Editor's note: The version of this article that appeared Thursday on Page 1C was incomplete. The complete version appears below.

After four two-year terms in the House, S.C. Rep. Tracy Edge, R-North Myrtle Beach, is looking to move up to head a key budget subcommittee, but his challenger says Edge isn't serving the people of the district.

Political newcomer Charles Randall, 53, the Democratic nominee, said Edge's experience doesn't mean anything because he has not used it to help people.

Edge, 37, has risen rapidly in the House party and committee structure.

Named to the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee two years ago, he expects to be appointed to lead the panel's health subcommittee if he is re-elected.

Health spending is "at least a third if not more of the state budget," Edge said. "You can control a lot of the economic activity of the state."

Edge said he has been able to get money for special projects in the district, especially road improvements such as widening U.S. 17 to six lanes.

"Transportation has been a focus," Edge said. "There was no one advocating the Main Street Connector when I got elected, and I pushed and pushed and pushed."

Now the road, which connects U.S. 17 to the Carolina Bays Parkway at Main Street in North Myrtle Beach, is close to being built.

He said that is the most significant achievement in his district, and that he believes if he had not worked for it, it would not have happened.

It benefits his district if he is a member of the state's budget committee, Edge said. But he also is interested in working on the health issues the panel oversees.

The state was short $170 million for Medicaid costs last year, which had to be made up from other sources.

"There's a lot of reform in the health care area that's needed," Edge said. "I'd like to take a turn at chairing the committee to try to control the costs in some way."

One way, he said, is to get better systems for eliminating people who are not eligible for Medicaid.

Randall, a retired Air Force radar operator and pastor of St. Delight Pentecostal Church in Little River, said Edge's work on Ways and Means "does not benefit us."

Edge may have gotten money for his district, but he did not help get water and sewer utilities for a section of Little River Road that does not have them, Randall said.

"I feel there are issues that the people have, and Mr. Edge is so far from the people they don't even know how to approach him," Randall said.

Edge works for developer Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc., and "he's pretty much for the big businesses," Randall said.

Randall said he already is serving people in his ministries and outreach program for those in need, and "I feel I can help the people more."

He came back home after retiring from the Air Force and began a ministry for the needy that includes Christmas presents for children, food, clothes and medicine for others.

He works with the Department of Social Services, other helping agencies such as SOS Health Care and area churches to serve the people who can't meet their own needs.

The goal is "that no person be hungry in Horry County," Randall said.

Edge countered Randall's criticism by saying that, "In my opinion, I represent all 32,000 people equally that are in the district."

His family is involved in small business, a motel, and it's "ludicrous" to say he serves only big business, Edge said.

The Little River water-sewer situation is between Horry County and North Myrtle Beach, he said.

The people there want something that others can't get, which is service without annexing into the town.

As for being on the Ways and Means Committee, that's something most House members fight for, and it is "the pinnacle position that you aspire to be in so that you can better represent your people," he said.