Some people in politics seem to do best when they have the fewest obstacles and a straight shot to their goals. Ron Twilegar, who died at Boise on March 5, flourished when he was – as he mostly was in his elected offices – in the minority, and facing lots of challenges.
In the state Senate (from 1976 to 1982), he served for a time as the Democratic minority leader, and was among both the best prepared and most resourceful legislative leaders I’ve seen.
One day on the floor he was arguing against a bill (it might have been a right to work, or something similarly contentious, and partisan) and didn’t just argue against it, he tried to kill it using virtually the whole roster of legislative rules. The Republican majority was set to pass it but he kept on trying.
Finally, out of maneuvers, he made a motion to send the bill to the second order of business: Prayer. Because, he said, that would be the bill’s only chance when it reached the governor’s office (and a certain veto).
Even the Republican caucus laughed.
He was smart and congenial enough to make friends across the partisan divides; then-state Senator (now U.S. senator) Jim Risch was his Republican counterpart, and from all appearances they worked together well.
His resourcefulness and doggedness could make him a source of aggravation, though, in some contexts.
After leaving the Senate he was elected to the Boise City Council, where during much of his tenure he was a minority voice on the then hot issue of downtown redevelopment. Mayor Dick Eardley had long pressed for a downtown shopping mall, and later took other positions Twilegar and others thought were getting in the way of Boise development. At council meeting after meeting, Twilegar would nudge and press and make motions and do whatever he could to upset the balance. Watching him then, I kept thinking of a cat gradually pawing at some object to fall from a shelf, the result being a loud crash. Which it was in the meetings.
He drove Eardley nuts. But he also may have been the pivotal political figure in changing the development trajectory of Boise, from where it was in the 60s and 70s to what it became in the 90s and since. He developed a broad coalition backing those efforts, a bipartisan organization that changed the membership of the council and led directly to the election of Eardley’s successor, Dirk Kempthorne.
He was a pivot as well in partisan politics. Before his election from a north Boise district in 1974, no Democrat had been elected to the legislature from Ada County in a third of a century. To see distinctly blue Boise in the last couple of decades is to see a whole different political place from its character in 1974, and that transition didn’t happen by accident. Twilegar’s campaigning – intensive and door to door – and ahead-of-its-time organization rooted the party first in Boise’s north end and over the next generation across the city.
If you still wonder what an achievement this was, bear in mind Twilegar was running that year against a veteran Republican incumbent (his name was Dean Summers) who was a close friend of Democratic Governor Cecil Andrus, and didn’t seem especially happy about this particular Republican loss. That was the year of another obstacle Twilegar had to deal with.
Twilegar later ran for the U.S. Senate, losing to Republican Larry Craig, and his career in politics was lower key after that.
But in his earlier years, Twilegar showed that in politics and agenda-setting, you don’t necessarily have to have a top of the line title or great power to make changes, even large and lasting ones. Smarts, preparation and determination can sometimes do as much, or more.
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