Bush to visit Idaho this month; Cheney to be in Boise Monday
BOISE – The White House confirmed President Bush will make his first visit to Idaho this month since taking office, but declined Thursday to say when and where.
“He will be in Idaho, but we have not released his schedule,” a White House spokeswoman who declined to give her name told the Associated Press.
The White House also announced Thursday that Vice President Dick Cheney will be stopping in Boise on Monday afternoon to help Sen. Larry Craig celebrate his 60th birthday and raise money for the Idaho Republican’s 2008 re-election campaign.
“The vice president looks forward to visiting Idaho again,” said Jennifer Mayfield, deputy press secretary to Cheney. Cheney will appear at a $60-a-person party for Craig at the Boise Executive Air Terminal beginning at 5 p.m.
While Cheney, a former U.S. House member from Wyoming, has visited Idaho several times, the president’s absence from the heavily Republican state has long been a sore spot for Idaho’s all-GOP congressional delegation. During a picnic for Bannock County Republicans in Pocatello two years ago, Craig announced that Bush would be visiting Idaho in 2004 after Craig extracted a promise from the president to come to Idaho.
The promise was the result of a practical joke Craig and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card played on Bush, convincing him that British Prime Minister Tony Blair – who had mentioned Idaho in a 2003 speech to Congress – would be visiting Idaho. Craig told Bush he had invited Blair to visit Idaho.
The president “said to me, why on Earth would I invite Blair?” Craig told the crowd. “And I said, ‘If you can’t get a president to come, how about a prime minister?’ “
Craig’s Washington, D.C., spokesman, Dan Whiting, said Thursday the senator is delighted that Bush will be visiting Idaho.
Bush is tentatively scheduled to speak to a national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Salt Lake City that starts Aug. 20 and is expected to be in Idaho as well that week.
The Idaho Statesman newspaper in Boise reported Thursday that the Idaho Center in Nampa has been reserved for a potential appearance by the president at a rally with military personnel and their families and that hangar space has been reserved for Marine One, the presidential helicopter, at the McCall Airport in Valley County.
“I don’t know who’s coming,” said Rick Harvey, director of the airport that serves as a hub for mountain resorts and airborne federal firefighting. “All I know is Marine One is coming up here on the 22nd and leaving the 24th.”
Les Crooks, interim general manager for the Idaho Center in Nampa, declined to say who made the reservation for an event at the city-owned arena the week of Aug. 22.
“They’ve got a date on hold here,” he said. “I’ve heard the same rumors you have.”
In the 2000 election, Bush easily carried Idaho with 67 percent of the vote and his support increased to 68 percent of the state in the 2004 presidential election.