Our View: Helen Chenoweth-Hage was a rare politician

Helen Chenoweth-Hage was known for many things.

Her hard-rock Western conservatism. A shoot-from-the-hip style. Black helicopters. An insistence on being called “congressman.” Property rights. Gun rights. Eyebrow-raising statements, such as the one she used to explain why few minorities reside in North Idaho: “The warm-climate community just hasn’t found the colder climate that attractive.” For questioning why salmon was considered endangered when shoppers could buy the fish in cans at grocery stores.

The last item inspired the regionally famous bumper sticker: “Can Helen, not salmon.”

Chenoweth-Hage, who was killed in a vehicle accident in Nevada on Monday, also will be remembered as a woman of her word who was gracious to political opponents and wasn’t afraid to answer tough questions from adversarial media, even at times after they mischaracterized her as dumb and anti-feminist. Her commitment to principle never was more apparent than when she kept her promise not to seek re-election to a fourth term.

Whether or not you support term limits as mandated by law – which we do not – Chenoweth-Hage was one of several Republican congressional candidates who pledged to hold herself to three terms voluntarily. And she kept her promise when colleagues were pressuring her not to do so.

While a couple of Republicans in the freshman class of 1995, including former Spokane Congressman George Nethercutt, reneged on similar pledges, Chenoweth-Hage and six others aborted what could have been a long stays in Congress by stepping down six years ago. She regretted the pledge. Shortly before the 2000 election awarded Butch Otter her 1st Congressional District seat, she said she realized that it takes longer than six years to make inroads in Congress.

Others weren’t as circumspect about term limits or their promise that year.

Neither Otter nor his Democratic opponent in fall 2000 took the term-limits pledge. Nor did Idaho’s two U.S. senators, Larry Craig and Mike Crapo. Nethercutt broke his promise but easily won re-election after surviving a tough primary. Two years later, he won a fifth term and would probably have continued to win in his district, if he hadn’t relinquished his seat in 2004 to run for the Senate.

Nethercutt told a high school class in 2000: “Only fools and dead people don’t change their minds.”

None of that mattered to Chenoweth-Hage. Nor did she waver when Idaho Republican legislators made noise about overturning voter-approved term limits – which they eventually did with little or no repercussions from voters. Chenoweth-Hage, however, had given her word. It was final.

Chenoweth-Hage left Congress with her principles intact, a hero to red-meat conservatives who were jaded by broken promises and corruption in American politics. She’d found love in Nevada during her last term when she married the late sagebrush rebel Wayne Hage. She continued to push issues that were important to her. She was a Western American throwback who proved that her word was her bond.