WE SUSPECT THAT voters in House District 77 would agree more often with Rep. John Scott’s beliefs than with those of challenger Swain Whitfield. Mr. Scott, for example, is more suspicious of tax cuts and more certain that the schools need additional funding, and rightly so.

But while Mr. Scott often is vocal in opposing ideas that he believes would hurt his constituents, he is in the larger picture a defender of the status quo. And the status quo most certainly hurts his constituents, and all of our state.

Don’t look to Mr. Scott to support overhauling a tax system that has far too many regressive features, from higher taxes on rental property to a nearly flat income tax that fails to balance the regressive nature of a sales tax on essential goods; as far as he’s concerned, the only question is whether you raise or lower the total tax burden. Mr. Whitfield, on the other hand, is quite concerned about the way the tax structure forces up residential rents and very much favors making changes in the tax system to get more money to poor schools.

Don’t expect Mr. Scott to support restructuring efforts that would squeeze savings out of redundant state agencies. He’s a strident opponent of giving the governor the tools to manage the bureaucracy, and has even convinced himself, inexplicably, that the limited powers we gave the governor a decade ago caused the Legislature’s irresponsible decisions to pack more people into our prisons. Mr. Whitfield, by contrast, understands that consolidating duplicative agencies and making government more efficient saves money that can then be spent on public education and other essential areas.

In fact, don’t even look to Mr. Scott to work for a change in the way lawmakers allocate money between such essential services as the schools and medical care for the poor, on the one hand, and optional programs on the other. He has concluded that the method the Legislature uses to set priorities is just fine.

Mr. Whitfield, who served on the nonpartisan Winnsboro Town Council in the mid-’90s and identified himself as a Democrat when he ran an unsuccessful write-in campaign for the House in 1992, is certainly more “conservative” than Mr. Scott in the way the word is generally used. But in the true sense of the word, he’s not; he’s not doctrinaire, and he is an agent for change. That makes him the better choice for the House.