Actor Funds Anti-Nuclear Campaign Bruce Willis Gives $25,000 To Effort To Void Batt’s Deal

Actor Bruce Willis, the self-described Republican who called for replacing GOP Gov. Phil Batt because of his nuclear waste deal, bankrolled at least the initial phase of the initiative campaign to void that agreement.

A financial disclosure statement filed Tuesday with the secretary of state showed that $25,000 of the $26,925 raised by Stop the Shipments through the end of March had come from Willis. Another $1,000 came from Hormel heir Jay C. Hormel of Ketchum, Idaho.

In a statement, former Democratic state Sen. John Peavey, a Carey rancher with a long history of speaking out against nuclear-related activities at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, called the Willis contribution “seed money” that enabled the campaign to “reach out to grass-roots Idahoans.”

The initiative needs 41,335 registered voters’ signatures by July 5 to win a spot on the November ballot. Officials said earlier they have hired Kimball Petition Management of California to gather half of them.

They declined to discuss the contract price, but anti-tax activist Ron Rankin paid National Voter Outreach of Nevada nearly $37,000 to collect 25,000 valid signatures to put his revised property tax initiative on the ballot.

The anti-nuclear waste initiative would void Batt’s Oct. 16 deal with the federal government and would require any future agreements on nuclear waste movement and storage in Idaho to be ratified by both the Legislature and voters.

The Batt deal traded the dumping of another 1,133 radioactive shipments at INEL over 40 years for promises that most of the waste would be removed by 2035.

Last February, Willis denounced the agreement and said if the deal remains in effect, “then we will get a new governor and we will get a new Legislature.”