It’s hard to imagine anyone ever topping that great comment from former state Rep. John Campbell, R-Sandpoint, back in 1999, when he said, “I don’t always make the brightest statements in the Legislature, but I feel I’m representative of my district.”

But each year, people try. The latest contender is Constitution Party candidate for lieutenant governor William Charles “Bill” Wellisch, who described why he got into the race like this: He was going to run for Bear Lake County commissioner, but found out no position was up in his district. Figuring that was that, he went to sleep – only to wake up the next morning to a divine voice that urged him to run for lieutenant governor. “I don’t know if I’m qualified, don’t know if I have the abilities to accomplish what is being done today,” he said, “but I do feel with the Lord’s help I can accomplish what He feels needs to be done.”

Incidentally, I just ran across a pretty good line from Rep. Bill Sali, R-Kuna, the current candidate for Congress, that’s of the same vintage as Campbell’s ’99 legislative session comment. Back then, Sali was co-sponsoring a bill to ban the use of university student fees for political activities, which drew opposition from student leaders across the state, who testified that the bill would outlaw the College Republicans and College Democrats, among other things. Sali had this to say to the opponents: “It’s unfortunate that so many of you were wrong.” But the bill then died by one vote.

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