Money, Endorsements Lose to Gaffes and Guts
Raul Labrador, the new GOP candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First District, is political proof of Woody Allen’s famous phrase – “Eighty percent of life is showing up.”
Back in the gloomy cold of winter, with the Idaho Republican establishment in line with the guy Labrador decked on Tuesday, you wouldn’t have found many political watchers in Idaho – this one included – who would have given the very conservative state legislator even a five percent chance to win the GOP primary. You gotta hand it to Labrador. He had the guts to show up and win he did. All politics require measures of luck and timing and courage and Labrador got just enough of each.
Labrador will now face first-term Democrat Walt Minnick in a race that could well turn on whether Republicans nationally have a genuine chance to recapture control of the U.S. House of Representatives this fall.
Minnick will hope to make the election about his effectiveness and his conservative Democratic credentials. In other words, localize the contest. Labrador will try, as he began to do on election night, to make the contest part of a national referendum on Nancy Pelosi. Minnick has a war chest, while Labrador must have awakened this morning looking for money.
The one-time anointed GOP candidate in the First District, Vaughn Ward – now dubbed the worst candidate ever – saw his front runner status dissolve over the last month in what will go down in Idaho political history as the most astounding series of, as Randy Stapilus says, “goofs and gaffes” that anyone can remember.
Ward’s demise drew significant national attention because he had been so completely embraced by the national and state GOP establishment and because Sarah Palin’s last minute appearance on his behalf seemed to do nothing to help his cause.
At the end of his line, Ward’s big name endorsers, including two former governors, were no were to be found. Sen. Mike Crapo admonished him in the campaign’s 11th hour for misusing a quote and a YouTube video of Ward stealing – of all things – Barack Obama’s words went absolutely viral. Shakespeare couldn’t have written this ending.
Now, the vetting of Labrador really begins. Ward, as the front runner and generally regarded as the toughest opponent for Minnick, collapsed under the scrutiny and because of his own verbal gaffes. Now Labrador, who went virtually unchallenged during the primary, get his turn in the barrel.
The rest of the primary soup in Idaho was pretty thin. Incumbent Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter won renomination, but a squad of challengers held him under 55 percent. Still Otter, a decades-long fixture in Idaho politics, seems well positioned for the fall. He will face first-time candidate Keith Allred, who had little opposition in the Democratic primary. Incumbent Republicans Crapo and Idaho’s other Congressman Mike Simpson seem on a sure glide path to re-election.
More tomorrow.