Idaho Politics

Egan, Idaho Politics, Judicial Elections, State Budgets

Budget Blues

Posted on by christian

utahLessons from The Beehive State

The Utah state budget is far from flush. The Salt Lake Tribune laments, as legislators do, a $313 million “structural deficit” in Utah. Having a “structural deficit” essentially means the state is spending more than it takes in. Most states have this problem, Idaho included.

As noted here yesterday, the Brookings Institution’s Mountain West Project has identified a variety of reasons for the fundamentally unbalanced nature of western state’s budgets. The reasons range from tax policies that gave away the farm in the form of tax breaks during flush times to antiquated tax structures – like Nevada’s – that overly rely on tourism and home building.

As for Idaho, some have long argued that the state’s tax structure, essentially unchanged since the sales tax was put in place in 1966, no longer reflects an economy built around high tech, services and recreation. If you buy that argument it begins to explain why Idaho, even given the deep cuts in state budgets over the last three years, is likely to continue – post-recession – to have revenue problems. That is a structural deficit.

Still, even with its underlying budget problems, Utah looks pretty good right now having avoided much of the fallout from the burst housing bubble and having in place a sound approach to budgeting and managing state government. And, by comparison to most of her neighbors, Utah is ahead of the game in addressing its structural problems.

Utah lawmakers so far are resisting further dips into the state’s rainy day fund and the state’s overall approach to budget and policy making continues to earn kudos from independent analysts.

In 2008, the Pew Center on the States called Utah “the best managed state” in the nation. Utah got a A- (so did Washington) in the sober, technical Pew study. Idaho, by contrast was back in the pack with Wyoming with a B- grade. Nevada, Montana and Oregon got gentlemanly C+ grades.

One reason Utah scored so high in this analysis was the management systems instituted during the governorship of Jon Huntsman. Huntsman, who recently resigned as U.S. ambassador to China in order to reportedly launch a Republican presidential bid, instituted a number of wonkish, but effective management approaches that impressed the Pew folks.

Here’s some of what was said: “Utah manages all facets of state government well, emphasizing long-term goals and performance outcomes. The executive and legislative branches work together effectively to align expenditures with the strategic direction of the state. Utah has also changed the organizational structure of agencies in order to ensure success, embedding human resources and information technology staff in every state agency to better assist with long term management needs.”

The Pew study concludes with this about Utah: “In sum, routine, evidence- and process-driven review has enabled one Mountain West state to catch an incipient structural deficit early and act intentionally to rectify it before it becomes entrenched.”

Words to budget – and make policy – by.

 

Egan, Idaho Politics, Judicial Elections, State Budgets

The State Fiscal Crisis

Posted on by christian

budgetIt’s Worse Than You Think

California’s new – old – governor, Jerry Brown, delivered his State of State address to the legislature last night. Lots of gloom and doom, not surprisingly, and calls for more drastic spending cuts and the extension of taxes.

California’s budget deficit is $25 billion – with a B. That amounts to 30 percent of the state’s budget and, if that problem and the certain prospect of additional cuts in education and social services weren’t bad enough, the painful reality for California and many other states is that a sizable portion of these huge deficits are literally baked into the fiscal cake of state governments for years to come.

The Brookings Institution’s Mountain West project, in cooperation with the Morrison Institute of Public Policy at Arizona State University, recently analyzed these so called “structural deficits” in four western states, California included.

Researchers concluded that the structural portions of the current state deficits are “the more or less permanent imbalances of revenues and expenditures that can arise from flaws in a state’s fiscal structure, fundamental changes in the regional economy or the state’s demographics, or, especially, imprudent or shortsighted policy choices.”

The study also looked at Arizona which “gave away the store in better times by handing out a series of ill-advised tax cuts (total value, adjusting for inflation and growth: $2.9 billion since 1993);” Nevada where a “narrow, consumption and real estate-oriented revenue system may well now be ill-attuned to a post-Recession “new normal” in which migration, homebuilding, and gaming are permanently depressed;” and Colorado were a “taxpayers bill of rights” has crippled revenue options and the funding for public education.

As for California, the study concluded that the state had “basically enacted too many permanent spending increases (notably on education) during the dot.com boom and more recent good times even as it left in place a series of rigid voter mandates and tax limitations.”

To put the situation even more bluntly, many states have for two decades been spending, tax forgiving and limiting their fiscal options; in essence behaving as mini versions of the federal government. So, while the economy will eventually recover and grow again, some of these state policy choices involving taxes and spending are truly “baked” into the system.

Idaho lawmakers had a rude awakening to this structural reality with the sudden discovery last week that a renewable energy tax credit coupled with routine conformance with the federal tax code is costing the state huge amounts of money. Many folks would rush, as the legislature did a while back, to embrace a tax credit to encourage renewables and the policy obviously worked. What is often missing when these policy choices are adopted is the long view. It is one thing to embrace an immediately attractive tax policy today, it is something else to consider that the diverted cash, now missing from the state budget, will come at the expense of an education or human services budget in the future.

The Brookings report offered four sensible policy suggestions. States should, and I quote from the report:

  • Commit to a balanced approach. Massive budget gaps cannot be responsibly closed by only cutting spending. Budgetary balance and revenue diversification are crucial. In addition to balance and diversification, broad bases and tax system responsiveness should be mantras of fiscal system repair. Tax policies that increase the base and elasticity of state tax systems reduce the need for discretionary and unpopular rate increases.
  • Maintain adequate rainy day funds. Most of the Mountain states exhausted their rainyday funds well before relieving their acute fiscal stress. As the economy gets back on its feet, state governments need to not just replenish, but increase their rainy day funds so that they can better weather protracted economic downturns in the future.
  • Increase local flexibility and control. States have a history of passing measures that constrain local governments’ ability to raise revenues and respond to changing fiscal circumstances. Those local governments need greater control over revenue generation and public service.
  • Improve budget processes and information sharing. Good policy decisions rest on good information and common-sense processes for delivering that information to the people who need it. Decision-makers need to have good data clearly presented about real and projected conditions, the range of policy options, and their consequences.

It must be noted, in contrast to those policy prescriptions, that Idaho lawmakers are still vowing to hold the line on any revenue diversification even as the state’s economy has changed dramatically in the last 30 years and more drastic cuts loom.

The state’s reserve funds are gone and the idea of more local control for local governments is about as popular as a skunk at a garden party. In fact, the Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey reported that some lawmakers have hungry eyes focused on that portion of the state sales tax that flows to local government. That’s not more local control, but less.

And, while Idaho has a long history of transparency in its budget process, missing until last week the multi-million dollar impact on state revenues of an established tax credit indicates there is a lot of room for improvement.

The Brookings report is a sobering assessment of the state budget troubles that loom ahead even as the economy starts to recover.

Tomorrow, why Utah is in considerably better shape than much of the rest of the west.

Egan, Idaho Politics, Journalism, Medicaid

The Moral Test

Posted on by christian

medicaidHard Cases

“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life; the children, those who are in the twilight of life; the elderly, and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

The quote is most often attributed to the liberal icon Hubert Humphrey and dates to a time when there was a broad consensus in American life that government had a very precise role to play in trying to improve the plight of those fellow citizens “in the shadows of life.” The lingering Great Recession more than ever has called that role of government into question and, at the same time, made Hubert’s eloquent quote more relevant than ever.

A massive human hurt is unfolding in nearly every state as governors and state legislators contemplate unprecedented reductions in spending on various services paid for at the state level by Medicaid. In states like Idaho, all the easy stuff has been cut. Now the real pain begins, as illustrated by the estimated 1,000 Idahoans who showed up on Friday, some in wheelchairs, to show state legislators, more eloquently than words ever could, just what the American social safety net really means to real people.

With the 50 states collectively facing a budget gap estimated at $125 billion, the New York Times reports today that Medicaid is “ripe for the slashing” from New York to California, from Idaho to Texas. The times are tough – very tough – but I doubt that even tough-minded, fiscally conservative legislators can live with the implications of ending services for a guy in a wheelchair or an 8th grader with autism.

In Idaho, 20 lawmakers, the members of the powerful Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC), make most every spending decision for the rest of the 85 members of the legislature. It is an awesome power and responsibility. The committee has co-chairs, Sen. Dean Cameron and Rep. Maxine Bell, and no one has ever credibly accused these experienced lawmakers of being big spenders. They run a tidy ship and one has to be impressed with the diligence they and their committee have lavished on the hard choices the state faces with both Medicaid and education. Cameron and Bell deserve a lot of praise for showing the political courage to open up the committee to those thousand people who came calling on Friday. It had to have been a sobering experience for anyone paying attention.

Here’s a fearless prediction. Arguably the most conservative legislature in the nation won’t be able to make the $25 million in Medicaid cuts that Idaho’s governor has proposed. It will take a while yet for the reality to sink in, its still early in the legislative process, but Friday was an important day. Not only did the thousand show up, but the budget numbers that have been in dispute since the first day of the 2011 session just gained some clarity and not in a good way.

All this will eventually lead to a frantic search for some barely acceptable source of new revenue to help plug the budget holes. The legislature will come to embrace, in tried and true fashion, the method of patch and scratch tax policy making. Some how, some way, Idaho’s very conservative legislature will “find” some new revenue to avoid these awful choices.

It won’t be easy, and people elected never to raise taxes will anguish over the choices, but it will happen I think. Idaho’s lawmakers have come face-to-face with their fellow citizens who really do, through no fault of their own, live in the shadows. In the end, it will not really be much of a political test. No one is likely to lose an election by making a vote to preserve home care services for an elderly, wheelchair bound neighbor. It will be quite a moral test, however, for lawmakers who infrequently see so clearly the impact of their votes.

Egan, Idaho Politics

Heir Apparent

Posted on by christian

littleThere’s a Trend Here…

Now that Idaho’s statewide elected officials have taken the oath of office for the next four years, we can safely start the speculation about four years from now.

You won’t find many “political observers” in Idaho who wouldn’t make book on the fact that the state’s current Lt. Gov. Brad Little is the prohibitive favorite to be the state’s next chief executive when current Gov. Butch Otter is ready to ride to the sunset.

While Gov. Otter is, appropriately, receiving most of the attention at the moment as the state struggles with another year of bleak revenue forecasts, shrinking budgets and many, many tough decisions, Little grabbed a bit of the political spotlight with a very well attended fundraising breakfast in Boise on January 7. That just happened to be the morning that he, Otter and the rest of the statewide electeds were sworn in for their new terms.

While it is dangerous to assume anything in politics, I’m betting that nearly everyone at the Lt. Governor’s breakfast earlier this month entertains the expectation that the affable Little is the odds-on heir apparent. After all, while taking nothing away from his obvious political talents and demonstrated appeal, Little seems to be part of the now established trend in Idaho of the “Light” Governor having the leg up on moving up.

Four of the last six Idaho governors, including Otter, have served as Lt. Governor before gaining the big job. This trend really began when John Evans succeeded Cecil Andrus in 1977 when Andrus went to Washington to serve as Secretary of the Interior. Before Evans got his chance to move into the big office in the west wing of the Statehouse, you have to go all the way back to Arnold Williams in the late 1940’s to find an Idaho Lt. Governor who become Governor.

Andrus returned to the governorship in 1986 and Phil Batt, who had been Lt. Governor under Evans, followed him. Jim Risch, now in the U.S. Senate, was appointed Lt. Governor and moved up when Dirk Kempthorne went to the Bush cabinet. Then it became Otter’s turn in 2006.

Kempthorne is the outlier in this group. He went from the U.S. Senate to the governorship, the first person in Idaho history to do that. Interestingly, only one Idahoan, three-term GOP Gov. Bob Smylie, moved up from the Attorney Generals’ office.

Prior to Evans moving up in the 1980’s, conventional wisdom held that the surest road to the governorship was through the state legislature. Andrus made that move, as did Don Samuelson before him. In fact, of the 19 men who have served as Idaho’s governor since 1920, 13 of them served in the legislature before becoming governor.

So, you want to be governor of Idaho – this sounds simpler than it is – do your time in the state legislature, as Little has done (the Senate is a generally a better stepping stone than the House) and then get yourself elected to the Number Two job. Nothing is ever pre-determined in politics – nothing – but that path is now pretty well-worn in Idaho.

Civil War, Egan, Hatfield, Idaho Politics

Nullification

Posted on by christian

davisWe Fought a War Over This…

As Idaho and a half dozen other states prepare legislation to attempt to “nullify” the federal health care law, including apparently sanctions against anyone trying to implement the law, it may be worth remembering that 150 years ago this week the future President of the Confederacy stood on the floor of the United States Senate and spoke his farewells.

A good part of Sen. Jefferson Davis’ speech on Jan. 21, 1861 was devoted to the doctrine of nullification.

His home state of Mississippi was leaving the Union, Davis said, and, in his mind at least, it naturally followed that he had to leave the Senate of the United States.

Davis explained his theory of his duties as a citizen and made it clear that his allegiance to Ole Miss came before his country. “If I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation,” he said, “or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action.” My state right or wrong, apparently.

Davis went on at some length to draw a distinction between what he and Mississippi were doing – leaving the Union – and the theory, widely advanced in the 1830’s by John C. Calhoun, of nullification.

“Nullification and secession, so often confounded, are, indeed, antagonistic principles,” Davis said. “Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to apply within the Union, against the agent of the States. It is only to be justified when the agent has violated his constitutional obligations, and a State, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the other states of the Union for a decision; but, when the States themselves and when the people of the States have so acted as to convince us that they will not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in its practical application.”

In his somewhat tortured assessment of nationhood, Davis explained what Calhoun was trying to do by advocating nullification, or as he described it a state “assuming to judge for itself.”

“It was because of [Calhoun’s] deep-seated attachment to the Union – his determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other States – that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the States for their judgement.

“Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the states are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.”

In other words, disunion in the mind of Jefferson Davis was a logical follow on to nullification for a sovereign state.

The trouble with Idaho’s approach to this fundamental Constitutional guestion is that it neglects a good slice of the last 150 years of American history; those years since Davis made his passionate defense of state’s rights. Our ancestors fought a bloody and protracted Civil War to resolve these very questions. As a result, the United States became a singular nation, as the great historian Shelby Foote loved to point out. Prior to Lee’s surrender to Grant in 1865, it was common to refer to the “United States are.” But our history and our courts have consistently held since that the “United States is.”

Still, every few years nullification comes roaring back. During the civil rights era, ten different southern states sought to nullify the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ultimately ruled in 1958 in Cooper v. Aaron that the Brown ruling, ending segregation, could “neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes for segregation.”

Idaho’s foremost Constitutional scholar, Dr. David Adler, recently told the Associated Press that nullification proponents are conveniently overlooking a lot of our history. “The premise of their position and the reasoning behind it are severely flawed and have no support in our Constitutional architecture,” Adler said.

In their zeal to overturn an act of Congress, the proponents of nullification cite, as Jefferson Davis did on the brink of the Civil War, the “high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited,” not to mention the wisdom of Jefferson and Madison. Funny, they rarely mention that old fire breather, Calhoun.

Through a terrible Civil War and on through the long and continuing struggle for civil rights, the United States gradually and imperfectly became one country of many states. Through elections and court cases, debate and discourse, we have arrived at a federal government that makes laws and attempts, not always ably, to apply them fairly to all the people. If folks don’t like those laws, they do have recourse – legal recourse. They can sue in the courts, as Idaho has done over the health care legislation, or they can have an election to change the Congress.

Neither available legal approach, historically or Constitutionally, sanctions nullification. Maybe that is so because wise leaders, at least since Jefferson Davis, have been able to see where such a doctrine logically can lead.

The great Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote a concurring opinion in Aaron more than 50 years ago and captured the essence of what is at sake in preserving our federal system.

“Lincoln’s appeal to ‘the better angels of our nature’ failed to avert a fratricidal war,” Frankfurter wrote in 1958. “But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln’s First and Second Inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.”

Civil Liberties, Egan, Idaho Politics, Poetry

Billy Collins

Posted on by christian

CollinsThe History Teacher

When I saw the story that Idaho’s State School Superintendent Tom Luna had pulled a pop history quiz on lawmakers on the legislature’s education committees, and that 17% couldn’t name the year Idaho became a state and that 15% didn’t know Lewiston was the original capital, I thought immediately of Billy Collins’ wonderful little poem – The History Teacher.

Trying to protect his students’ innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years

when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
“How far is it from here to Madrid?”
“What do you call the matador’s hat?”

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.

Idaho became a state in 1890, by the way.

 

Egan, Idaho Politics

Wipe Out

Posted on by christian

seal_IdahoIdaho GOP More Firmly in Control

If yesterday’s election in Idaho had been a Little League baseball game, it would have been called on account of the ten run rule.

Republicans gained four seats in the state House of Representatives, held all the Constitutional offices and recaptured the Congressional seat held for the last two years by Democrat Walt Minnick.

As elections go, this one was a tidal wave.

The huge Republican majorities in the Idaho Legislature will soon enough face big challenges, including more budget cutting – potentially including education and social services – but the GOP and Gov. Butch Otter can bask, for a while at least, in the sure knowledge that voters were in no mood to punish them for historic cuts in school spending or for presiding over a still struggling economy. Quite the contrary, Idaho Republicans seem more dominate than ever against a dispirited, disorganized opposition.

Otter’s victory was nothing short of astounding. He won just over 59% of the vote against four opponents and held Democrat Keith Allred to the worst showing for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate since 1998. Allred’s eastern Idaho and Magic Valley strategy was a bust. The governor polled nearly exactly the same number of votes in Bonneville County (Idaho Falls) as he did in 2006, but Allred didn’t come close to matching the vote Democrat Jerry Brady managed in the same area four years earlier.

With his LDS faith becoming a focus of attention in October, Allred carried not a single county in heavily Mormon eastern Idaho. He only came close in Bannock County (Pocatello) where Brady beat Otter four years ago. When all was said and done, Allred won only two counties – dependably Democratic Blaine (Sun Valley) and Latah (Moscow) by a narrow margins.

In the Raul Labrador – Minnick race, there will be, I suspect, a good deal of analysis of Minnick’s hard hitting television attacks on the Republican, but the backlash factor – and there was a backlash – can’t entirely account for Labrador’s comfortable ten point win. Minnick, always an uncomfortable Democrat in a very conservative district, won by the wave in 2008 and lost by it, as well. In a year when the GOP was headed to a nearly 60 seat pickup in the U.S. House of Representatives, it was – in perfect hindsight – nearly impossible that one of those seats was not going to be in the First District of Idaho.

Take nothing away from Congressman-elect Labrador. Out spent 5 to 1, he pulled two “upsets” this year – a primary and a general election win, neither of which he was expected to accomplish.

There was nothing anti-incumbent about this election. It was anti-Democrat. Idaho is painted deep RED today and it is likely to stay that way for a long, long time.

Egan, Idaho Politics

Clint Stennett

Posted on by christian

stennettA Nice Guy and Pretty Fair Legislator

I long ago began to apply a simple test to any Idaho Democrat who aspired to statewide office. Could the wanabee candidate walk into the VFW Hall in an Idaho rural community and “work the room” effectively or could they campaign at the Bear Lake County Fair and not look out of place? If you could be authentic and comfortable in those kinds of settings, you might have a future in Idaho politics.

Clint Stennett, who died last week at age 54, was nothing if not authentic. He passed with flying colors the VFW – Bear Lake County Fair test. He wore his cowboy boots naturally and under this Stetson was a sharp mind, a good sense of humor and the rare ability, particularly in today’s political world, to find and keep friends across the aisle.

Stennett was dealt a very, very tough hand when he was diagnosed with cancer early in 2008, but by all accounts he bore the personal and health burdens with grace and determination. His partner in life and politics, Michelle, carried on for him in the State Senate and she now seeks the seat he occupied so well for so long.

I was touched, as many will be I suspect, to read this letter from former Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, a Republican, endorsing Michelle Stennett. It speaks volumes about Mr. Speaker Newcomb, but also the Stennetts. This, my friends, is decency and substance trumping party and partisanship. We could use a good deal more of that.

Clint Stennett’s passing is a big loss for the Idaho Senate, his central Idaho constituents, his friends, family and, of course, for beleaguered Idaho Democrats, but it is also a cold, hard reminder that life is very short and full of only the sureness of uncertainty.

Stennett toyed more than once with those inevitable statewide ambitions that tend to swirl around a person with smarts, style and charisma. Too bad he didn’t take the plunge and sad for all of us that now we won’t know just how good he might have been on a statewide stage. I suspect very good.

It is too true, the good do die young.

Egan, Idaho Politics

The Automatic 3%

Posted on by christian

governors raceFive Vie for Idaho Governor

All the attention two weeks before the November 2nd gubernatorial election in Idaho has been focused on the two major party candidates, incumbent Republican C.L. “Butch” Otter and independent-turned-Democrat Keith Allred.

Not surprisingly, considering the voting habits of Idahoans for the last 16 years, Otter has consistently been ahead in the public polls. But, there is at least one wild card in this political deck this year – three other candidates are on the ballot.

The recent Mason-Dixon poll in the governor’s race, conducted over a month ago, had Otter ahead 45% to Allred’s 29% with 20% undecided. The three minor party candidates were taking a total of 6%. The Rasmussen Poll has consistently had Otter over 50% and Rasmussen’s latest numbers (early September) show the minor candidates getting 7% with a much smaller number of undecideds – 5%.

Historically, an independent or third party candidate for Idaho governor (and there have be a lot of them) has taken about 3% of the total vote. In 1986, an independent candidate named James A. Miller pulled just over 1% of the total vote cast for governor. Miller’s total vote was 4,203. Democrat Cecil D. Andrus won that close 1986 election defeating then-Lt. Governor David Leroy by only 3,635 votes out of more than 387,000 total votes cast. It’s hard to say whether Miller really impacted the outcome or explain why 4,200 Idahoans voted for a guy who never really campaigned, but merely put his name on the ballot. Still, had the lion’s share of Miller’s vote total gone to Leroy, history might have been very different.

Idaho gubernatorial elections in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006 were not nearly as close as that 1986 race, but each of these later races featured a minor candidate who, in all but one election, got at least 3% of the total.

I think the argument can be made that in the 1994, 2002 and 2006 races, the independent candidates where, generally speaking, positioned to the right of the Republican standard bearer. Anti-tax gadfly Ron Rankin, for example, who as a Republican had been a Kootenai County Commissioner, garnered close to 16,000 votes, or close to 4% of the total, in 1994. While it’s all conjecture, one assumes that most of Rankin’s votes came from among his anti-tax followers around the state and at the expense of the successful GOP candidate Phil Batt who won with just over 51% of the vote.

So, what about 2010?

Of the three minor candidates on the Idaho ballot, only former GOP legislator Jana Kemp has put on much of a campaign. She handled herself well in a recent three-way debate and, while hampered by a lack of money, Kemp has managed to get mentioned in much of the press coverage of the campaign. Under normal circumstances, and given Idaho’s election history, Kemp’s independent effort should almost automatically be good for 3% of the votes. Just by showing up and having her name on the ballot, she should takes that number of votes from the established party contenders. But what of the other two candidates?

Libertarian Ted Dunlap is on the ballot again this year and he pulled 1.6% in a four-way race in 2006, as did Pro-Life candidate Marvin Richardson who has now officially changed his name to Pro-Life. Neither candidate has really mounted a campaign this time around, but the same level of effort four years ago still ensured that together they pulled the nearly automatic 3%.

Do the three minor candidates split the magic three percent this year? Or, do the weird Tea Party dynamics of 2010 mean that there are more “protest votes” up for grabs than is normally the case in Idaho gubernatorial elections? Will more Idahoans be interested in a self-proclaimed Libertarian? Will an articulate, independent woman draw votes from a Republican or a Democrat or both? With the economy dominating the issues, will a single-issue, pro-life candidate register? What if Kemp, Dunlap and Pro-Life collectively pull seven or eight of even more percent? At whose expense will those votes come? And in which parts of the state?

If this gubernatorial election turns out to a close one, it will be interesting to see the election night totals in the handful of counties where Otter ran neck-in-neck with his hard right GOP primary opponent Rex Rammell. Rammell actually beat Otter in the GOP primary in Benewah and Idaho Counties and came within a few hundred votes of the governor in Twin Falls and Cassia Counties. All told, nearly 45% of all Republican voters in the May primary voted for someone other than Butch Otter.

On November 2nd will these folks “come home” to the GOP candidate? They usually do. Will they decide in some numbers simply not to vote, or might they decide, in the spirit of “none of the above” with regard to the major candidates, to cast their lot with one of the three minor candidates on the ballot?

If Kemp, Dunlap and Pro-Life start to collectively accumulate votes above the historic threshold for minor party candidates in Idaho, and if there is a sizable undecided group that breaks in the next week to Allred or to the minor candidates, election night could be long and interesting. Under this scenario, Allred would need every vote Democrat Jerry Brady got against Otter in 2006 and three or four percentage points more to make it interesting. Brady polled just over 44% four years ago.

Twice in modern times – 1966 and 1986 – a winning candidate for governor of Idaho polled less than 50% of the vote. Both elections involved Andrus who won one and lost one. Could it happen again?

The only obvious path to a win for Allred is to keep Otter close to that 45% number in the recent Mason-Dixon survey and hope that the minor candidates do succeed in grabbing substantially more than their historic fair share of the total vote. Call it the less than 50% solution for Allred.

Then again with a major national tidal wave building for the GOP and with a tradition of Republican-leaning voters returning to their political roots on election day, Otter should be in the catbird seat.

We’ll have to wait and read the Tea Party tea leaves on November 3rd and see if the top spot on the Idaho ballot has been impacted by the automatic 3% or maybe even more.

Egan, Idaho Politics

Mike Mitchell

Posted on by christian

mitchellOne of the Good Guys

When I became chief of staff to the Governor of Idaho in 1991 it was a case of good news and bad news. It was an honor and responsibility and therefore good news to have that job and title. The bad news was I had to follow Mike Mitchell.

There is a dinner in Lewiston tonight honoring the long-time state legislator, state transportation board member, former candidate for Lt. Governor and chief of staff to Cecil Andrus. Mike Mitchell deserves to take some bows and enjoy the limelight. He has it coming. Those of us lucky enough to have worked with and enjoyed the friendship and company of the “little giant,” know Mitchell simply as a state government expert. The guy has forgotten more about how things work in state government than most legislators ever learn.

During my time covering the Idaho Legislature and later working for Andrus, I saw Mike master the state budget process as a member of the legislature’s most powerful and important committee – Joint Finance and Appropriations. He knew the ins and outs of the correction system, he served with real distinction on the Transportation Board, he knew public school funding and where the higher education system worked and didn’t. Few legislators or executive branch officials worked harder to master the details, that is to understand why things work well or need to be fixed, than Mike Mitchell.

Mitchell is a committed Democrat with friends all over the political spectrum in part, I think, because he was scrupulously fair and honest in his dealings with everyone – even reporters with half-baked notions – and he has a sense of humor.

A favorite story: Mike once placed an expensive cigar on a chair side table near a swimming pool and, while dozing in the sun, the cigar rolled off onto the deck near his chair. Waking from the nap, and anticipating re-lighting the cigar, he inadvertently stepped on the stogie while standing up. There was a very noticeable crunch and the frugal and funny Mitchell immediately quipped, “I sure hope that was my watch…”

It is an easy talking point for politicians to criticize government. We all have our pet peeves. But a guy like Mike Mitchell proves the truth of the old notion that public service, in all of its manifestations, can be, and with good people on the job truly is, a noble calling.

A lot of the hard and essential work Mike Mitchell performed for Idaho for the last several decades won’t ever get recorded in the history books. Too bad. But he can know as he takes a bow in Lewiston tonight that it made a big difference to thousands and thousands of people. Mike Mitchell gets the title he most deserves – he is one of the good guys who has made a real difference in Idaho.