Brady, Otter vie to lead state

BOISE – U.S. Rep. C.L. “Butch” Otter, R-Idaho, isn’t Idaho’s governor, though it’s hard to tell from the way he’s campaigning against Democrat Jerry Brady.

Otter, 64, a cowboy boot-wearing millionaire with monogrammed shirt cuffs who made his fortune at the agricultural conglomerate owned by J.R. Simplot, his former father-in-law, is running like a man in office: Picking and choosing debates, beginning serious campaigning after Labor Day and avoiding toe-to-toe matchups when he can.

“What he’s following here is a strategy that’s worked. It’s good politics,” said Jim Weatherby, political science professor emeritus at Boise State University. “Otter is hard to pin down.”

That hasn’t stopped Brady, who lost to former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne in 2002, from trying.

The latest front: Private “shooter-bull” operations, after about 160 elk escaped from a hunting farm near Yellowstone National Park. Brady opposes the farms and says Otter has been disingenuous by telling the elk-farming industry he never supported banning Idaho’s 14 penned hunting camps, while saying he’d back the Legislature if it deemed a ban necessary.

“(Otter) feels he is just going to walk into this, and what he needs to do is make no mistakes: Be visible, ride a horse and lean against a corral fence, and issue lofty statements about individual liberty and freedom. And coast into the election,” said Brady, 70, a Notre Dame-educated lawyer whose family runs the Idaho Falls Post Register. “We’re not going to let him do that.”

Both men are Catholics whose first marriages were annulled so they could remarry.

And both oppose a $130 million plan that includes adding underground wings to the Idaho Capitol to relieve cramped quarters, instead favoring renovating adjacent state-owned buildings.

Most similarities end there.

The two can’t even agree on how often to debate. Otter consented to three events, in Twin Falls, Lewiston and Boise, but rejected October’s statewide televised League of Women Voters event. Brady wanted more, but Otter says he’s got a job to do – he’s still the 1st District congressman – and has to manage his time.

He’ll dedicate all of October to campaigning, he told the Associated Press.

In February, Brady lambasted Otter for taking campaign money from a California company aiming to build a coal-fired power plant in Idaho.

They’ve also battled over outgoing Gov. Jim Risch’s Aug. 25 special legislative session to cut property taxes now dedicated to schools and raise the sales tax to pay for it. Otter says it helps homeowners, Brady says it hurts schools and poor people.

Now they’re arguing over two proposed wilderness areas in central and southwestern Idaho. Otter calls the proposals flawed, saying they would lock up the state under federal control, at a time when just 17 percent of Idaho is in private hands.

“I don’t see any sense in not trying to get every acre we can possibly get, so we can graze it, so we can manage it and get any kind of economic activity, recreational activity, so that somebody can come into the state, buy a candy bar and a gallon of gas and go ATVing,” Otter said.

Brady praises the measures’ Republican sponsors, U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson and Sen. Mike Crapo, for forging a compromise that’s good for the state, helps economic development and protects public lands.

“Otter is demonstrating he will make the wrong decisions for the majority of the people of Idaho,” Brady said in a recent interview. “He does not share our values.”

Earlier this year, they locked horns on a U.S. House plan to sell federal land across the West, including in Idaho, to finance Hurricane Katrina relief. Brady opposed it, saying it threatened public access.

Otter initially favored it, but eventually concluded he was wrong. He says this shows his political style isn’t unlike that of former Republican Gov. Phil Batt, who left office in 1998. Batt, an onion farmer from Wilder, once asked the entire Fish and Game Commission to resign, before saying he’d made a mistake.

“I don’t think you could ask much more than that from a governor except one that will listen to the arguments,” Otter said. “And if some of those arguments suggest very strongly that the governor is wrong, that he’s not so ego-driven that he’s unwilling to say, ‘You were right, and I was wrong.’ “

Brady, who concedes he’s impressed by the vigor of Risch’s four months in office even as he laments the results of the special session, says Idaho is ripe for change after 12 years with a GOP governor.

He acknowledged candidates who failed in previous elections, as he did against Kempthorne, often struggle when trying to resurrect their political ambitions. That’s not a concern, he said.

“What I’ve found is, there’s very little holding on to the past, reactionary Republicanism,” Brady said. “It’s a different year. It’s a different opponent. We’re feeling good about it.”

Ted Dunlap of the Libertarian Party and Marvin Richardson of the Constitution Party are also on the November ballot.