A lingering irony from the last Idaho governor’s race: When the minority candidate lost, minorities won.

The minority candidate, then-Attorney General Larry EchoHawk, a Pawnee Indian, lost to Wilder farmer Phil Batt, a Republican.

But it has been Batt who has done much for minorities in his first 14 months in office, highlighted this past week by the historic passage of a bill repealing agriculture’s 79-year exemption from the workers compensation law.

Since the vast majority of Idaho’s 35,000-plus farm workers are Hispanic, many saw it as a victory for civil and social rights. They packed the House gallery when the bill passed.

Legislative leaders give Batt full credit for getting the bill through. “He laid it all on the line on this one,” said House Speaker Mike Simpson.

“He didn’t need to do it politically,” said freshman Sen. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden. “He did it because it was the right thing to do.”

The governor got his staff to fashion a bill that would reduce farm resistance.

In what turned out to be a master stroke, Batt ordered the minimum coverage premium lowered and the base salary calculation cut in half. Immediately, that got business on board because all companies would benefit from the lower premiums, not just farmers and ranchers.

Even such groups as the Potato Growers of Idaho, previously opposed to the legislation, backed Batt’s bill.

The state’s major industry-business lobby, the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, did not oppose the legislation. Most of its members already provide the coverage.

That left the Idaho Farm Bureau almost alone in lobbying against the bill, and Batt played hardball with lawmakers to line up their votes.

When even a conservative retired farmer, Senate President Pro Tem Jerry Twiggs, predicted several weeks ago that the Batt bill would sweep through both chambers, it was obvious that Batt would win.

The new law won’t be without its problems. Business interests fear that in offering lower costs to farmers and ranchers to make the insurance more attractive and affordable, rates have been cut so much that financial problems could develop for the State Insurance Fund, which is the likely source of coverage for agriculture.

But the fund currently has a $100 million reserve and last year returned $30 million in dividends, or premium refunds, to policyholders.

Getting Hispanic and other farm workers covered by insurance isn’t Batt’s only accomplishment. The governor has made a commitment to help Indians, promising to spend at least one day per month on their problems.

He’s also believed to be the only Idaho governor ever to visit each of the state’s five Indian reservations.

It may have seemed odd that it was a farmer, Batt, who ended agriculture’s long preferential status. But not to those who have watched Batt in action for years.

It was Batt who got the Legislature to authorize the Human Rights Commission, and he fought off efforts to eliminate the agency in its early years.

As a white Republican farmer elected with a solid 34,700-vote majority over EchoHawk in the last election, Batt was free to do more for minorities than EchoHawk could have.

With his party overwhelmingly in control of the Legislature, Batt could achieve more than a Democratic chief executive whose politics would have gotten in the way.

And because he is a farmer, Batt knows that the coverage will work hardships on some operators because of the extra cost.

But as he said in his State of the State message, the time has come.