Idaho has always been mostly conservative. It's the nature of the state, and part of the reason why our liberals are so liberal.
For a long time, Idahoans liked to keep things in rough balance, though. They liked to have an liberal Democratic Governor and some other high officials in office, so the conservatives could be reined in if they got startled and did a runaway, and tried to jump off a cliff.
But over the past 20 years or so, the balance left, and the state GOP, which has always had it's share of far right populists, has succumbed to the crazy. Several cliff jumpings have occurred recently, and more will follow.
Read on below the failed attempt to coil a lariat.
It's a long read, but I hope you enjoy it. Pour a cup and spend some time in some deep Republican wackiness. Every word is true, believe it or not.
George Hansen died a couple of days ago. Does anyone remember George? He was a Representative in the 1970s and '80s, and was a real grand stander wing nut. He led the fight agains giving the Panama Canal back to Panama in the '70s, at a time when the canal was obsolete and we couldn't use it for moving our Naval ships while costing us a boatload of money to operate.
George was the guy who flew off to iran in the middle of the hostage crisis, and screwed up all of Carter's attempts at getting the hostages released. The hostages, thanks to George, got to hang around for almost a full year of continued terror as a result.
idahoans loved George. Even with 4 felonies hanging over his head, he still came very close to re-election once more. He lost by only a couple of hundred votes to the first Democrat to hold his seat since George became a Representative.
Out of office, George continued his screwy ways. He developed a pyramid scheme that cost my uncle $250,000 and others millions more, and was so bad at it that he never made a dime himself from the scheme. It landed him in prison for another 5 years. (The first time he went to jail was shortly after the election, when he was convicted of the charges on him. He did 2 years that time.)
Ah, the good old days.
Helen Chenoweth, Larry Craig, Bill Sali, and Raul Labrador were all to follow, but none could top Big George. Nowadays, all we have is a Senator, James Risch, who loves the the disfunction so much he hopes it will continue forever. He bragged publicly about only needing to show up, vote no, and go home. And hopes to collect the paycheck forever.
Risch's claim to fame, other than being about 4' tall and pissed about it, was the 6 weeks he spent as temporary Guv after Dirk Kempthorne went to Washington to be Bush's boy in the Interior Dept.
Risch called a special session in the middle of summer, and tore apart what was a stable funding sales tax for Idaho's education funding. He threatened to keep the session going until he got what he wanted- a big deal when most of the legislators here are ranchers and farmers.
Nowadays, he seems to be quite proud that Idaho is now the lowest state in the nation in education funding. The sales tax now goes into paying for all the other bills the GOP has rung up by refusing to tax our wealthiest folks. Risch himself is a multi-millionaire.
The crazy has been bubbling along merrily here for years, but this year, it finally boiled over. Here is what the Republicans are now offering us.
Sorry- it gets a little complicated, but there is plenty of whoopee in it.
The current Governor, Butch Otter, a former Representative, and Lt. Governor, always wanted to be Governor, probably because his ex father-in-law, J.R. Simplot, the richest guy in Idaho, detested him after Butch began running around on J.R.'s daughter.
Simplot had the Idaho Legislature in his pocket forever, and made sure anyone but Butch got the job while J.R. was still alive.
J.R. left his awesomely ugly mansion, perched on top of a hill just outside the Boise city limits, to the state as an Executive Mansion after his death. The irrigation bill for the lawn runs about $3,000 a year, and it needs big restoration. The road is so steep that it's treacherous in the winters, and the place is all done up in the worst of '70s modern.
Naturally Butch wants nothing to do with it. The place is a huge white elephant Idaho got stuck with. So our old mansion sits empty, another white elephant until butch is gone.
Once Butch won, and made sure all his cronies were well cared for, he took the job pretty casually. For the following two terms, he preferred to hang around his ranch on the outskirts of Boise, fooling around with his roping horses, and only showed up in his office a few days a week to catch up on his mail.
Life was good, and everything was either in deadlock or in the courts for most of the past 8 years, which made things even easier for Butch.
But Butch had to face a crisis when the ACA was approved by the courts. Idaho opposed the health care reform bitterly, tooth and nail, but Butch had been around long enough to know when the jig was up, and at the final moment of the 2013 session, brought Idaho into the national exchange.
Idaho's exchange has worked very well since, insuring thousands of our underpaid workers. That's a big deal in a state where everyone is underpaid, but it didn't go down well with the Idaho teabaggers, who are still trying to fight it.
When Butch decided to run for an unprecedented 3rd term, the teabaggers had enough of him. They ran Russ Fulcher in opposition. Russ seemed to be a reasonable guy until you read what his policies were, and he came pretty close to winning.
Nowadays, nobody likes Butch but his horse, wife, and Butch. his best pal, Tom Luna, decided not to run as state education director after all 4 parts of his radical reforms were thrown out by statewide referendum last year. Even the conservative faithful hated the billions his plans would cost, and all the money would have gone out of state. Luna was a dead duck after that, and decided to hang it up. He's now the second most hated by the state GOP. When he was elected the first time, he only had a high school diploma!
Our State Treasurer is having a bit of trouble with his re-election. Ron Crane has held the job for quite a while, and along the way, he spent thousands of dollars of state money on limousines to ride around in New York City to attend parties, and blew a couple of billion on bad investments for the state. He was also caught receiving money for commuting to his job, the only guy in the state government to do so.
Our Secretary of State is retiring this year, and the GOP candidate for the job is the former state Speaker of the House, Lawrence 'Boss' Denney. Denney is the single most responsible person for Idaho's own legislative deadlock, ran the House with an iron teabagger fist, and protected one of his lieutenants, a Rep. from the panhandle, Phil Hart, from prosecution for as long as Hart was in office.
Hart refused to pay income tax for over 10 years, accumulating a million dollar tax debt, and illegally logged some federal forest.
Hart was the chairman of the state tax committee until he finally was voted out of office. He believed in taxing everyone but himself. (his nickname is the Athol Asshole. Athol is a little town he lives in.)
These days, he's bankrupt and busy trying to stay out of jail.
Denney also saved Shoeless McGee's senate term for a while.
John 'Shoeless' McGee was a rising star until 2012, when he got drunk at an exclusive Boise country club, wandered off the grounds without his shoes at 2 in the morning, and staggered barefoot into the surrounding neighborhood, where he broke into a parked pickup with a trailer attached in the owner's driveway.
He attempted to drive the truck home, jackknifed the trailer in the driveway, and was found in the truck bed, passed out, by the cops.
Incredibly, this wasn't the incident that got him kicked out of the senate. A few months later, several of his female staff workers filed a sexual harassment suit against him, with lots of proof. McGee then resigned after much sniveling.
All this hanky-panky cost Denney his job as Speaker. He is now just another Representative.
He's only running for Sec. of State because his retirement will be 3 times higher if he retires from that position. The Speaker position also brought in 3 times more money, but if he retires as only a Representative, he loses all that money.
The Boss is almost as despised as the Athol Asshole, but he thinks he's gonna win against his squeaky clean Democratic opponent. The retiring Secretary of State, a Republican, is supporting our Democrat.
The party division was particularly bitter in the 2nd district.
Mike Simpson, a long-time Representative and one of the most popular Republicans in the state, found himself in the biggest primary fight in his career when teabagger Bryan Smith decided to contest him. Both Simpson and Smith live in Idaho Falls.
Both men received enormous outside special interest support- Simpson had the U.S. Chamber of Commerce behind him, and Smith had Freedom Works dumping money into his campaign. Both outfits spent a gaboon of money on TV ads, and the fliers the sent out filled my mailbox twice a week.
Simpson is very personable, and he's an old style bring home the pork politician. He sits on several committees that are important to our farmers and has protected the INL funding, our leading federal laboratory, very well.
Smith is one of those guys who doesn't want to spend a dime of federal money on anything. He has a very irritating and strident personality, and is one of those folks who amps it up in an argument every time, becomes very defensive and aggressive when opposed, and has a loud, brassy voice.
The fight started in late November and continued all the way into May, but Simpson's popularity carried him through. The voters didn't like Smith, who runs a debt collection service along with a legal practice. Smith got trounced as did all the other teabaggers in the 2nd district, leaving Smith a very angry man.
Later on, Smith won the chairmanship of District 7. (more on this to come.)
Up in the panhandle, which is almost a state unto itself, Raul Labrador did just fine, as did a number of incumbent teabaggers who faced their own opponents.
Shortly after the primaries, the Idaho Republicans held their convention in Moscow, the home of the U of I. Labrador was the convention manager.
Everything looked fine the evening before the business started; Rand Paul spoke, took his money and split, and there was a lot of typical convention hoo-rah gong on.
But on the first morning, a credentials fight began. Some of the delegates were deemed to be too RINO to be Republicans. In the end, all the delegates from Ada county, the home of Boise, and the counties that are the home of Twin Falls and Pocatello, all had their credentials taken away. Those cities are 3 of the 6 largest in Idaho, so they represent a lot of the state's Repubs. The arguments lasted all day long for the next 2 days at full volume. By the morning of the 3rd day, Labrador called it quits and ended the convention a day early.
The battle prevented the convention from actually doing any party business at all.
The Chairman of the State Republican party, a volunteer job with a single 2-year term, decided his term hadn't ended because they never voted in a replacement, so he arbitrarily declared himself Chairman for one more term.
The professional staff at the headquarters saw the train wreck coming, and they all bailed out, leaving the Headqauarters with no treasurer, campaign organizers, or staff in the building.
Barry Peterson, the Chairman and a teabagger, changed the locks on the doors, and for the next month, sat in an empty office until the state Central Committee met voted him out and chose a replacement, a complete unknown who moved here less than 2 years ago. Peterson is now suing his party.
Next week, the Republicans will hold their biggest fund raising party of the year, a grand barbecue, the is hosted by the richest guy in the state, Frank Vandersloot, out on his ranch. Vandersloot was a big Simpson supporter in the primary.
Tickets are sold for the yearly event, and it's always a sellout. it always pulls in thousands of dollars more in donations once the event starts. The BBQ is the place where all the candidates get to speechify and meet & greet their voters, and the first opportunity for most to get some wide attention, but not this year.
Bryan Smith is the BBQ organizer this year. The 7th district Chairman is always the host for the event. He broke tradition by planning to bring in Matt Kibbe, head of Freedom Works and a big-league teabagger, as the featured speaker. None of the candidates will be allowed to speak.
This event will be held in Idaho Falls, home to Smith and Simpson and Vandersloot. Simpson is scheduled to receive the Republican of the Year award at the BBQ. Smith, the guy who's holding the poison dripping grudge on Simpson, may be the guy who gives it to him.
Other complications:
Otter, our leading Republican figure, is more on the outs than ever with his party as the summer has progressed, and is in real trouble in both ends of the state. he may not show up at the BBQ, as Vandersloot invited his Democratic opponent, A.J. Balukoff, to an earlier function this spring.
So far, ticket sales have been very slow for the very first time.
Mike Simpson has been politely silent, as has Frank Vandersloot, but the former Chairman of the 7th district, the host district of the BBQ, has not.
She's a nice old lady who held the job for 17 years before Smith got it, and she's very pissed at Smith for mucking up her signature event.
After all, she was pretty good at raking in millions for her party for a long time, so it's natural she would be upset. She hasn't been shy about telling Smith a thing or two in the papers recently, and may spit in his eye if he doesn't shape up.
Given Smith's personality and the general crankiness of the state's teabaggers, who will show up en masse, I'm sure, it's a given that the BBQ will end up in another fight.
I expect food to be thrown, but the beer will flow, and Idaho Republicans tend to get surly when drunk. The guns and knives may come out, but I hope not. I actually like a lot of my conservative friends who may be there.
That's some Idaho crazy, for ya. I'm a native, so I'm used to it.
Since we have a most excellent Democratic lineup this year, I'll be most happy to vote all of our Democratic candidates into office.
I think we'll get more voter support now than in a decade. (How bad do things have to be? Not all conservatives here are total wackos, after all.) I expect to be a happy guy come November, but I never take anything for granted.
If you would like to help us out, we would be happy if you do. If all our candidates get the job, there will be much gratitude shown to the Kossacks. Idaho Republicans deeply fear the Kossacks, that's for sure. Ron Paul warned 'em about us twice.
If you would like to see our most excellent bunch, check out:
http://idahodems.org
We just moved into a very cool new headquarters that has a lot of Idaho history in it. We are hot to go and ready!
You can contribute here:
https://secure.actblue.com/...
or you can send a check my mail here:
Idaho Democratic Party
PO Box 445
Boise, ID 83701