Threatening e-mail disturbs legislators

BOISE – Three Panhandle lawmakers say they were disturbed and disappointed after Frank Reichert, a Libertarian candidate in last year’s District 1 House race, spread an e-mail calling for the legislators to be “hauled out onto the street and hung in public display for their treason.”

Reichert, who received less than 5 percent of the vote in the election, targeted Republican Reps. Eric Anderson of Priest Lake and George Eskridge of Dover, as well as Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, for voting in favor of HB 163, a contractor registration measure.

The lawmakers didn’t report the threat to the police, but did notify the leadership in each house. Under Idaho law, threatening to commit a crime against a state politician is a felony.

“The talk of violence was disturbing,” Keough said. “But I know Frank wouldn’t be violent.”

Reichert sent the letter to three Internet newsgroups – including two Libertarian discussion groups – where he often uses strong language to make his point, he said.

“What I write on a private, Libertarian newsgroup … is no holds barred,” he said in a phone interview from his home in Naples. “There was no disturbing language in the letter. … It should not be construed as a threat.”

Reichert said one of the principles of the Libertarian Party is nonviolence, so the legislators “don’t have anything to worry about.

“It would have been different if it was sent to a neo-Nazi group or something,” he said. “But Libertarians don’t use force.”

In the lengthy e-mail sent two weeks ago, Reichert wrote that Anderson, Eskridge and Keough would be at a GOP fund-raiser in Bonners Ferry. He gave the time of the event and where it would be held.

Then, he wrote, “Most sensible folks would probably agree that they should all be hauled out onto the street and hung in public display for their treason against the unalienable rights of the individual citizen.”

The legislators say they never took the threat seriously, but were still disappointed.

“I told him at the fund-raiser, ‘That’s not what a good legislator does,’ ” Eskridge said. “We work out things in a professional way. … You don’t jump off the wagon and call people out.”

Anderson, who defeated Reichert and Democrat Steve Elgar in November, was the only lawmaker to receive the e-mail. When his wife forwarded it to him from his home e-mail address, he said it disturbed him. He then shared the letter with Eskridge and Keough.

“My wife and I thought it didn’t seem like the Frank we know,” Anderson said. “It upset me. It comes after the fact. There was no correspondence prior to the vote.”

Reichert wrote that the contractor registration bill is “probably the greatest government intrusion into the world of everyone, particularly small contractors and all property owners within … Idaho. It’s a terrible bill.”

The legislation requires building contractors to be registered and have at least $300,000 in general liability insurance. But Reichert, a 56-year-old contractor and tree farmer, said it would “eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of self-employed building contractors throughout … Idaho.”

Reichert said he might run again in 2006 – but this time possibly on the Republican ticket.