Campaign To Recall Fox Opens On A Second Front Southwest Activist Signs On To Help Pocatello Woman’s Foxwatch Petition Drive

The campaign to recall embattled state Schools Superintendent Anne Fox has spread from its birthplace in Pocatello west to southwestern Idaho.

Political activist Phil Summa will head up the recall drive in southwestern Idaho for Carole Wells, the Pocatello woman who is the state chairman of Foxwatch.

“I have been following the Anne Fox follies,” Summa said. “I have been really concerned that so many people have decided she is no longer the right choice.”

Summa’s claim of mounting dissatisfaction with the new state schools chief will be tested, however, when the recall petition drive begins later this spring. Fox’s opponents will have to gather just over 125,000 signatures in only 60 days to force a recall election, and then they will have to attract over 227,000 votes against her to oust her from office.

Last year, anti-tax activist Ron Rankin was unable to collect just 32,000 signatures to put his property tax-slashing One Percent Initiative before voters in November.

Summa admitted a recall was improbable, but he hopes Fox will resign or change the way she does her job.

Fox, who has been under increasing criticism for political, administrative and other missteps during less than three months in office, did not comment, but spokesman Asa Ruyle said she was disappointed that her critics had not brought their concerns to her first.

“She is taking her job seriously, and she is moving ahead,” Ruyle said. “A lot of the people who voted for her wanted the things she is doing.”

But with controversy swirling around her and skepticism mounting about her ability to oversee public education, the state Board of Education this week essentially stripped Fox of the authority it had ceded to her predecessor, fellow Republican Jerry Evans.

Foxwatch plans rallies during April to educate voters about what it sees as Fox’s failures before launching the 60-day petition drive.

“I think she’s more concerned with conservative politics than with our education system and school students,” Summa said.