District’s reputation at stake – get out, vote
This being the eve of the midterm elections, I just have to tell you about this article I read recently in a national online news magazine that I read avidly, Slate. The magazine is daily and its free. It was started in 1996 by Microsoft and was recently sold to the Washington Post, which I also read avidly.
Anyway, the teaser headline for the article on Slate’s home page was “The Craziest Congressional District in the Country,” and the article itself, written by Idahoan Bruce Reed, is titled “Black Helicopter Down: Have we seen the last of the great right-wing extremists?” It opens with: “Not to brag, but over the last decade, my humble home district in Idaho may have elected more genuine extremists per capita than anywhere in America.”
The story is about our very own 1st Congressional District, and our recently deceased former congressman, Helen Chenoweth-Hage. According to Reed, Chenoweth-Hage insisted on being called congressman, because in her view, the white male was the real endangered species. This was, of course, in contrast to the salmon, of which she wondered how the Pacific salmon could be endangered, when she could buy canned salmon in the grocery store.
During her six years in Congress, Chenoweth-Hage was an outspoken defender of local militia movements and a bold and brash opponent of just about anything the federal government would wish to do in the West. After leaving Congress, she married Wayne Hage, a leader in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion which advocated removal of federal control from much of his native Nevada.
As our districts representative, Chenoweth-Hage conducted hearings on what she believed to be United Nations-sponsored black helicopters that were bringing U.N. troops to Idaho to impose international law and take away our guns. You know, I have seen those helicopters many times, often at dusk, flying low over Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene, and the odd thing is that they are indeed all black, with no markings that I have been able to see. On the other hand, I haven’t seen anything that resembles international law in North Idaho during that same time, and I see guns everywhere.
Chenoweth-Hage once described the reintroduction of grizzly bears into North Idaho as being “like pouring a toxic substance into a water supply.” Former Idaho governor Cecil Andrus described her “extremism” as being like someone coming across a brush fire and pouring gasoline on it. Chenoweth-Hage saw nothing inconsistent with condemning President Clinton’s tryst with a White House intern while admitting that she had a longtime affair with a married man.
She considered Idaho, at 96 percent Caucasian, ethnically diverse. Besides, “the warm-climate community just hasn’t found the colder climate that attractive. It’s an area of America that has simply never attracted the Afro-American or the Hispanic,” she said.
None of these statements or positions ever hurt her in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District. Chenoweth-Hage was elected three times and chose not to run a fourth. She was steadfast in her beliefs, and apparently willing to die for them. And in the end, she did. The government could not tell her to wear a seat belt.
Now, 1st District voters, who, according to Idaho historian and online publisher Randy Stapilus, “don’t embarrass easily,” have a chance to reclaim their congressional notoriety. According to Reed, the front-runner in the current election for Chenoweth-Hage’s former seat is state representative Bill Sali, described by Dan Popkey of the Idaho Statesman as “a pariah in his own party.”
The current speaker of the Idaho House stumbled all over himself in describing Sali, his political party-mate and antagonist, when he said “that idiot is just an absolute idiot.” According to Popkey, the House Speaker was trying “to signal voters that electing Sali – an outcast because of his self-righteousness and refusal to compromise – would be a mistake.”
A previous speaker of the Idaho House and the current 2nd Congressional District representative – the man who will work most closely with the new 1st District representative – had threatened, in frustration, to throw Sali out a third floor window. Same-party House colleagues had suggested the fourth floor would have been better.
One of the many infuriating episodes between House members and Sali involved a comment he made in a legal deposition concerning memory impairment from a head injury he had received in a car accident: “How shall I say this? Much of the time in the Legislature, critical-thinking skills are not necessarily needed.”
Stapilus called Sali, a 16-year representative, “one of the weakest Idaho state legislators in the last couple of decades.” From my reading of Idaho history, that’s saying a lot.
As the leading candidate to become Chenoweth’s heir, Sali has said: “Politics is a full-contact sport, and I think people are smart enough to figure out who’s right and who’s not.” We’ll see.
As I have just learned, our 1st Congressional District has quite a national reputation: “The craziest congressional district in the country.” I’d say that Art Spander, sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, had us pegged when he wrote: “The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.” With that in mind, on Tuesday, get out there and vote.