Idaho Voters Play Hot Potatoes Notoriously Independent State May Be Weary Of Craig, Chenoweth

Finding a Democrat in this state after the electoral wipeout of 1994 used to require a mining light and compass. Republicans thought they had created a single-party utopia, where President Clinton is bashed round-the-clock on talk radio.

But through the years in which the state slogan “Famous Potatoes” has been nearly supplanted by “Reliably Republican,” Idaho has kept a more enduring character trait - fiery independence. And this year, that maverick streak threatens the political lives of two of the most visible national stars of the Republican right, Sen. Larry Craig and Rep. Helen Chenoweth.

Idaho is the last state where Republicans ever expected to be in danger of losing a Senate seat. But Craig, a 16-year veteran of Congress who sits on the board of the National Rifle Association, has seen a 40-point lead diminish to the point where both sides say it is a close race. And both parties say Craig suffered from the thing he has spent a career stoking: distrust of Washington.

His opponent, Walt Minnick, is a former Republican who has built his campaign around a single message: Idaho should not be a dumping ground for nuclear waste.

Craig has backed a deal by Gov. Phil Batt, a Republican, that would allow nuclear waste to be stored at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory for 40 more years, on the promise that the federal government would then clean up and close the dump site.

“All we are doing,” said Minnick, a former timber industry executive who is spending $1 million of his own money in the race, “is riding down the very tracks that the Republicans have laid over the years. ‘Don’t trust the federal government,’ they say. We don’t.”

Chenoweth is arguably the most conservative member of the Republican freshman class. She has won support from members of paramilitary groups, tried to dismantle the nation’s major environmental laws, and calls the government shutdown by Congress last year a cause for celebration. Last week she advocated doing away with traditional Medicare and Social Security in place of a private-sector system.

“That was a gift almost beyond our wildest dreams,” said Ted Sullivan, a spokesman for Dan Williams, 34, the Boise lawyer who is challenging Chenoweth.

But Democrats are not out of the grave yet. The race for Chenoweth’s seat, in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, is a dead heat, according to all the polls. And Republicans far outnumber Democrats. In the state Legislature, the most Republican in the nation, Democrats make up not even 20 percent.

“Some voters would take a bullet for Helen Chenoweth,” said Jon Duane, a talk show host at KIDO, the state’s leading news-talk radio station. “But I don’t hear the same thing about Larry Craig. I would not be surprised if Craig lost and Chenoweth won.”

If Craig, who is the fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate leadership hierarchy, were to lose his bid for a second Senate term, it would be perhaps the biggest upset in the nation.

“It’s not going to happen,” Craig said. “It is a race. But my opponent made the critical mistake of getting too negative too late in the campaign.” He was referring to recent advertisements that label the senator “lying Larry Craig.” Minnick has since announced he was pulling all negative ads.

After years of attacking environmental groups, Craig is going green, somewhat, reflecting the state’s changing demographics. His advertisements show him river rafting, which is about as unlikely, opponents say, as Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina doing a rap song on MTV. He no longer talks about disarming agents of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, nor does he use the “War on the West” slogan to describe federal environmental regulations.

Still, a little bit of the better-known Craig seeps out. Before an audience of farmers in rural Owyhee County, he said, “Environmentalists are more interested in plants and animals than they are in any of you,” and spoke of “impeachment charges” against President Clinton.

Minnick, 54, a Harvard Law School graduate whose timber company used recycled wood, was on the board of the Wilderness Society, an environmental group, and campaigns on a vision of a “New West” less tied to the mining, logging and grazing.

“The Old West industries are trying to protect their subsidies and restrict public meddling,” Minnick said. “They are very generous givers. They own the Idaho Legislature.” Asked to respond, Craig said, “If he is a reflection of the New West, it’s the out-of-state New West, not Idaho.”

Minnick said that what prompted him to run was Batt’s deal on nuclear waste. Minnick has run a string of campaign advertisements on the issue, and his cause may be helped by a state referendum on the agreement.

Minnick appears in advertisements with a hunting rifle and also supports abortion rights. He even shuns the Democratic Party affiliation, introducing himself to audiences as “an independent running on the Democratic ticket.”

He says he can pull off the upset. But even Democratic polls show that after steady gains on Craig, Minnick’s momentum has stalled.

“The only way a Democrat can win this race is to run as a moderate Republican,” said Jim Weatherby, a professor of political science at Boise State University.

Weatherby rated the Chenoweth race a tossup. Noting Idaho’s reputation as a haven for racists, neo-Nazis and paramilitary groups, Weatherby said Chenoweth has become associated with extremists.

The Idaho Statesman, the biggest newspaper in the state, and generally conservative, endorsed Williams on Wednesday. Today, The Spokesman-Review endorses Chenoweth.

Last year, the Statesman said Chenoweth had practically become “a poster child” for paramilitary groups.

“I think Idahoans are embarrassed by her,” Weatherby said. “That’s the only way you can explain how a little-known Boise attorney has drawn dead even with her. But she may still win by a hair.”