Candidates make rounds on D.C. scene

BOISE – With six Republicans crowded into the primary race for Idaho’s 1st District congressional seat, three have scheduled “meet and greet” receptions on Capitol Hill hosted by the state’s all-GOP congressional delegation – but only one has snagged an endorsement from a member of the delegation.

Second District Rep. Mike Simpson has endorsed former state Sen. Sheila Sorensen of Boise in the race and donated $2,000 to her campaign.

“Sheila and I were colleagues in the state Legislature for a long time and formed a friendship, and I support her candidacy and think she’d do a great job,” Simpson said Friday.

All four members of the delegation will co-host a “meet-and-greet” reception at the Capitol Hill Club for Sorensen on Tuesday. Two days later, they’ll do the same for another candidate in the same race, state Controller Keith Johnson.

“Mike is the only one, I think, that has made the decision to get into it,” Sorensen said. “What it says to me is that I’ve worked with him, he knows how I work. … He’s saying, ‘Sheila, I know you can do it, and I think you’d be a good member of the group here and we can work together.’ I’m just thrilled that he’s willing to step up and endorse me.”

Members of the delegation said they’re happy to help out Idaho Republican candidates by hosting meet-and-greet sessions, but that doesn’t mean they’re endorsing them. Candidate Norm Semanko had a similar Washington event last spring.

Johnson said he’s hoping his event will give him “some exposure in Washington, D.C.,” to everyone from other members of Congress to key lobbyists to people who control the purse-strings for campaign donations.

“Clearly it includes a fund-raising perspective, talking to people who help raise money for campaigns, but also to network and develop a relationship with people who make policy on Capitol Hill,” Johnson said. “I have made a number of invitations to folks that I know in the governmental accounting and accountability arena. I expect a few of those folks will be there.”

He added, “As much as I would love to have an endorsement, that’s not part of the deal.”

The 1st District seat currently is held by Butch Otter, a Republican who is giving up the seat in 2006 to run for governor. That’s prompted something of a political stampede to run for the open seat, with six Republicans and two Democrats already announced candidates in the race.

Otter isn’t endorsing anyone in the race, though he and Sorensen are longtime friends and former neighbors.

For that matter, Sen. Larry Craig also is declining to endorse anyone – though his wife, Suzanne, is a prominent supporter of Semanko, a former Craig staffer.

Sen. Mike Crapo’s press secretary, Lindsay Nothern, said it’s “standard operating procedure” in Washington, D.C., for candidates to hold an introductory reception or fund-raiser there to make contacts, with officeholders lending their names to the invitation. “We’re doing it for everybody,” he said, “and that goes for everybody on the Republican side of the aisle, probably. He (Crapo) will not endorse anybody in the primary. But we will support folks who make the trip out to D.C. to get themselves introduced around Capitol Hill.”

The three Republican candidates who haven’t yet scheduled such Capitol Hill soirees are state Sen. Skip Brandt of Kooskia, state Rep. Bill Sali of Kuna, and Canyon County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, who has been sharply critical of Craig and other Republicans on immigration issues.

Asked if Craig would co-host a similar reception for Vasquez, press secretary Mike Tracy said Vasquez hasn’t asked. “He hasn’t contacted our office as far as I know, and I don’t know.”

The two announced Democrats in the race are former Micron Technology executive Larry Grant of Fruitland, and Coeur d’Alene businessman Cecil Kelly.