2 incumbents fall in GOP races

BOISE – Only two incumbent Republican lawmakers in the Idaho Legislature lost primary races Tuesday. Rep. Kathy Skippen, R-Emmett, lost to a conservative rival, and Rep. Ann Rydalch, R-Idaho Falls, a proponent of a statewide community college system, fell to a GOP opponent who raised more than twice as much money as she did.

Steve Thayn had the backing of Idaho Chooses Life, an anti-abortion group, to win Position 11A in Gem and Canyon counties with a 52 percent to 48 percent margin over Skippen, a member of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee and a proponent of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s $1.4 billion “Connecting Idaho” highway program.

And Dean Mortimer, who raised $16,500 for the Position 32B Bonneville County primary, including $1,000 from eastern Idaho businessman Frank Vandersloot, won 56 percent to Rydalch’s 44 percent. She’s an Idaho National Laboratory employee who chipped in $4,100 of her $7,400 fundraising total.

Outgoing House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, R-Burley, said Wednesday that one sign Rydalch’s seat was in jeopardy had already emerged two years ago: Rydalch won the 2004 primary by just 351 votes – even though her opponent, Mike Adams, had left the race a month before the election.

“She was a weak candidate,” Newcomb said.

Mortimer, a mortgage banker in Idaho Falls who canvassed neighbors a month before Tuesday’s vote, said he felt like Rydalch was “exposed” and that community members wanted change.

“I felt like that was the race I could win,” Mortimer said. “I’d been working toward running for political office for a long time. The timing was right.”

Rydalch said her post as a sitting legislator left her unable to raise money until the end of the 2006 session in April. She also said her advocacy of community colleges may have rankled supporters of Idaho State University, a four-year school.

“I think they were working behind the scenes to get me unelected,” Rydalch said, adding she’s not done with politics and could attempt to return to the Idaho Senate – should Sen. Mel Richardson, R-Idaho Falls, eventually retire. “There are a lot of things to do yet, in regards to community colleges, education, energy issues and economic development.”

Newcomb said Thayn’s defeat of Skippen was the rare instance Tuesday in which an incumbent who was perceived as more moderate wasn’t able to fend off a challenge mounted by social conservatives.

For instance, Stan Bastian, now a GOP House member from Eagle, beat back Rod Beck for the Republican nomination in District 14 to replace retiring Sen. Hal Bunderson, R-Meridian. And Sen. John Andreason, R-Boise, defeated challenger Dennis Mansfield, a longtime conservative activist, in District 15.

Like Thayn, Beck and Mansfield had endorsements from Idaho Chooses Life, which labels itself the “voice of the preborn child.” The group did endorse several incumbents and candidates campaigning for GOP nominations for open legislative seats who did win.

Thayn, who in the 2004 primary failed to unseat Sen. Brad Little, R-Emmett, didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Skippen said the reasons for her defeat were threefold: low primary turnout of just over 20 percent, as some people who thought she was a shoo-in stayed away; little campaigning from April to mid-May, when her ill father died; and brochures from Thayn that labeled her as amenable to tax increases.

“I had people call me and say they didn’t vote, because they didn’t even think it was a race,” Skippen said. “When you add all those things together, I think that adds up to losing. If I had it to do over again, I’d still spend my time with my Dad.”