Anti-takings activist keeps ‘em riled up

BOISE – As soon as the Nov. 7 election is over, Laird Maxwell, sponsor of Idaho’s controversial Proposition 2, says he’s moving to Arizona.

“Idaho’s gone very liberal,” Maxwell said.

Many Idaho Republicans won’t be sorry to see the back of the grinning but prickly activist, who’s known for orchestrating last-minute smear campaigns and other gloves-off political tactics. “I feel sorry for Arizona,” said former Idaho Transportation Board chairman and Boise mayoral candidate Chuck Winder.

State Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, said, “I don’t talk to him at all. As far as I’m concerned I never will, not after the things he does.”

But Maxwell, grandson of an Idaho legislator and son of a former state Republican Party executive director, says he won’t be gone completely. “I’ll still run stuff up here too,” said the bearded, red-haired professional thorn in the side of Idaho Republicans. He’ll also do the same in Arizona, where his new wife, Lori Klein, is an established activist for the same causes he favors. “Same kind of stuff, fight for limited government,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell’s latest initiative – he’s been sponsoring mostly unsuccessful initiatives through his Idahoans for Tax Reform Group since 1996 – has stirred folks up more than most. Proposition 2 was billed initially as a measure to fight government abuse of the power of eminent domain, but it actually doesn’t change Idaho’s eminent domain laws because those sections of the measure merely mimic existing law. Instead, it enacts a sweeping new regulatory takings law, requiring government to pay property owners if any land-use regulation or change in farming or forest practice rules diminishes their potential profits from full development of their land.

Maxwell said he wants to “stop that nefarious practice of government sticking it to the people by down-zoning ‘em.”

He’s had his own problems with land-use rules. He still complains that his grandpa’s cattle and sheep operation in eastern Idaho got cut way back because of regulations, like not letting the cattle use scenic Henry’s Lake as their walk-in watering trough anymore. And when he was a partner in Idaho Electric Sign Co. in Boise, “That’s when I really got my taste of working with land-use planners, getting sign permits,” he said.

“I started seeing the irony of this government planning and these restrictions,” he said. “They got exactly the opposite of what they were trying to plan.” Planners didn’t want strip malls and sprawl, Maxwell said, but, “You knew it was coming – that’s what the marketplace wanted to do.”

His anti-regulatory takings initiative has libertarian-leaning Idaho Republicans who count private property rights as a “core value” in a dither. Most can’t stomach the approach Maxwell wants to take, which opponents contend would halt all planning and zoning in Idaho and force taxpayers to pay off wealthy out-of-state speculators.

In fact, it’s wealthy out-of-staters who’ve bankrolled the initiative, feeding Maxwell more than $330,000 to pay professional signature gatherers to qualify the measure for the ballot. Much of the money has come from groups tied to Howie Rich, a New York real estate investor and libertarian activist. Of the initial $337,050 it cost to get the measure on the ballot, just $50 came from Idaho – and Maxwell paid that $50 himself.

Maxwell says he didn’t know Rich before this campaign, but was tapped into a network of limited-government activists, think tanks and wealthy donors from attending national conferences of groups like the National Taxpayers Union. “My wife knows all these guys, I know all these guys, I’m good buddies with (former Ada County Commissioner) Gary Glenn who knows all these guys. There’s literally thousands of activists out there who are fighting for limited government.”

Maxwell, who grew up moving back and forth between Boise and Pocatello as his dad changed jobs, is a former newsletter publisher, sign company owner, Montana ski bum, campaign manager, public relations consultant, TV cameraman, construction worker and even U.S. Senate doorkeeper, a job his dad got him through then-Idaho Sen. Jim McClure in 1978.

Maxwell studied history and communications at Boise State University, which he derisively calls “B.S. University,” but didn’t graduate. “I’m one semester shy – I’ll never go back,” he said.

His younger sister, Tish Dahmen, said, “He had a strong personality, always.” Maxwell was the oldest of four siblings and imposing as a teenager – tall, thin, with curly red hair down to his shoulders. Dahmen remembers that he “always had a girl on either arm. He was fun to grow up with, he really was.

“We’d go on family vacations and he would keep us roaring in the car. He had stories he would just make up as he went along,” Dahmen recalled. “We would be laughing until tears ran down from our eyes.”

Maxwell still makes folks laugh around the Statehouse, where he’s a near-constant presence as a lobbyist for Idahoans for Tax Reform. But he also makes some cringe.

In 2004, he paid for an out-of-state phone bank to target half a dozen senators as backers of the “homosexual agenda” because they opposed a procedural vote to revive a previously killed same-sex marriage measure. Most senators considered the move an attack on their committee system, and that was the focus of their debate. Anonymous calls flooded the districts of senators like Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, giving the senators’ home phone numbers and urging callers to flood them with calls, which they did.

Maxwell at first denied involvement, then admitted it, telling a reporter he’d “walked ya around the block” in his earlier denials.

“Although he and I agree on some issues, I’ve not appreciated some of his tactics,” Keough said. “He has been the proponent of some pretty nasty politics that I don’t believe most Idahoans appreciate.”

Maxwell also funneled money from mysterious sources into last-minute attack ads against Idaho Supreme Court Justice Linda Copple Trout when she was seeking re-election in 2002. He ran a “push poll” against Schroeder with callers telling residents in Schroeder’s district that Schroeder favored “huge tax increases.”

He also takes credit for a “stunt” in which he sent out a round of last-minute calls in the Boise mayoral race in 2003 trying to link candidate Chuck Winder to a scandal involving previous mayor Brent Coles. Investigations and lawsuits still are pending on that one.

State Sen. Brad Little, R-Emmett, said with a chuckle, “Oh, Laird.” Little said though he’s often agreed with Maxwell on issues, “I really dislike organizations where the proponents are kind of hidden behind a shield, and Laird has been in some of those and you never know who’s pulling the string.”

But Little said he’s always glad to see people involved in the political process, and “Laird’s darn sure involved.”

Little said when he sees Maxwell coming, “I always know something’s up.”