Ridenbaugh Press

One of the core principles of Republican strategist Karl Rove is supposed to be: Hit ‘em not where they’re weakest, but where they’re strongest. Undermine their core strength, amd they’re in trouble.

In the Idaho 1st district race, Republican Bill Sali keeps doing it to himself.

Sali’s core strength is supposed to be that he is an absolutist, rigorously pure of ideology - a black/white guy, no shades of gray at all.

Now comes a ballot issue on which Idaho voters will have to decide next week - an important one, on land use policy, Proposition 2 - and polls make clear that most Idahoans have figured out what they think. (Last weekend’s Idaho Statesman/KIVI-TV poll shows the margin between favor/disfavor as close.) Elected officials and candidates have let loose their thoughts, as have just about all of the candidates for office.

Bill Sali apparently can’t decide.

He told the Statesman that “it’s one of the most complicated things I’ve read in my life.” Too complicated for him but not for hundreds of thousands of Idaho voters and every other candidate on the ballot? (His opponent, Democrat Larry Grant, is in opposition.)

That lack of a position appears to obtain even though, as Prop 2 manager Laird Maxwell correctly notes, Sali has not protested Maxwell’s listing of him as a Prop 2 backer on the initiative’s web site.

Could the fact that some of Sali’s key out of state backers support the measure have anything to do with his indecision?

We noted this pecuiarity several weeks ago, assuming it would be clarified before now. With a week left before the election, looks as if Sali may remain the fuzzy candidate clear to the end. (If that should change, we’ll post to that effect.)

Oregon U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat, represents the most liberal part of Oregon - his district consists mostly of Portland - but he’s been getting a considerable dousing in more conservative waters as he campaigns for Democrats elsewhere.

He is only barely opposed in this election, and so has the free time. It may turn out to be useful experience if he winds up campaigning statewide in 2008. (Okay, he’s done the disclaimers. But it remains a live possibility.)

Blumenauer’s travelogue, which includes a fairly detailed section on his stopover and campaigning in Idaho, has been posted on Daily Kos.

Acall from the Associated Press/Portland this afternoon prompted the question: To what extent is the national political mood likely to influence down-ticket races? Or, will state and local Republicans pay the price for the unpopularity of Republicans based on the far coast?

The correct answer seems to be “sure - to some extent,” which begs the question of to what extent, which is something we’ll all be wiser about in another week. But some impact is highly likely.

Politicians are picking it up. Oregon’s governor race is one of the clearest examples. It is not directly tied to the Bush Administration or to Congress - the candidates are not running for, never have run for and are not serving in federal office. But the swing in energy in Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski’s campaign came suspiciously close to the time he and his ads starting linking - sometimes with subtlety, sometimes not - Republican Ron Saxton with Bush and Washington Republicans. And if that’s a little subjective for you, the latest Saxton TV ad blitz - in which he acknowledges that he’s a Republican but promises that he won’t be too much of one - ought to be a convincer.

Or consider the numbers.

This is the rundown of partisan balance in the state Senate and House in Washington, Oregon and Idaho for the last two major wave elections, in 1994 and 1980. The numbers indicate the seats held by each party - listed as Republicans/Democrats - before and after those two elections, by chamber.

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In all 12 transitions, Republicans gained seats - House and Senate, net totals, in all three states. The size of the gain was widely variable, though. They range from the astonishing Republican pickup of 28 House seats in Washington in 1994 - a number proportionately greater than in the U.S. House that year - down to the modest Oregon changes in 1980. (But remember that in the cases of the Washington and Oregon Senates, moreover, the numbers are held down because only half of those seats are up for election in a single two-year cycle.)

You can figure that the wind at the back of congressional Democrats will help their colleagues down-ticket. As to how much . . . there’s a range of possibilities.

Open communications permeate our society too richly to allow the areas of political segregation - the cultural walls - we’ve built up, to last forever. Sooner or later someone figure out a way through them, and then the bricks will fall.

One of those might be an intriguing experiment in counterintuitive campaigning: Democrats, even somewhat liberal Democrats, campaigning in a theoretically Republican venue. In this case, Christian radio.

Three Oregon House Democratic candidates - Rob Brading, Charles Lee and David Edwards - have started advertising messages on Christian radio stations. The ads have a similar feel: In each, the candidate talks in an easy voice, about how his faith affects his candidacy. Lee, for example: “My father taught me that living by God’s Law makes life easy—all you have to do is tell the Truth and you’ll be fine. But he also taught me that the Truth needs courage and firm convictions to survive.”

All three are in serious races, Brading opposing House Speaker Karen Minnis, Lee against Representative Kim Thatcher and Edwards against Everett Curry - all three seats are substantially up for grabs, in politically marginal areas. (The most interesting of the three may be Edwards/Curry, since Curry is a pastor of a Baptist church in southern California, and since Edwards took a big hit in the Oregonian - including a pulled editorial endorsement - over a hotly disputed matter of political ethics.)

This reach for the “Christian vote” could - if it hits its target - have a real impact on the calculus in those places. We’ll be checking back to see if it worked.

The trend line is persistent: Newspaper subscriptions continue their downward plunge.

For the six months ending in September, circulation nationally fell another 2.8%. Exceptions appear, but the overall is clear enough, and of a piece with the trend line in the last decade and more.

In Seattle, that has meant more circulation losses at the two dailies, albeit at slower paces - they’re sinking a little more slowly. The Seattle Times weekday circulation now stands at 212,691 (down, over six months, by 1.3%), the Post-Intelligencer at 126,225 (down 4.9%). For a close-in metro area of three million and more, that’s shockingly low. The third-largest paper in the state, the Tacoma News Tribune, dropped 5.7% (now 116,150).

In 2000, the Times stood at 225,687, the P-I at 75,794.

And probably no one expects a reversal in the next six-month report.

This kind of trend line can’t go on forever.

The sort-of bright spot for newspapers in this is that traffic on their web sites (from which they earn relatively little) is continuing a steady growth.

Question: When does the tail start wagging the dog? It’s beginning to look as if you can pinpoint the date on the right kind of spreadsheet . . .

Of the 1st district Idaho daily newspapers which endorse, we correctly estimated that Democrat Larry Grant either might sweep the endorsements over Republican Bill Sali, or all but one. (One more is yet to come in this race.)

The paper we were thinking might go for Sali was the Nampa Idaho Press-Tribune, considering its usually very conservative editorial stands.

Not this time. Their editorial today is the thoroughgoing and powerful - and skillful - editorial blast against Sali we’ve seen all year. “Skillful” is added in because it did what is tough to do: It explains clearly why, though the candidate may be acceptable philosophically, he is unsuited for the job he seeks. It does so in fair and reasoned terms. Emanating from a solidly conservative editorial board, it has some chance of being taken more than usually seriously by conservative voters.

UPDATE: Corrected for prematurity; we had understood an endorsement had been made, which hadn’t.

Today’s Idaho poll offered up by Mason Dixon - broadly regarded as one of the better polling firms in the country - courtesy the Boise Idaho Statesman and KIVI-TV in Nampa, shows a general election campaign riding on the razor edge.

The core numbers are these:

That these numbers are as close as they are in Idaho is noteworthy on its face, and an indicator that recent polls showing a closing of the races are not outliers.

Looks like a serious horse race. But more specifically, what do we make of it? (more…)

By way of notation, for any interested . . . ‘Twas almost exactly a year ago when this side moved from pure HTML to database (those older posts remain accessible through archives); we were loathe to let go hands-on site manufacture, but the demands of the modern web made it necessary, and WordPress software has been a worthy handler.

The features it made possible (common and ordinary among many web sites these days) probably contributed to this site’s growth: Our average daily visits have more than tripled in the past year, and we don’t seem to be levelling off. Total visits during that time stand at 314,388.

Thanks for stopping by. You’re in growing company.

Democrats in eastern Washington and western Idaho were cheered this week when their candidates, Peter Goldmark and Larry Grant, in the 5th and 1st respectively, were upgraded to the national Democratic “red to blue” list - the party’s list of hot and truly competitive races. Which both, in fact, seem to be.

A moment, please, for what this says in larger-picture perspective, as we look toward the election 10 days off. (more…)

Musing: You have to wonder if the impact is all it might be. But it might be. Could it be that a 10-year-old civil case could cost a half-million dollars now, so much more than the $20,000 back then?

The subject is a sad incident dating from 1995, just now unearthed (the process and timing of which would be interesting to know, and isn’t entirely clear yet). The political principals are Karen Minnis, now speaker of the Oregon House, and her husband John, who in 1995 was both a state legislator (she worked for him then as an aide) and a police officer. Briefly, the story is this:

The Minnises in 1995 opened a pizza parlor at Hillsboro. Both otherwise employed, they hired John Minnis’ brother Tuck to manage it. It was an unfortunate choice. According to court records, Tuck Minnis soon began sexually harassing the help - the descriptions in court records put his actions well beyond the pale of ambiguity - culminating in an attack on a 17-year-old girl who worked there, at the restaurant, the point of “attempting to tear off plaintiff’s clothing in an apparent attempt to rape her.” She told her mother, who in turn called John Minnis (at the statehouse) to complain.

The eventual lawsuit (another female employee also eventually sued) said the Minnises “retaliated against plaintiff [the girl] for resisiting and reporting the sexual harassment conduct, as alleged above, by engaging in a course of intentional conduct designed to traumatize plaintiff and force her to quit, including but not limited to excusing defendant Tuck Minnis’ conduct toward plaintiff, assigning plaintiff to undesirable later night shifts, ordering her to change or wardrobe on and off work, setting rules for women employees that were not applied to men, reducing plaintiff’s work hours, changing her job description from hostess to cook, punitively treating her in a rude and angry manner, and writing her up for alleged insubordination on the job.” (She was at the time, remember, age 17.) She stopped working at the restaurant soon after, and then sued. The Minnises paid $20,000 to settle the civil suit. John and Karen Minnis removed Tuck Minnis as manager of the business, but kept him on as an employee there until November, when he apparently left voluntarily. (more…)

The winding down of this year’s campaign means time is coming not only to vote but also to consider how this process can be improved next time. Do we really want a 2008 campaign season that becomes simply a bigger and badder version of this one? Thought not (for most of us, that is).

Here’s one such suggestion (we will have more soon).

Consider the Thursday ruling by the Supreme Court in Montana (Montanans for Justice v. State) throwing out (more precisely, declaring void) three ballot issues which actually will appear on the state’s ballot. These issues were backed by some of the same outfits which sent their tentacles into Washington, Oregon and Idaho this season. Here’s a piece of what the court said happened: (more…)

Do the national Republicans appreciate the extent to which this is beginning to make Republican Bill Sali look ever more like a seriously at-risk candidate in a heavily Republican district?

Word up today that yet another massive buy on Sali’s behalf from a national Republican committee - at a time when national Republican money has been pulled from some states - and that Vice President Dick Cheney will pay yet another another visit to the 1st district, once again to help Sali. There seems to be no bottom to the generosity of the national Republicans and allied groups (hello, Club for Growth) on this race - by election day, their independent expenditures on Sali’s behalf will approach the total campaign expenditures of Sali and Democrat Larry Grant taken together. What the national Republicans will spend in the last month of this campaign, in fact, probably will exceed Grant’s total spending (which has not been shabby for a Democrat) all year. That’s in addition to the Club’s central underwriting ever since last fall of much of Sali’s campaign treasury.

Gee, you’d think these guys didn’t have confidence in Sali to do his own thing. Which raises the question: To what extent is Sali doing his own thing?

It suggests two more questions too. (more…)

The biggest political question in Oregon for the last several weeks - without a lot of visible poll results - is the state of play in the governor’s race, between incumbent Democrat Ted Kulongoski and Republican challenger Ron Saxton.

Ted Kulongoski

Ron Saxton

We’re not sure we buy the whole 11-point Kulongoski lead in the just-released Riley Research (of Portland) poll report (this copy by way of the Oregonian political blog). But, with maybe a few points shaved off, it does match other scraps of evidence we’ve encountered lately about the top Oregon contest. (more…)

We now have it definitively from the National Republican Congressional Committee: The top three U.S. House races in the Northwest - Washington 5 and 8 and Idaho 1 - are among the 33 top races in the country. All three, we know courtesy of The Hill newspaper, have placed on the NRCC’s “Final Push List.”

That list is about focusing financial help to specific campaigns. PAC Director Jenny Sheffield was quoted: “…it’s crucial at this point to send in some late money to some [of] our campaigns. The funds our candidates receive now will allow them to increase their TV buys and will make the difference on Nov. 7. I have attached our Final Push list for those Members and candidates most in need of support right now. If your boss has not maxed out to those on the attached list, please ask him or her to consider sending a check from a leadership PAC and/or reelection account … IMMEDIATELY!”

You sense a tone of urgency. Considering how securely Republican the three Northwest districts have been in recent elections, this is a remarkable admission (and backs up Cathy McMorris’ comments last week that the Washington 5th is in play).

We shouldn’t let this go unnoted, if only as a model for next time around: Idaho 2nd District House candidate Jim Hansen’s fundraising.

Hansen, a Democrat, is running a steeply underdog campaign against incumbent Republican Mike Simpson. Money was certainly never going to come easy, and Hansen decided early on that he would accept no PAC money, only contributions of $100 or less. His argument: “If at least 5,000 people donate $100 that ought to be enough to run a congressional campaign without going to the PACs and lobbyists that are strong-armed by Congress to fork over huge contributions every day. It is a leap of faith based on Jim’s convictions. The consultants inside DC think it’s nuts, but virtually every person Jim talks to in Idaho - ordinary voters - appreciate it as a principled stand. It is only risky if everyone who agrees with Jim sits back and does nothing.”

He acknowledged he’d draw some skepticism, and probably did. We weren’t dismissive, though, having seen the recently-developing power of grassroots fundraising.

So what has Hansen raised?

As of September 30, according to federal finance reports, he pulled $110,888, all of it from individuals.

Simpson has overall raised much more, $467,776 (and could have raised more, no doubt, if he felt more strongly threatened). But he raised $126,755 from individuals, not so much more than Hansen.

In today’s context, $110,000 (and Hansen has doubtless raised more since September) isn’t usually enough to win a congressional seat, but it is enough to get one’s word out.

Something interesting is going on.

The absolute assertion in today’s lead Salon article that Madison County, Idaho - and notably its main city, Rexburg - is “the reddest place in America,” is open to some dispute. We can cite a county or two in Idaho that may statistically surpass it, and elsewhere around the country there may be a few more. But that feels like a quibble; certainly you’ll not find many places more Republican in 2006 than the home of the Brigham Young University-Idaho, an institution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Have been there many a time over three decades, we can testify that writer Tim Grieve well captured the political nature of the place. Anyone interested in why much of Idaho, including much of eastern Idaho, is as it is, would do well to read it, though Rexburg sets somewhat apart from most other Idaho communities by virtue of the presence of the explosively growing BYU-I, which is just as conservative if not more so than its parent, BYU in Provo, Utah.

Grieve might be interested to know that, though Rexburg has for a century and more been overwhelmingly Mormon (recent estimates put the church’s portion of the population at well upward of 90%), it has not always been single-party. A generation ago it regularly elected Democrats alongside Republicans to the legislature and courthouse, and one of the leading families in town, in local politics and as owners of the local paper, were staunch Democrats. But those days appear to be past.

As this passage indicates:

And perhaps the results are preordained because of the monolithic influence of the Church of Latter Day Saints. As BYU-I English professor Dawn Anderson tells me, it’s important to understand that most voters in Madison County are Mormons, and that “everything of a political nature” has to be understood in that context.

“The climate surrounding faithful membership in this organization is not always conducive to challenging authority,” she says. “People here are reluctant to openly criticize the president and his administration, even if they privately disapprove of his job.” And many of them don’t disapprove, even privately. “After 20 years of teaching Mormon students, I’ve learned that the majority of them have little knowledge of issues outside the Republican platform. They only know that Democrats are lesbian baby-killers.”

She’s not being figurative. Anderson also recounts: “She remembers the time when a group of classmates followed her third-grader home, shouting out ‘baby-killer’ all along the way. She took it up with the teacher, who didn’t seem to mind.”

Anderson (who is a Democrat) doesn’t go on to say whether the BYU-I students, when they cast their votes, genuinely feel they are casting well-informed votes. But in this particular college town, such a concept takes on a framework all its own.

If Idaho largely remains, in this year of the blue wave, determinely red, there are reasons.

CORRECTED to change the name of publication to the (correct) Salon.

In Oregon as nowhere else, the general election campaign jumps the shark today. By now, just about all Oregonians have received their ballots, and today they begin to vote; “election day” November 7 merely marks completion of the process.

The campaign is hardly over, however: People do not cast their votes all at once. So to what extent do the remaining ads, campaigns, statements, news items and so on still count for something? A substantial amount, apparently.

We can put numbers to it. The Oregon Secretary of State’s office tracks the number of ballots returned by day, and from those numbers we can pull some trends.

The patterns differ for primary and special elections, but general election returns tend to be bunched near the end. In the 2004 general election ballot returns were fairly spread out, only modestly bunched at the end (40% of returns in the last three days, out of 13 days available). But in the 2002 general election, 55% of all returns came in the last three days out of 13. And in the 2000 general, 54% arrived in the last three of 12 days, the number was 51% in 1998.

Some of this may reflect active get out the vote (GOTV) campaigns which track who has and hasn’t yet voted (which is not especially hard to do), and then getting their people to send in those ballots. Some of it may reflect procrastination.

But while those late voters don’t eliminate the value of late campaigning, the half or so that vote earlier do wipe out many of the late slime campaigns voters elsewhere are accustomed to.

In Oregon, ballots already are in the mail (some may have received them Saturday, most others should on Monday), so endorsements are long done. Although the Portland Oregonian is still dealing with fallout from last Sunday’s gubernatorial endorsement of Republican Ron Saxton: the paper says that somewhere near 400 letters to the editor flooded in last week in protest.

Will any of these other regional endorsements generate such response?

They tend not to generate a lot of surprise.

SEATTLE TIMES/SENATE Not a big shocker, that the Times went for Republican Mike McGavick over Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell (whom it endorsed six years ago). But the language seemed tepid. It didn’t much blast Cantwell, who (it said) has a decent record, taking issue mostly with her “caution.” The McGavick praise seemed a little narrow, praising mostly his spirit of innovation.

So the paper left itself open to an increasingly frequent charge, really needing to address it - as it did: “Critics will note that McGavick supports the elimination of the federal estate tax, a cause for which The Seattle Times has campaigned many years. That is part of why we endorse him, but not most of it.” How much of it will be a topic for easy dispute.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER/SENATE Elsewhere in the same large bundle of paper on Washingtonians’ doorsteps today they will find the PI’s opposing take on the race. (Times goes R, PI goes D; okay, got it.) Their take, with a more definitive tone than the Times‘, concluded, “With America needing to fix off-track federal leadership, every Senate vote counts. Maria Cantwell is the candidate for a real change in course.” (more…)

Our Thursday post on the regional U.S. House races listed Washington’s 5th district contest, between incumbent Republican Cathy McMorris and Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark, as a serious contest - running up steadily to the point that it now merits serious watching.

We half-expected some counter on that from some area Republicans, and surely would have a few months ago. But conditions have changed, that assessment is mainstream, and now comes confirmation that the race is closing from none other than McMorris.

We got this courtesy of a glitch in telephone technology and Spokane Spokesman-Review political reporter Jim Camden. Camden on Thursday had dialed in to listen to a McMorris town hall session on veterans. Placed on mute (so that he couldn’t participate) - but inadvertently not on hold, like other participants, which would have blocked the private conversation - he overheard some pre-meeting chatter between McMorris and Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who chairs the Senate committee on veterans services. During that short conversation, McMorris told Craig, “It’s a closer race than I first imagined,” and advised her fellow Republican that Goldmark was “hitting very hard” on veterans issues.

Craig’s response was that nationally, “The new numbers are just devastating.”

This looks to be turning into an unusual political season.

The ist district House race remains Topic A in Idaho - and beyond: We just got off the phone with a reporter from the Washington Post, so look for an ID-1 piece there soon - so: Here’s another log on the fire . . .

We’ll refer now to the blog byBubblehead (a term derived from his years in military submarine service, in case you wondered), a Republican who has issues with Republican 1st district House nominee Bill Sali. This paragraph in a recent post caught our attention. (more…)