Meyer enters campaign as write-in
BOISE – Five-term Rep. Wayne Meyer may have lost the primary election, but now he’s jumping back into the race as a write-in candidate to try to hold his seat.
Phil Hart, an engineer and former Constitution Party member who beat Meyer in the Republican primary, had been running unopposed in the general election.
Meyer, R-Rathdrum, said, “I’ve served 10 years here in the Legislature, I know the players, I believe I have the respect of my colleagues here in Boise. I’m able to get things done.”
He noted that he was a co-sponsor of the bonding bill that brought North Idaho College a new health sciences building; helped squeeze through Kootenai County’s local-option tax bill as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee; and secured funding for protecting the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer through his seat on the joint budget committee.
“Phil Hart, as a newcomer, isn’t going to be able to do all that stuff,” Meyer said.
Hart said he was “surprised” to hear that Meyer was back in the race. “The history of write-ins is not really very good,” he noted.
In 2002, former Rep. Don Pischner ran as a write-in in the general election after losing to Charles Eberle in the Republican primary in District 5. Pischner, who had served four terms, got just 11.1 percent of the vote in a three-way race.
As of midday Wednesday, 5,978 Kootenai County voters already had cast absentee ballots. Compared to the total votes cast in the last presidential election in 2000, that’s more than 13 percent of the vote.
Several thousand more absentee ballots have been sent out to Kootenai County voters and may already have been marked and sent on their way back in, according to county officials.
“So from this point on to the general election, Mr. Meyer would have to do very well in order to be successful,” Hart said.
Hart declined to say why voters should choose him over Meyer’s write-in bid.
“You know, I want to wish him good luck,” Hart said. “That’s really all I have to say.”
In the GOP primary election for the District 3 House seat, Hart defeated Meyer 2,483 to 1,638, an 845-vote margin. But the turnout in the primary was low, at just 24 percent of registered voters in Kootenai County. The turnout in November’s general election is predicted to hit 70 percent or more.
Two years earlier, Meyer defeated Hart in the 2002 general election by a 3,500-vote margin, when Meyer was the Republican candidate and Hart ran on the Constitution Party ticket.
Meyer, who describes himself as a moderate Republican, said he thought the low turnout in the primary hurt him, and that he’d fare better in the general election.
However, he acknowledged, “A lot of people I’ve spoken to who are friends of mine have already voted absentee.”
Meyer said he decided to run as a write-in – just in time for this week’s deadline to declare write-in candidacies – after his father told him he’d written in his name, but it wouldn’t count because he hadn’t declared.
“I guess you could say it all started from my dad, and I wanted his vote to count,” Meyer said. “But it has seriously mushroomed into, I believe, an all-out campaign at this point. … We’re going to go ahead with a full head of steam.”
During the primary campaign, differences between Meyer and Hart on field burning and abortion were among the top issues. Hart takes an anti-abortion stand, while Meyer has voted against anti-abortion legislation he believed was unconstitutional. Meyer is a grass seed farmer who burns his fields each year; Hart raised concerns about the practice.
Hart said, “I don’t see how things will change a whole lot in the next 10 to 12 days here, as opposed to what happened back in the primary in May. … I think the people had their opportunity in the spring to vote for either one of us, and I feel pretty comfortable with that result. And I think it’s going to be a repeat here in November.”
Meyer said when he and his wife cast their absentee ballots, “I wrote my name in. So I know I got two votes – and maybe three if my wife wrote my name in, too.”