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Posts published in “Day: March 11, 2010”

If he doesn’t

March 11, 2010

UPDATE He has: Otter filed for re-election this (Friday) morning. What follows may still be food for thought, though.

This post may be rendered useless speculation tomorrow or next week, and odds are it will be. Can't help posting it, though, just because it seems to shine some light on a political dog that didn't bark in the night-time. [see edit at end of post]

That would be C.L. "Butch" Otter, the governor of Idaho who is widely expected to run for a second term. He has nowhere said he won't, has indicated he will, and has six filing days left to do it. But when asked about his campaign, he has sounded reluctant to the point of diffidence. Yeah, odds are he will.

But it's quite a contrast with the last cycle for the office, when Otter, just re-elected in 2004 to the U.S. House, made clear he wanted to run for governor. Hardly had his re-election to federal office been certified than he was on the run, the happy warrior doing everything he could to lock down at least the Republican nomination for governor. Then-Lieutenant Governor Jim Risch, who also wanted the job, was simply out-maneuvered, and in November 2005, after strongly suggested he was in the race, dropped out. It was the logical move: Otter had moved very aggressively to sew it up.

Compare that to this cycle: What looks very like an oh-I'll-get-around-to-it sort of approach, almost an unwillingness. The contrast couldn't be much greater.

So what if Otter - and the decision is singularly his - decided: To hell with this garbage everyone insists on putting me through? What if he decided not to file?

What a fun time we'd have. Well, some of us. (more…)

And candidates trickle in

March 11, 2010

Monday was a deluge, the rest of the week a trickle, in Idaho candidate filings. That's not unusual; the pace doesn't ordinarily pick up again until near the end, which is a week from tomorrow.

No posts on this the last couple of days because there wasn't a lot to say - the fitful filings have been mostly as expected.

Following up on a Kevin Reichert post yesterday, though: The bulk of the legislature does seem to be running for another go-round.

Unless my count was somehow side-tracked, I'm now counting 82 current legislators having filed for another run at the legislature. That includes Democrat Anne Pasley-Stuart in District 19, currently a House member running for the Senate seat, but not Senator Nicole LeFavour, who plans to swap offices with Pasley-Stuart, but hasn't yet filed. o you can bump that up to 83.

Since there are just 105 legislators, and since six more filing days (out of a total of 10) remain, that gives good odds the next legislature will, as Reichert suggested, closely resemble this one.

There is also this:

Total number of legislative seats (out of 105 total) for which Democratic candidates (including incumbents) have filed so far: 20. Seats for which Republicans (including incumbents) have filed: 79.