D’s pull organizer from Bonner County
The Idaho Democratic Party has pulled a party field organizer out of Bonner and Boundary counties after the young man reported he was repeatedly stalked and harassed by supporters of GOP state Rep. Heather Scott.
This follows concerns expressed this week by Scott’s Democratic challenger, Kate McAlister, about an armed Scott supporter who confronted her 90-year-old mother-in-law outside the Sandpoint Safeway store in August as she was putting away her groceries, complaining about the “Kate” sticker the woman had on her car.
McAlister’s mother-in-law chose not to file a police report on the August incidents, but police reports were filed with both the Bonner County Sheriff’s office and the Sandpoint Police in regard to the incidents with the field organizer, said Dean Ferguson, a party spokesman.
When the 21-year-old field organizer called the sheriff after people in a loud pickup showed up around 2 a.m. at a remote rural home where he was staying with a local family and photographed the house and his car license plate, the sheriff’s deputy who responded dismissed his concerns and told him that “being a Democrat is not a protected class.”
“Out of concern for the employee’s safety, the Idaho Democratic Party relocated him out of the county,” state Democratic Party Chairman Bert Marley wrote in a letter of complaint to Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden.
Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane confirmed Friday that the office has received the letter and is reviewing it, but hasn’t yet responded.
Ferguson said the young staffer was twice accosted at the local Safeway store, harangued about politics and followed outside into the parking lot. In one of those incidents, the aggressive man, wearing a “Heather Scott” campaign baseball cap, “ended the conversation by saying, ‘You’d better watch your back, because we’re watching you,’ ” Ferguson said.
In another incident, the young man came out of his office in Sandpoint to find “three or four of ’em, leaning against his car like schoolyard bullies, wearing Heather Scott caps,” Ferguson said. “So he cracks a joke, gets in his car, goes away. It was a bizarre incident. They knew him by name.”
Bonner County Sheriff Dale Wheeler couldn’t be reached for comment, but he told the Bonner Daily Bee on Friday that the matter is being investigated. “I am looking into it,” he told the newspaper. Sandpoint police Chief Corey Coon also couldn’t be reached for comment/Betsy Russell, Eye on Boise. More here (subscription).
