Businessman Ready To Take On Chenoweth

One North Idaho businessman already is eager for the 1998 campaign to begin.

Tony Paquin of Coeur d’Alene wants badly to challenge second-term U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth in next year’s Republican primary.

He thinks the race is winnable, even though Chenoweth has beaten every opponent - however well-known or well-financed - in four previous 1st Congressional District campaigns.

Paquin has been sending out notices for weeks that he’s considering the race. And even though he will be the darkest of dark horses at first, he says he’s 90 percent certain he will run.

“We need to assess two or three things before we jump off the cliff. Once we start, there’s no turning back,” he said. “We haven’t found anything yet, but I have to be ready personally. I have to be convinced we can win the race.”

Brave talk for someone who has never run for political office. And even veterans know Chenoweth is tough to beat.

In primaries and general elections she has taken out a former attorney general and GOP gubernatorial candidate (David Leroy), the current state Republican chairman (Ron McMurray), a two-term Democratic incumbent congressman (Larry LaRocco) and the beneficiary of a huge labor-financed campaign against her (Democrat Dan Williams).

It’s generally acknowledged that Chenoweth has a hard-core following of staunch conservatives who might make up 30 percent of the people who vote in the 1st District.

That’s the key to Paquin’s strategy.

He hopes to appeal to the same people by offering “reasonableness and effective leadership,” as well as the same moral values that make Chenoweth attractive to the religious right.

He and his family are members of the New Life Community Church and he is past president of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International.

Chenoweth, the 38-year-old Paquin says, spends too much time on ideological issues and not enough on promoting jobs, education and technology or addressing the federal budget deficit.

“The real reason I’m running is my son,” 6-year-old Anthony. Unless federal spending is reined in, “this country will be bankrupt in 15 years,” he said.

Paquin and brother Gary founded the insurance industry software company Agency One Corp. in Phoenix in 1989. They moved to Coeur d’Alene two years later and sold the company to Agency Management Services in 1993.

Paquin left Agency Management this month to form a consulting firm with Gary. Paquin Consulting will provide support to developing high-tech companies and advise established software companies.

Paquin also is founder and president of the Idaho Technology Association, which promotes the growth of technology jobs and hopes to lure more high-tech companies to North Idaho.

The Paquin brothers obviously are very close. In fact, they often interrupt and finish sentences for each other. Gary, who will be his brother’s campaign manager, says there is a “synergy” between them.

Although he has not yet been a factor in Idaho politics, Paquin lists good GOP credentials.

He participated in the National Republican Campaign Council and last year was member of the advisory team to its committee on term limits.

But right now the terms he most wants to limit are Chenoweth’s, whose agenda he calls “extreme right wing.” As a result, he said, she doesn’t represent a majority of the district’s voters.

Chenoweth isn’t about to get into a verbal battle with Paquin 13 months before the May 1998 primary, or even acknowledge she might have a challenger for what she has said will be her last congressional campaign.

“She welcomes everybody into the process, but she’s too busy working as a congresswoman to start talking about a candidate,” spokeswoman Khris Bershers said. “She says the people are still a little tired of the last campaign and it’s early to start another one.”

Paquin is eager to begin and says he has the business and other contacts necessary to round up the money needed to make a credible race.

“It will take several hundred thousand for the primary to get our message out so we can be in the game,” he said.

Even that might not be enough.

Chenoweth holds the record for spending in an Idaho U.S. House campaign, pumping just over $1 million into the last two-year election cycle.

She got $180,000 in just the last three weeks of the campaign for a barrage of late commercials.