Idaho Anti-Gay Group Will Push Initiative That Fell In Close Vote Chairman Says Citizens Alliance Also Will Target Republicans

Hang on to your wallets.

Kelly Walton, state chairman of the group pushing a second round of battles over an anti-gay initiative, says the rerun will be more expensive.

“I think both sides are going to raise more money this time,” Walton said Friday. “We are going to get outspent, I can guarantee it.”

He was interviewed for Boise TV station’s “Viewpoint” program which will be telecast this morning.

Proposition One, the anti-gay initiative pushed by Walton and his Idaho Citizens Alliance, failed by just 3,073 votes out of about 408,000 cast in the last election.

It was expensive. No On One, which opposed the initiative, spent $562,739. Walton’s Stop Special Rights group spent $192,778, or just over $750,000 for the two main groups.

But this time, Walton said the financial backing will not come from his family’s Heyburn construction company, Walton, Inc.

The company listed $88,059 in cash, loans and in-kind donations, but Walton said a lot of the in-kind contributions were for office expense and did not represent out-of-pocket spending.

When asked if Walton, Inc., would finance the campaign again, Walton said, “That’s a negative. The chairman and the board of directors of the company were very explicit with Kelly Walton, no more checks.”

Walton said the new initiative, titled the “Family and Child Protection Act,” will be clearer than the 1994 version. He said his group’s exit polling indicated 20 percent of the people were confused, voting no thinking they were voting against homosexuals.

“When you get those kinds of figures in exit polling, it’s really encouraging to do it again,” he said.

Walton said the Idaho Citizens Alliance has no plans to make an effort to take over the Idaho Republican Party, even though party leaders have been reluctant to take on the alliance’s agenda of moral issues.

Besides the anti-gay initiative, the Idaho Citizens Alliance also will be gathering signatures for initiatives to restrict abortions, allow public funds to be spent on private schooling and o make it optional, not mandatory, that school boards negotiate with teacher unions.”We have no designs to take over the Idaho Republican Party,” Walton said. “We’ve bitten off enough right here to chew on for quite a while.”

But Walton said his group might go after “several Republicans” in next May’s primary elections because they won’t push the Idaho Citizens Alliance agenda.

“We feel that we are very close to being able to influence very heavily any open seat in a Republican primary in this state,” he said.