State Superintendent of Schools Marilyn Howard won’t say whether she’ll run for re-election for a third term – there’s a while yet ‘til the 2006 election – but rumor has it that she won’t. Howard is currently the only Democrat holding statewide elected office in Idaho.

Sen. Bert Marley, D-McCammon, a fifth-term state senator, member of the influential Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee and a schoolteacher from eastern Idaho, has been rumored as a possible candidate, and when I saw him in a parking lot this week, I asked him. “Of course we’ve got to see what Marilyn’s going to do,” Marley said. But, he said, “Everything we’ve heard indicates she’s not planning on it, so we’re looking seriously at it.”

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