Craig, Minnick Trade Shots Over Pay Raises Campaign Ads Accuse The Other Of Inaccuracies

Idaho’s U.S. Senate candidates squared off Wednesday over an issue near and dear to the hearts of voters - pay raises for public officials - and each accused the other of feathering his own nest.

Both campaigns began airing television advertisements on the pay raise issue this week.

Republican Sen. Larry Craig claimed credit for ending the policy of special interest payments to senators for making speeches.

And Democratic challenger Walt Minnick said he cut his own pay as president of TJ International when the company was not performing while Craig voted to raise his own congressional pay less than a year after essentially promising voters he would not.

Craig campaign spokesman Mike Tracy contends Minnick’s ad is a distortion because the former Boise businessman actually got a pay raise in 1991 when his company reported a $3.2 million loss. That was the same year, Tracy said, when Craig and the Senate voted to reform the congressional pay system.

But Minnick spokesman Bill Broadhead said Minnick did cut his pay from $285,000 in 1988 to $206,000 in 1990 as TJ International’s performance for shareholders plunged over 20 percent. Shareholder performance rebounded from 1990 to 1991, justifying the pay increase of $8,300 under Minnick’s theory of pay for performance. The campaign could not explain why shareholder performance and net income did not seem to track each other.

As for Craig’s claim to have reformed the congressional pay system, Broadhead said Craig’s vote to end speech payments also gave the Senate its largest ever pay raise - 23 percent. The raise not only significantly boosted the pension benefit for the veteran member of Congress, Broadhead said, but it violated the pledge he made to voters during the 1990 campaign that he would not vote to raise his pay.

Tracy said Craig was left no choice but to vote for the package that combined the pay raise with the ban on speaking fees because Democrats refused to allow a separate vote on the speaking fee ban.

But congressional records show that two months earlier, the Senate did hold a vote on what Democrats admitted was a weakened version of a ban on speaking fees and Craig was among 24 senators to oppose it. The ban was attached to a campaign finance reform bill that Craig also opposed on final passage. The bill died when House and Senate negotiators could not work out a compromise.

During the 1990 campaign against Democrat Ron Twilegar, Craig blasted Twilegar for essentially voting to raise his state legislative pay as recommended by a special citizens commission. In a radio ad, he called Twilegar’s action wrong and said members of congress are employees of the people and they should decide when pay is raised, not the politicians.

Broadhead pointed out that less than a year later Craig supported the controversial midnight vote that raised Senate salaries.

Tracy said that Craig voted to cut congressional pay by 15 percent in May 1994 but the then-Democratic majority defeated the bill.