Dr. Neil Nemec is a Coeur d’Alene resident. He was born on January 11, 1949. His highest level of education was three years of residency after completing medical school at the University of Washington. He is a practicing family physician.

COEUR d’ALENE — Dr. Neil Nemec has spent 35 years practicing medicine and starting up a number of medical-related businesses in Coeur d’Alene.

Now, he wants to take that experience to the Kootenai Health Board of Trustees.

“If I am elected, I am not going to go in there and change anything,” Nemec said. “This is an extremely effective board, and I have a lot of respect for the trustees. I just want to bring my experience from the perspective of a primary care physician and a small business owner.”

During his 35 years in practice, Nemec has also started several successful businesses related to healthcare, as well as running a health maintenance organization.

He is president and chairman of North Idaho Family Physicians. He is chairman of the Kootenai Urgent Care Board of Directors. Formerly, Nemec was Chief of Staff Kootenai Medical Center, and Senior Medical Director of QualMed Health Plan.

He knows medicine, and Nemec is no stranger to governance, but he is not a politician. When he decided to run for a trustees position, he had no idea the race would become political.

“Never in a million years did I think that it would be like this,” Nemec said. “I just thought I would sign up to get my name on the ballot and now I am running a campaign.”

As he approaches retirement from his private practice, Nemec is looking for a way to stay involved in healthcare — at least through the transition of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“I have a tremendous concern about the direction health care is going in our country,” he said. “There are some big changes coming our way, and many of those changes will be in primary care.”

Nemec said primary care is the front lines of health care, and as the hospital gets more involved in the transition to PPACA, it will important have that experience represented on the board. But he is not naive. He knows that if he is elected, it isn’t going to be easy.

“I know there is going to be a learning curve,” he said, adding at least he is not starting from scratch like some of the other candidates in the race.

Nemec grew up in Seattle and wound up going to Medical School at the University of Washington after stint at Stanford University. He did three years of residency in Spokane beginning in 1977, and started his practice in Coeur d’Alene shortly thereafter.

His parents lived in Butte Montana while he was in medical school, and he drove through Coeur d’Alene every summer to visit them.

“I had no idea back then that this is where I would wind up in practice,” he said.

Nemec met his wife of 39 years in medical school, and has raised two children. He has never been political until now, but he still doesn’t consider himself a politician.

“I am not a politician,” Nemec said, but he is learning to campaign like one. “If I just sat on my laurels, I probably lose this race.”

Nemec said he was shocked to learn the Reagan Republican were going to target the non-partisan hospital election, but since they did, he has had to learn to campaign on the fly.

“They have a war chest, and they are a well oiled machine” he said. “They are the experts and I am novice at this stuff. Before this, I had no idea what went into a campaign.”

He set up website, printed literature, and began an advertising campaign that includes billboard space. He credits his friends and supporters with helping him get organized.

“I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish in such a short time,” he said. “And I think we are doing OK.”

Because of his busy career, Nemec said he is probably at somewhat of a disadvantage. He spent his days practicing medicine and didn’t have enough time to network in the community like many of his opponents have.

“I didn’t have time to be active in Rotary or the chamber of commerce,” he said. “But I do have tremendous support from the people I have worked with over the years.

“The question is, will it be enough?”

* * *

Donna Montgomery lives at Hayden Lake. She was born on Feb. 15, 1944. Her highest level of education was two years of community college. She is a retired business woman who currently serves as a community volunteer.

COEUR d’ALENE — It’s all business for Donna Montgomery, who is running for one of two open seats on the Kootenai Health Board of Trustees.

“I would like to see the hospital run like a business,” she said, explaining one of the reasons she is running. “That, and we are losing doctors. I want see if we can do something to attract them back and retain the doctors we have.”

Montgomery was accompanied in her Press interview by Duane Rasmussen, a local attorney and Republican political activist. Rasmussen recorded the interview and took notes. Montgomery was the only candidate for any local seat who brought a third party to these interviews.

Montgomery said she spends a lot of time at the hospital as a volunteer for her church, and she has developed relationships with many employees as a result.

“I have heard from some doctors who are unhappy right now,” she said. “Some of them have been told by the hospital to not spend too much time with their patients.”

Montgomery said she also wants to see the hospital board become more open with its constituents. She has been trying to get up to speed on the hospital’s issues by studying the board’s minutes, but that has been somewhat frustrating, she said.

“I have requested copies of the minutes, but the latest ones I can get are January’s,” she said. “Apparently they haven’t finished the February or March minutes yet.”

Montgomery has a strong background in political organization, and sits on a variety of governing boards, she said.

“I have started three Republican women’s groups,” she said. “I also started the secret witness program in North Idaho. That evolved into Crime Stoppers, and it’s much bigger now.”

Montgomery sits on the board for Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization. She is state president of the Idaho Federation of Republican Women. She also sits on the board of the North Pacific Conference of Seventh Day Adventists, which oversees several hospitals in the Pacific Northwest.

“I go to a lot of meetings,” she said.

Montgomery moved to North Idaho in 1995. She came from Claremont, Calif., where she is still an honorary member of the chamber of commerce.

She and her husband of 54 years ran two trucking businesses, and that is how she got involved in politics.

“I was denied a business permit for a woman-owned business because my business was too closely related to a white male (her husband) who had a similar business,” she said. “So I called my congressman and got the permit.”

She said the permit was necessary in order to gain bid-preference on certain government contracts.

“I actually owned and ran the business,” she said. “I did all the billings and dispatched trucks.”

Despite her political activism, Montgomery said she is able to separate her politics from her business dealings when necessary.

“Businesses are non-partisan,” she said. “I’ve hauled asphalt to Democrats, Republicans and independents.”

She said she is a “hand-up” as opposed to “hand-out” type of person, and if elected would take that conservative approach to her work on the board.

Montgomery has earned the endorsement from the Reagan Republicans, who have set their sights on all of the local taxing district elections.

She said she is a dedicated hard worker who loves North Idaho and its people.

“We’ve never taken a vacation; we are always working,” she said. “And I’ve always said the best thing about North Idaho is the people. I think a lot of people would agree with that.”

* * *

Jim Pierce is a Coeur d’Alene resident. He was born Sept. 11, 1965. His highest level of education is an MBA from Washington State University. He is currently a commercial banker at Washington Trust Bank.

COEUR d’ALENE -- Jim Pierce is no stranger to partisan politics, but he also knows when to set that aside.

“This race is about qualifications, not ideology,” Pierce explained. He is running for a trustee’s position on the Kootenai Health board. “If I were running for state senator, that would be different, but this is a non-partisan race.”

Pierce said he has made a conscious choice to keep his campaign non-partisan.

“On the first draft of my campaign literature they printed ‘Republican,’ and I made them take it off,” he added.

In college working on his undergraduate degree, Pierce was elected to serve the Associated Students University of Idaho as a senator and vice president. On campus, he helped campaign for Idaho’s then Republican Lt. Gov. David Leroy in a failed race against Democrat Cecil Andrus for the Governor’s seat in 1986.

“I also did campus campaigning for some of the local state legislators,” he said. “It was just a handful of us doing it, we were all Republicans, but we didn’t have a Young Republicans group or anything like that.”

Pierce met his wife in college. They married 25 years ago this month and moved to Seattle, where he worked for Anderson Consulting and US West Cellular. He was largely apolitical while he was there.

“We were bought out, so I started my own consulting company,” he said. “I could do that anywhere, so being fourth generation Idahoans, we knew we had to get back to Idaho.”

Pierce grew up in Buhl, Idaho and his wife grew up in Coeur d’Alene. When faced with the decision on where to live, they opted for Coeur d’Alene and arrived here in 2009. That’s when he got back into politics.

He has served two terms as a precinct committeeman for the Republican Party, and is currently serving in that capacity for voting Precinct 47, and he is also the 4th District chairman of the party.

“Looking back now, I was fairly Pollyanna going into it,” Pierce said. “I was asked to run, and thought why not?”

Pierce said that was before some of the infighting began in the Republican central committee. Despite the split in the party, he has been able to establish himself in the Republican political structure.

He is the only candidate who was endorsed by two political action committees. The Reagan Republicans, a partisan group, has endorsed Pierce, and Balance North Idaho, a non-partisan group, has also endorsed him.

“I think both of those endorsements will help a lot,” he explained. “I think the Republican endorsement reflects the level of trust they have in me. They know me and they trust me. They know I will approach this in a financially conservative way.”

He said he earned the Balance North Idaho endorsement because of his qualifications. Balance North Idaho was created to endorse and campaign for candidates who are best qualified for the elected positions they are seeking, despite their partisan pedigree.

Pierce said the one thing he would change if he is elected would be to make the board more transparent.

“That is not a criticism, though,” Pierce said. “There was never a need for them to be very transparent, but I think that is where a little of this political turmoil came from.”

One thing Pierce would keep the same is the hospital board’s strategic plan for growth.

“The hospital is at a crossroads right now,” he said. “It’s going to have to grow in order to survive.”

Pierce spent three hours with Kootenai Health CEO Jon Ness last month to get a feel for the direction the board was headed and he thinks his business acumen will be an asset on the board.

“If we don’t grow, we get bought. I want to keep this a local hospital,” he said. “The corollary is the more procedures we can offer here in Coeur d’Alene, the more jobs we will have here.”

* * *

Liese Razzeto lives in Hayden. She was born on Sept. 15, 1958. Her highest level of education was a graduate student of banking at Washington State University. She is currently an area president at Wells Fargo Bank, overseeing 44 bank branches.

COEUR d’ALENE — As the only incumbent, Liese Razzeto knows what it takes to be a trustee on the Kootenai Health Board.

She has served as a trustee for seven years, and served on the Kootenai Health Foundation Board for three years prior to that.

“I was serving on the foundation board, which is an appointed position, when Jim Curtis asked me to run,” she said. Curtis is currently the chairman of the hospital board. “I decided to do it, and when I ran there were no challengers, so we didn’t have to hold an election.”

That’s the way most of the board of trustees were seated, she said. Most of them served on the foundation board first, and once they learned enough about the position, they would be asked to run for an open trustee seat.

“There was never anything like this,” she said, referring to the Reagan Republicans’ attempt to politicize the race. “I was asked to run for my financial background — my financial acumen combined with strong board skills and I really understood the hospital.”

She recognizes now that those days are gone. In fact, for the first time in her life she has to get political.

“I have never been a political person,” she said. “I can remember when I was about 9 years old and my dad pinned a button on my lapel and told us that we were all Republicans. That’s the extent of my political background.”

Razzeto was raised in Elko, Nev., and moved to Twin Falls after college. She moved to Coeur d’Alene in 1986, and she plans to stay put here. She has raised two children and now has a grandchild.

“I have had many opportunities to leave, but I won’t,” Razzeto said.

She still considers herself a Republican. She votes that way and manages her business dealings with a conservative approach, but when it comes to the hospital board not much of that matters, she said.

“This is supposed to be a non-partisan race,” she said. “There are only seven of us on the board, and we need people who are qualified to fill those positions.”

Razzeto said she spent the first two years on the board sitting in a corner and taking notes.

“I remember Marc Wallace (who is leaving the board) telling me that he thought I was just being shy,” she said. “I wasn’t shy at all, I was just trying to get up to speed.”

Razzeto sits on a number of other boards in the community. She has served as president of the Rotary. She is on the Coeur d’Alene Symphony Board, and she is on the board of United Way.

By far, she said, the hospital board is the most complex.

“That’s why I decided to run again,” she said. “I care enough about the hospital that I am willing to do this.”

She said the hospital is at a critcal junction, and she wants make sure it has strong leadership as it makes the transition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“With the Afforable Care Act, there are so many things that we still have to do,” she said. “And there are so many ways that can go.”

To that end, Razzeto said she has set aside many of her other duties to launch a full-scale political campaign to retain her seat.

“In fact, I am taking the next two weeks off to go out and knock on some doors,” she said.

Razzeto’s campaign began in earnest last month when she was interviewed by the board of Balance North Idaho, a non-partisan political action committee that supports candidates based on their credentials rather than their political affiliations.

“That was a real eye opener for me,” she said. “They really did their homework. They knew the issues and they asked some pretty tough questions.”

It paid off, too. Razzeto earned the endorsement.