Otter has long history of following his instincts

BOISE – As a freshly minted lieutenant governor, Butch Otter caused a furor 20 years ago by vetoing a bill lifting Idaho’s drinking age to 21 from 19 that lawmakers passed to keep the feds in Washington, D.C., from denying highway payments.

Gov. Cecil Andrus had left town, and Otter, a 44-year-old just two months on the job, took a populist swipe at “usurpation … of Idaho’s sovereign power by the Congress” – his words at the time.

Andrus later boosted the drinking age anyway, but Otter had made his mark, for better or for worse.

A month into his term as Idaho’s chief executive, the now 64-year-old Republican still governs from his gut, confounding some members of his own party by putting a chokehold on the Capitol expansion. He’s won the love of wolf foes, saying he’ll be the first to shoot one of the predators once federal protections get lifted. And he says he wants to build more dams on Idaho’s rivers, to keep more water here.

“People need answers,” Otter said Friday. “Obviously, my remarks are going to be targeted at what they can expect me to do on issues of concern to them.”

Remarkably, critics and allies alike say very similar things about the three-term U.S. congressman and millionaire rancher, whose offices feature cowboy prints and gigantic rodeo belt buckles: He’s real, and if there’s something that strikes him as good horse sense, he’ll speak up.

“He has good reason to trust his gut,” said Russell Westerberg, a lobbyist who sat with Otter in 1973 when they were freshman state House members. “In the minds of people like me, his gut is going to be right more than it’s wrong.”

Not everyone is so sure.

The governor’s fight of the Capitol expansion may cost taxpayers time and money, said Sen. Chuck Coiner, R-Twin Falls, among lawmakers who fear the project now won’t be done before 2011 – a year’s delay.

On Jan. 12, Otter issued a stop-work order, saying the $45 million plan for two underground, 50,000-square-foot wings would lead to a bloated, professional Legislature. Lawmakers argued they’d sweated seven long years before deciding two-story wings were cheapest and best for Idaho’s next century of government.

A compromise – one-story wings, half the space – came last week. Few are happy.

“He (Otter) had no idea of what we went through on this decision,” Coiner said. “When you’re one of 400 members of Congress, how much damage can you do? But when you’re the chief executive of a state, I would hope you slow down and look at the consequences of your ideological decisions.”

Otter says common sense told him Idaho already has two perfectly good buildings – the old Ada County Courthouse and the Borah Post Office.

“Let’s go forward with the assets we’ve got in place,” he said.

On Jan. 11, he braved new snow on the Capitol steps for a rally of 300 camouflaged hunters. To cheers, he told them wolves should be reduced from 650 to just 100 animals in 10 packs.

House Minority Leader Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, was surprised and disappointed; Idaho’s own federally approved wolf plan calls for at least 15 packs.

“It’s the kind of thing you might say among friends and have a laugh about. It wasn’t the kind of statement you want the governor of your state to make,” said Jaquet. “He’s funny and he’s lovable. Maybe people of Idaho will say, ‘Oh, that’s Butch. He’s just shooting from the hip.’ “

It’s not rhetoric, Otter says.

“Our plan calls for 10 breeding pairs,” he told the AP. “Our managed plan will be a little higher than that. Once we get off the (endangered species) list, we don’t ever want to get back on.

Clearly, Otter’s arrival in the governor’s office has been a departure from the 7 1/2-year tenure of former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne. A distant visionary, the tall, silver haired former U.S. senator, now President Bush’s interior secretary, often conducted business at arm’s length through a retinue of policy advisers, lawmakers say.

The visceral Otter, by contrast, has told Republicans and Democrats his office is open any time.

He’ll grab Capitol regulars in the halls and haul them into his office for mano-a-mano exchanges.

It’s been 20 years since Otter vetoed that drinking-age legislation on Feb. 24., 1987, to protest “federal coercion.” Otter says the intervening decades have mellowed him, but the instinct to govern from his gut is intact. For better or for worse.

“Once you get 65 or 70 percent of the information you need to make a decision, you rely on the experience you have,” Otter says.

“I’ve been a businessman, I’ve been in Congress, and I’ve been lieutenant governor. I rely on those experiences to make decisions, because it’s going to take a lot more time to get to 90 percent.”