Idaho Decries Image Of Backwoods Bigotry Ruby Ridge Hearings, Fuhrman Remarks Don’t Help

Senate hearings on Ruby Ridge and racist statements by new Idaho resident Mark Fuhrman have state officials scrambling to turn around the state’s growing image as a backwoods haven for bigots.

“It’s totally unfair,” Gov. Phil Batt said Friday. “I’m certainly not proud of the fact that there are Nazis in Idaho. I wish they would leave.”

The Senate hearings on the 1992 tragedy at white separatist Randy Weaver’s North Idaho cabin are not about Idaho or Idaho law enforcement, but the portrait of the state painted in the first three days of hearings was not a pretty one.

Among other things, an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms described cross-burnings he attended at the Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake.

During a break in the proceedings, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., seemed stunned by the number of guns and 20,000 rounds of ammunition that the Weaver family had stockpiled in their Ruby Ridge cabin. Then he added, “That’s not unusual for you folks up there in Montana.”

There’s one hope Commerce Director James Hawkins can cling to: With any luck, others will mistake Idaho for Montana, too.

Hawkins said Friday that the state does not have the money to buy television commercials to convince America that Idaho is not all that bad. But he said state leaders met Thursday to talk about how to get that message across.

Batt said the best thing he can do is decry racism and continue to emphasize facts over image.

It is a fact that racist groups are telling their people to move to the Northwest, said Joe Roy, chief investigator for Klanwatch in Montgomery, Ala.

Hate groups are drawn to places with wide open spaces and a low minority population, Roy said, and Idaho fills the bill.

It also is true, however, that Idaho is no more a haven for racists than other states. Klanwatch keeps an “activity map” showing racist groups around the nation. “The groups are spread out pretty good,” Roy said.

Colorado, Oregon and Washington each had more than twice the number of hate crime incidents reported during 1994 that Idaho did, according to the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. Idaho had 78; Colorado, 167; Oregon, 201; and Washington, 286.