Democrat Joins Race For 1St District Seat Moscow Councilwoman Pall Plans To Make Diversity Key Campaign Issue

Pledging to “take back the reputation of our state,” long-time Moscow attorney and city Councilwoman Linda Pall announced plans Thursday to run for the 1st Congressional District seat held by retiring Republican Helen Chenoweth-Hage.

Pall, 54, is the first Democrat to enter a race crowded with conservatives. In announcements Thursday in Moscow and Boise, she predicted the race will be “the most fun we’ve had in politics in years.”

Pall, an active member of the Jewish Community of the Palouse and the Latah County Human Rights Task Force, long has been a champion of diversity.

Fed up with Idaho’s image as a haven for racists, she pledged to make combating the problem a key campaign issue.

“We are known nationally for our political extremists and interns of hate. Instead of bringing people together, bridging the chasms of political ideology, race and religion, we are subjected to the language of division, of separation, of anger,” Pall told a small audience of supporters in Moscow.

“Idaho is really too great for hate. People of good will live here, and we are ready to stand together to tell the rest of the world that this is a great place to live, work, raise quality kids and grow old.”

Pall also said she is frustrated with policy paralysis on a range of issues from combatting poverty to reforming campaign finance laws and health care.

“In a Congress that has the first budget surplus in decades and a robust national economy, members have done very little,” she said.

Pall later said her dismay over the most recent hate crime with connections to Idaho - former Aryan Nations member Buford Furrow Jr.’s August shooting spree at a California Jewish center - had clinched her decision to run for Congress. “We are so much better than that,” Pall said. “It’s defaming the entire state.”

State GOP leaders welcomed Pall into the race but said Democrats are not alone in denouncing racism and the Aryan Nations. “The Republican Party denounces violence and hate crimes in no less strong of terms than she did today,” state GOP Chairman Trent Clark said Thursday.

Another key piece of Pall’s campaign platform will be bringing conservationists and working people together, Pall said.

Pall does not support dam breaching. She suggested following Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s call for a multistate, multitribal, U.S.-Canadian effort to address dams, salmon and electric power.

Pall promised to champion community values, be a congressional watchdog and push for action “when the federal bureaucracy moves at a glacial pace on Idaho priorities.” Known for her tenacity, Pall drew laughter when she vowed to “be the call that an agency head will not want to get when the agency has dropped the ball.”

Moscow Mayor Marshall Comstock praised Pall’s doggedness.

“When Linda bites into something, she doesn’t let go,” Comstock said.

Pall has served on numerous government committees and commissions at the state and local level. She got involved in Democratic Party politics working for then-Lt. Gov. John Evans’ campaign in 1974, two years after moving to Idaho from Oregon, where she grew up and attended Reed College.

She studied at the London School of Economics and taught at Portland State University before moving to Idaho with her husband, who taught at Washington State University. She holds master’s and doctorate degrees in political science from WSU and a law degree from the University of Idaho. She has a 25-year-old son, Zachary, but has been single since her divorce in 1983. Pall was on the Moscow City Council from 1977 to 1983, returned in 1993 and was re-elected in 1997. She has been an advocate for the arts, historic preservation and more-restrictive land-use policies.

Though she opposed further development in the Moscow-Pullman corridor and a large new subdivision, Pall has supported downtown development and Moscow’s business park.

This year she joined two other women on the council in opposing a new indecent exposure ordinance that would have restricted toplessness and regulated women’s attire. Pall, who is past president of the state American Civil Liberties Union, argued Moscow didn’t need additional regulation because Idaho’s law sufficiently addressed lewd conduct and obscenity.

As a City Council member, she sits on the board of the Association of Idaho Cities, representing North Central Idaho. She also works with the National League of Cities, where she’s the Pacific Northwest board member for the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials. As a family law attorney, Pall has served on numerous committees for the Idaho State Supreme Court and the American Bar Association. She applied for an open magistrate position in Nez Perce County in 1990, but was not appointed.

She currently teaches business law at WSU.

Two Republicans - Lt. Gov. Butch Otter and former state GOP Chairman Ron McMurray of Lewiston - are running for the congressional seat, as is Reform Party candidate Chris Charlton of Boise. All three have formed campaign committees, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Gene Summa, an unemployed forklift operator from Boise; Idaho Family Forum founder Dennis Mansfield of Boise; and Steve Coyle, a Boise hardwood floor installer, have also expressed interest in the Republican nomination.

“We have a wide range of candidates covering the breadth of the philosophical spectrum,” Clark said.