Foes Of Initiatives Receive Donations Businesses, Teachers Underwrite Opposition

Cash poured in during the summer to underwrite forces fighting to defeat three major initiatives on November’s Idaho ballot, according to campaign finance disclosure reports filed Thursday with the state.

Businesses and special interest organizations provided nearly all of the cash to finally get campaigns off the ground in support of Gov. Phil Batt’s nuclear waste deal and against the One Percent Initiative to slash property taxes.

The Idaho Education Association, whose teachers underwrote much of the 1992 campaign that defeated a version of the property tax initiative, donated $50,000 at the end of August and the Hospital Association $20,000 a week earlier, accounting for 40 percent of the $170,000 raised. Both rely significantly on property tax revenues and fear they will be shorted if the state has to make up the cash lost if the initiative passes.

And a $1,300 contribution to the Stop the Shipments drive to void Batt’s nuclear waste agreement came from “Peavey for Governor.” That fueled speculation that former Democratic state Sen. John Peavey, who lost the 1994 race for lieutenant governor, was using his leadership role against the waste agreement to lay the groundwork for a 1998 race for governor.

But the feud over restrictions on bear hunting remained the most expensive of the initiative campaigns although not on a record level. Even with both sides collecting a combined total of another $205,000 during July, August and September, that campaign still pales financially to the 1986 Right-To-Work referendum, when both sides spent nearly $1.6 million overall.

Opponents of the proposition banning spring bear hunting and bear hunting with hounds and bait raised another $175,000 this summer, pushing their total revenue to $450,000.