Candidates hit Panhandle campaign trail

Less than three weeks before the November election, candidates are stepping up their campaigns, pumping thousands into TV advertisements and spending their days traveling around the state stumping for votes.

Their crunch-time efforts at votes brought many of them to North Idaho on Friday, with the GOP tour bus making stops in Post Falls, Rathdrum, Priest River, Sandpoint and other North Idaho towns. U.S. Rep. Butch Otter, who is running for governor, was scheduled to attend all the events but had to give a speech in Boise and attended only the evening dinner at Silverwood Theme Park.

The Republican candidate to replace Otter in the 1st District, Bill Sali, rode the bus around the Panhandle with his GOP counterparts, while his opponent, Democrat Larry Grant, knocked on doors in Coeur d’Alene and attended a luncheon at Iron Horse restaurant downtown. The Sali-Grant matchup has been attracting attention from both national committees as recent polls show the race to be much closer than Idaho’s red-state reputation would indicate.

A Washington Post reporter accompanied Grant while he went door-to-door and later spoke with Sali for a story the newspaper is doing on heated congressional races in the Inland Northwest and surrounding area.

Door-knocking brought Grant to a lot of empty houses, but he was able to talk with a few citizens – some Democrats, others Republicans, one a woman who said she couldn’t vote because she was a Jehovah’s Witness.

When Grant asked one Coeur d’Alene resident what was on her mind, the woman had just one response.

“I don’t like the police,” Renee Jones said as she stood outside her Coeur d’Alene Avenue home.

“What are they doing?” Grant asked.

“What don’t they do?” Jones responded, saying the police have failed to respond to calls she’s made for assistance.

There isn’t much a congressman could do to help Jones directly other than urge her to contact the city government, but Grant said Jones’ complaint is representative of a larger problem facing Congress: the budget.

The federal government is cutting grants given to towns and cities to aid law enforcement and other community agencies in light of the monstrous debt facing the country. There is something Congress can do about that, Grant said.

Sali said he’s been getting great response on the campaign trail about his platform, especially his pledges to fight for more secure national borders and to make English the country’s official language.

National Democrats and some political experts have moved the Sali-Grant race to their list of races to watch, and the Republican National Congressional Committee has spent more than $100,000 on ads attacking Grant and is poised to spend much more, something many say is a sign the GOP fears the seat currently held by Otter could be in jeopardy.

“Can you imagine the national Republicans sitting in D.C. scratching their heads, saying ‘Jeez, we have to spend money in Idaho?’ ” Grant said.

But Sali said he isn’t worried.

“There are a lot of races around the country that are going to be a lot closer than mine,” he said.

Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, who’s unopposed in his re-election bid, said he’s more worried about low voter turnout than his party losing seats.

“Non-presidential year, the war, the (former congressman Mark) Foley stuff – you get people who don’t need a reason to stay home getting a good reason to stay home,” said Ysursa, who was on the GOP tour bus Friday.

Jayson Ronk, executive director of the Idaho Republican State Central Committee, said he doesn’t think the recent attention the Foley issue is getting nationally will affect the state races.

“Idahoans are independently minded,” Ronk said.

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