Jones to clinch spot on high court
BOISE — Former Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones will surely win election to the Idaho Supreme Court in Tuesday’s primary election, reversing a trend over the past several Supreme Court elections that saw bitter contests.
Jones, who is unopposed for the nonpartisan judicial post, is known for his battles against gasoline companies and for his crusade against white supremacists.
Boise State University political scientist Jim Weatherby said he was surprised there were no other candidates, but in this case, “I think it says a lot about Jim Jones.”
Jones, 62, was raised on a southern Idaho farm and graduated with a law degree from Northwestern University. After volunteering for combat duty in Vietnam, he went to work for then-Idaho Sen. Len B. Jordan, a Republican, in Washington, D.C., for three years beginning in 1970.
He was unsuccessful at running for Congress in 1978 but won Idaho’s Attorney General office in 1983 and served until 1991, when he returned to private law practice.
During his tenure as attorney general, Jones had several conflicts with the petroleum industry.
In his first term in office, Jones wrote a strong letter to gas companies about suspected price fixing in Idaho, where gas has always been more expensive than surrounding states. He also released the letter to the news media.
“The next day, when the story appeared in the paper, gas prices dropped almost 14 cents a gallon throughout the state,” Jones recalled.
Jones also helped work on Idaho’s landmark anti-malicious harassment legislation, along with then-legislative leader Phil Batt, who later served as governor.
“We had white supremacists running around making all kinds of statements that were not very helpful to, you know, keeping peace in the community and guaranteeing everybody the rights to which they’re entitled,” Jones said. “I took a pretty strong stand against them, and made a lot of statements about how Idahoans respected one another.”
His efforts won him the Torch of Liberty award from the B’nai B’rith in 1987.
Norm Gissel, Coeur d’Alene attorney and human rights activist, said the legal community considers Jones an outstanding candidate.
“He’ll look at the facts, and see what the facts have to say about the law,” Gissel said. “He won’t be like (Justice Antonin) Scalia at the U.S. Supreme Court, whose philosophy is obvious in his decisions.”
Jones said he figures he’s qualified to serve on the court because of his broad range of legal experience.
“I’m pretty familiar with just about every area of law except for admiralty law of the sea. You don’t get a lot of that in Idaho,” he said.