Minority rules in low-turnout primary vote

BOISE – The few Idahoans who voted in last week’s primary election sent a message to the state’s political establishment by ousting local officials across the state and picking a confrontational ultraconservative for Congress.

“I think you saw focused voter discontent, and it’s easier done at the local level,” said Dan Chadwick, executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties.

Twenty-three incumbent county commissioners were defeated in the primary – two-thirds of the 34 who faced opposition on the primary election ballot. They ranged from two commissioners each in Kootenai and Bonner counties, to a long-serving commissioner in Ada County whose opponent didn’t even campaign, to commissioners in Valley, Jerome, Twin Falls and Madison counties and more.

In the 1st Congressional District, a hard-fought six-way Republican primary went to state Rep. Bill Sali, who won with 26 percent of the vote. Canyon County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, who ran a strident campaign focusing on opposition to illegal immigration, finished second. The two bested a field of other Republicans with closer ties to the state’s GOP establishment, including the current elected state controller.

“These were both anti-establishment candidates,” said Boise State University political scientist Jim Weatherby.

The primary voters’ ire for the most part didn’t extend to state legislative seats, though two incumbents were ousted, six-term Rep. Ann Rydalch, R-Idaho Falls, and two-term Rep. Kathy Skippen, R-Emmett.

But Chadwick expects more changes there in November.

“I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

National polls show widespread dissatisfaction with the direction the country and its administration are going. Chadwick said that when it comes to voting, former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s comment that “all politics is local” proves true. “I think you’re seeing a really good example of that,” he said. “You know voters can always reach out and touch their local elected official. And if they’re frustrated with any certain policies, I think that’s their way of sending that kind of a message.”

Growth, growth management and property taxes are hot issues in growing Idaho counties, Chadwick said, and voters showed they’re angry about how those issues are affecting their lives.

But another large group of voters may have sent a different message – three quarters of registered Idaho voters didn’t even bother to vote in this spring’s primary election.

“I’m not so sure that we have an angry electorate out there, but we had angry voters apparently who turned out, who were among the small number who turned out on primary election day to vote,” Weatherby said.

In fact, Sali’s vote total of 18,972 votes is nearly 10,000 fewer votes than Helen Chenoweth got in the 1994 GOP primary. Like Sali, Chenoweth was a conservative who faced more-mainstream candidates, but she garnered 28,545 votes to win with 47.9 percent. She went on to serve three terms in Congress from the 1st Congressional District before retiring.

In 2000, conservative Dennis Mansfield lost big to current Congressman Butch Otter in an eight-way Republican primary for the same seat, but Mansfield still collected 23,559 votes.

“So Sali wins, but with very few votes,” Weatherby said.

House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, who is retiring after setting a record as the longest-serving Idaho House speaker, said he was disappointed in the primary election results. “What you have to look at is 75 percent of the voters voted for somebody else other than Sali. So there’s definitely not a mandate there,” said Newcomb, who long has clashed with Sali in the state House.

“Idaho’s only got two representatives, and so the only way we can have any representation in Congress is to have people that know how to build bridges and coalitions and know how to get in positions to where we can really help Idaho,” Newcomb said. “But I don’t see Bill Sali – he couldn’t build coalitions in the Idaho Legislature – I don’t see him building any coalitions in that regard on behalf of Idaho in the Congress.”

Newcomb lamented the low voter turnout statewide of just 25 percent. With Sali taking a quarter of the votes and such low turnout, “you’ve got just a little over 5 percent deciding who’s going to represent us,” he said.

Asked about a plan being mulled in Arizona to offer anyone who votes a chance to win $1 million, Newcomb said, “It’s got to be something like that. Because you can’t have 5 percent of the people deciding who’s going to represent half the state or even the whole state – that just doesn’t make sense.”

He added, “We’re in Iraq trying to fight a war to get people the right to vote, and in our own country we don’t even take advantage of the privilege we have. It’s just kind of unconscionable. Maybe one day the majority will get tired of a small minority running the world.”