as a member of the working middle class and the working poor, though, will allow her to serve the majority of voters in southwest Michigan, should she be elected, she said.

“I will have your best interests in mind every time legislation comes up for a vote,” Pierman said. “Whether I agree with it or not, if it isn’t going to be good for the majority of people in the 21st district, then I will not be voting for it.”