Posts published in March 2007

The Idaho Legislature has just adjourned for the year - sine die (properly, that's see-nay dee-ay, though no one says it that way). The last bit of business was a compromised (and apparently somewhat straightened out) highway bonding bill.

Reflections tomorrow on the session and Governor Butch Otter's relationship to it.

There was the case in the last session of the Oregon legislature where leadership of one party tried to quash a transportation project pursued by a member of the other party. And denial of legislation and pet projects to minority members is not especially unusual in any legislature.

But what emerged on the floor of the Idaho Senate today is something else - punishing an entire region because the people in it voted against the candidates of the majority party.

This came up on what was supposed to be the last day of the Idaho Legislature this year (still might be), as the Senate was getting ready to consider what was to be its last big decision of the year - approving authority for issuing GARVEE bonds for highway construction. It was the subject of concern and negotiation for some time (there was a reason it was held off until the end), and a final draft of Senate Bill 1245 was presented to the Senate only today, after several leaders in the House had worked on it.

Which is when the senators found out what had happened in the guts of the bill: One of the half-dozen big highway projects in it had been eliminated. This project concerned work on Interstate 84 at Boise from Orchard Road to Isaac's Canyon - central and southeast Boise. The precise area, in other words, in which voters in the last couple of elections have thrown out their Republican legislative delegations and gone Democratic.

We might be willing to chalk this up to uneasy coincidence; spending priorities will differ according to one's viewpoint. Except that by legislators' own accounts there's no debt that this was the precise reason the project was dropped. Betsy Russell's Spokesman-Review blog has the quotes that nail it. Start with Senator Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, co-chair of the budget committee, speaking on the Senate floor: “There was one of those six projects that was removed altogether. Why? Because the senator and the representatives from that district were from the wrong political party. . . . It’s time for us to step back.” Drilling down, he later said it happened “because it’s in Elliot’s backyard,” referring to Boise Democratic Senator Elliot Werk.

There were some sort-of demurrals, though House Speaker Lawerence Denney, R-Midvale, seemed to distance himself: “I was never in a meeting where that was discussed” (though he said other House leaders did discuss the GARVEE plans).

The Senate spent almost two hours debating the bill; afterward, it decisively killed it, 23-12.

There may be more to this, and we'll keep watch. But if Russell's reportage so far is accurate (and it's rarely not) and if Cameron is right (and his statements would be extraordinarily out of character if they weren't), then this is a dark passage: A message from legislative leadership that you'd better vote Republican, or else.

Those following the political track of Idaho 1st District Representative Bill Sali may want to take note of a Congressional Quarterly piece appearing today, centering on an interview with a man planning to try to take him out next election.

Rand Lewis

That would be Rand Lewis, a retired Army colonel who lives at Moscow who appears to be leaving no doubt he plans to run, as a Democrat. (This is not entirely new; his name was floated around the blogosphere floated in 2006.) He says that Larry Grant, who lost to Sali last year 50%-45%, plans to run as well, though Grant has not said so publicly.

Lewis is talking about the need to prepare and fund-raise early, and that's no doubt true. In this district which has chosen Republicans for the U.S. House in every election there since 1966 (save two), Sali starts the 2008 run with a distinct advantage. And it may as well be said now too: To this point, he's done nothing since taking office in Washington that seems likely to hurt him politically back in the district, and at least some of what he's done seems likely to improve his standing. Anyone thinking him an easy target in 2008 will need to do a rethink.

Notes: Link to CQ article revised; blogosphere link noted from 2006.

Two recent opinion pieces about this year's legislative session, and its new House leadership, merit attention. They take off from two entirely different angles; and their implicit suggestions are quite different.

One is by Dennis Mansfield, the conservative Republican activist in Idaho, is currently touring around Israel, and has been blogging about it (interesting stuff too), but before he left he delivered a provocative Idaho political post.

It takes off from a March 18 article in the Idaho Statesman about how this has been a session of discontent for the dwindling number of moderate Republicans in the Idaho House, and about how several of the members (moderates among them) who supported the losing candidate for House speaker have had rough sledding in the House this year. At one point in it, House Democratic Leader Wendy Jaquet is quoted as saying, “I feel sorry for the moderates in the majority party of the House that they’re having to vote the way they don’t want to . . . At some point, the folks that are moderates are going to have to stand up and say, ‘We won’t support that.’ ”

Mansfield has an alternative suggestion:

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