Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of five stories featuring District 7 candidates for state House of Representatives.

BROOKINGS – Zach Kovach talks to and listens to people, so he feels he can represent them as state representative for District 7.

There are two, two-year District 7 posts in the state House of Representatives, and in the running are Democrats Bill Adamson and Kovach, Independent Cory Ann Ellis, and Republicans Doug Post and Tim Reed.

Kovach grew up all over the country, but when his mom got a job at South Dakota State University, he decided to attend SDSU. Even though his parents, Jani and Eric, have moved to Aberdeen, Kovach decided to stay.

“I fell in love with Brookings, so I’m still here,” he said.

He’s in his fifth year at SDSU and plans to graduate in the spring with a degree in political science and a minor in legal studies. Right now, he’s bartending at Skinner’s, but he’s worked for Wal-Mart and Subway, as well as having been a teaching research assistant for the SDSU philosophy department.

Kovach is the president of three SDSU clubs: College Democrats, Chess Club and the Philosophy Club. He is on the executive boards of the Delta Chi Fraternity and on the College Democrats of South Dakota, “which gave me the opportunity to go out for College Democrats of America in Chicago over the summer,” Kovach said.

He was inspired to run by the 2016 elections.

“I believe I can make a difference. … It was my dream,” Kovach said. “My whole life goal is to make the world a better place. For me, I saw politics as the best avenue to do that. Because with policy-making, you have such a large impact on the everyday lives of real people.”

Kovach has steeped himself in politics.

“I’m a bit of a political junkie. I mean, I study the subject in school,” he said. “Politics is my life. I listen to podcasts while I’m driving so I can keep up with the news and I can know what’s going on in the country.

“What I’m running on is education, economic issues and health care,” Kovach said.

He’s talked to school kids about safety – “I think that we could better utilize the resources we have to improve our K-12 education system,” he said. He and his girlfriend have concerns about the expense of college and he thinks that prohibits students from getting advanced degrees, such as a law degree, which Kovach said could put a student $200,000 in debt.

“Home ownership, car ownership is down among my generation because of the cost of education,” he said. “You start your career and you’re in such a deficit that you have to work your way up from so far.”

Tied to that is the minimum wage of $8.85 in South Dakota, he said.

Starting wages in Brookings might be better, “but it’s still not enough,” Kovach said, adding he knows a woman with four kids and four jobs who is working 80 hours a week.

“I would love to make her life easier and people like her, their lives easier because working that hard to take care of your kids is unreal,” he said.

“There are a lot of people like me whose health insurance plan is ‘I hope I don’t get injured because I’m not covered.’ And that is my health insurance plan,” Kovach said.

“A lot of people and a lot of Democrats are afraid to say the words universal health care, and I’m not. The thing is we can afford it. The price the government pays absorbing debt from people that can’t pay off their medical bills, we have enough to afford universal health care, but we just don’t. And I think that’s something that would be extraordinarily beneficial to all people,” Kovach said.

He thinks Brookings and all of South Dakota is “moving in a more progressive direction,” including abolishing the right-to-work laws to give workers more rights and using technology to solve problems, such as having counseling services available to every school.

He wants to see more scholarships and other funding for college students.

“I think that anybody who is willing and able to attend college should go,” Kovach said.

Going to college, universal health care and raising the minimum wage “are all great things that would bring South Dakota into the future, along with implementing more technological solutions to old problems,” Kovach said.

He thinks the LGBTQ-plus community needs a little more attention.

“In the past, our Legislature hasn’t been as friendly as they could be to people in the LGBTQ-plus community,” Kovach said. “We just need to make sure to ensure equal protections across all communities of people.”

Kovach wants people to realize we’re all living in the same circumstances with the same challenges.

“I think, across the nation – and in South Dakota, too – we’ve been suffering from very high levels of polarization,” he said. “We should focus on moving into a more unified society and get behind our common beliefs and focus on what makes us the same and not what makes us different.”

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.