House Race Features Big Differences Grudge Mixed Into Pratt-Chenoweth Contest

It’s about a grudge. It’s about differences over the future of logging, mining and grazing.

And it’s about differences in style.

So begins the Republican primary election race in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District.

Political newcomer Jim Pratt says livestock, logging and mining magnates have had their way for 100 years. “Change is going to happen,” he predicts.

It’s time to slow road construction in national forests so the U.S. Forest Service can deal with its $10 billion maintenance backlog and engineer less environmentally destructive roads, Pratt argues. Raise grazing fees on federal land, he says, and start keeping cattle out of the streams.

Modestly increase fees for mining claims on public lands and use the money to mop up pollution at old mine sites as well as mining contamination along the edge of Lake Coeur d’Alene, Pratt says.

Mothball the four lower Snake River dams and give salmon a chance to recover, he adds. Divert foreign aid money to helping Lewiston deal with the jobs lost when idling the dams idles Lewiston’s seaport.

Those salvos fly against a rather formidable opponent with quite different views.

Incumbent Helen Chenoweth is a fervent champion of livestock, logging and mining companies and an equally legendary basher of any group or government agency that slows them down. She is ready for a different kind of change for those industries - one that includes state management of federal public lands.

Idaho will be more efficient overseeing natural resource development on those lands, Chenoweth says. Things such as forest health must be guarded with more intensive management that includes logging to prevent fire, disease and insect problems.

Much more study is needed before the lower four Snake River dams are breached, she said.

Chenoweth also talks about repaying the $600 million the federal government has borrowed from the Social Security trust fund with any budget surplus. She wants to talk about administrative waste in Medicare, about eliminating affirmative action.

“We will never end discrimination by practicing discrimination, and that’s what we’ve been doing,” Chenoweth said. “As John Kennedy said, ‘Race should play no part in American life or law.”’ Then there’s the grudge part of this match.

Pratt, a Melba resident, has been in a squabble with Farm Credit Services over a farm he bought from the federal agency in 1991. The bottom line is his assets are frozen, he says, and Chenoweth wouldn’t help him.

“She’s always talking about the federal government treading on other people’s lives,” Pratt said. “She didn’t want to help me because I’m a member of a tribe or because I’m lower in the pecking order in the Republican Party.

“If I were J.R. Simplot’s son, something would have happened.”

Simplot is a wealthy farmer and businessman.

Pratt, a member of the California-based Pitt River Tribe, grew up poor. His father was a sheep shearer and mechanic. Thus, Pratt attended 27 schools before graduating from high school in Dayton, Ore. - an all-star football player and state wrestling champion.

Wrestling took him to Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, where he coached and took classes. Summers he worked in a fish cannery in Alaska and used the money to buy rental property in Nampa.

He is part-time Mr. Mom to four children, part-time used equipment dealer, full-time landlord. His wife, Connie, is a nurse. The farm in question is leased to a neighbor until the dispute with the federal government is resolved.

A few childhood years along the Salmon River gave him his passion for fish, but Pratt says most people want salmon runs restored.

Pratt characterizes himself as a moderate conservative with a more palatable style.

“I don’t know if (Chenoweth) is conservative or if she’s off the reader board to the right,” Pratt says. But “people need to know all of the Republicans in the 1st Congressional District aren’t like Helen.”

Pratt calls his views somewhat isolationist, advocating tariffs and other measures to keep blue collar jobs from going overseas to places like China.

His role models are Jack Kemp, George Bush and Elizabeth Dole, he says. But that doesn’t mean he’s impressed by titles.

“I like people who have worked hard, been successful and are still regular people,” Pratt said. “I would represent the billionaire the same as I would a sheep shearer.”

Chenoweth says she represents everyone equally. Her staff is well aware that her foremost concern is helping her constituents fight the federal government. “Mr. Pratt was treated as every other constituent would be - with a great deal of professionalism and concern for the constituent,” she says.

Chenoweth says she cannot comment on the specifics of Pratt’s case. But she disagrees with Pratt’s charge that his Native American ancestry was a factor in how she handled his case.

Still, it raises the question of Chenoweth’s often-stormy relations with Idaho tribes.

“I’m very interested in having a good, strong relationship with the tribes,” Chenoweth said. “They have a heritage we are all proud to share.”

Simultaneously, the United States needs to thoughtfully and respectfully address the difficult question “as to whether Native American Indians are a sovereign nation or should they be mixed into society and how should that occur,” Chenoweth said.

Such views aren’t that surprising considering Chenoweth’s willingness to say what she thinks. Nor is it surprising that she cites role models like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

There’s also George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt. She paws through Roosevelt’s presidential papers with curiosity and admiration.

“He was so brilliant,” Chenoweth says. “His thinking was so expansive in working with Gifford Pinchot to create the national forest reserves.”

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