Legislative Conflict Still Expected Idaho’s Last Gop Governor Predicts Battles Within Party

Idaho’s last Republican governor does not expect all conflict in the Statehouse to end now that the GOP controls both the governor’s office and the Legislature.

Indeed, 81-year-old Don Samuelson should know. The last governor to work with a legislative majority of his own party, Samuelson set a record in 1967 when he vetoed 39 bills.

“I think there’s going to be (conflict) and I think it’s good,” he said during Phil Batt’s inauguration Friday. “There has to be a difference of opinion on many things and a different way to do different things.”

It marked the first time Samuelson attended a gubernatorial swearing-in since 1971, after Cecil Andrus defeated him and began a 24-year Democratic lock on the office.

But partisanship is only one source of conflict. Just as strong are the constitutional checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches, he said. The Legislature will go its own way at times and Batt will not be a rubber stamp either, Samuelson said.

“I found that in my own party a lot of times, I had some people really, really upset at some of the things we proposed,” he said.

Samuelson said he has attended only two inaugurations, including his own in 1967. He stayed away because his wife, Ruby, suffered from arthritis, requiring the couple to spend winters in Arizona.

“I’ve been gone all the time,” he said.

After losing the 1970 election, Samuelson went on to serve with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Northwest regional office at Seattle before retiring in 1977.

He lives in Sandpoint and recently published an autobiography.

More than two decades after he handed over the office to Andrus, Samuelson said he feels vindicated by the election of likeminded conservatives he believes will curb state government.