Asked to address "scandals" including the Phil Hart affair, redistricting and more, Lawerence Denney, GOP candidate for Secretary of State, told the City Club of Boise, “Ninety seconds to explain all of those scandals is going to be a little bit difficult.” He said, “We were controlled with what we did with Phil Hart by a pesky little document that nobody really follows any more called the Constitution. You know, we really had no authority to do anything.” Denney said that Hart’s constituents re-elected him to the Legislature, despite his ongoing tax protest, legal problems and timber theft case. “We really had no authority under the Constitution to do anything other than what we did,” he said.

Holli Woodings, the Democratic candidate, responding to the same question, said, “I was not involved in any of those scandals. But I can tell you what happened during the Phil Hart scandal, and that was that a very good friend of mine, Rep. Eric Anderson, who serves his district honorably in North Idaho, was unseated from his (vice) chairmanship for bringing ethics complaints.” Anderson filed an ethics complaint against Hart; Denney then removed him from his committee vice-chairmanship. “So to me that brand of partisanship does not belong in the Secretary of State’s office, and I hope you agree,” Woodings said.