Former elk rancher will challenge Risch

BOISE – Former elk rancher Rex Rammell has shed his Republican ties and will run for the U.S. Senate as an independent because he says his former party has anointed Lt. Gov. Jim Risch as its chosen candidate.

Rammell, 47, who last October said he’d run as a Republican for the seat now held by Sen. Larry Craig, conceded he couldn’t beat Risch, 64, in the May 27 GOP primary. He gathered the 1,000 signatures needed to run as an independent before filing Wednesday with the Idaho secretary of state’s office.

The two men have been at odds since September 2006 when Risch, then Idaho’s interim governor, ordered an emergency hunt for 160 domesticated elk that had escaped Rammell’s property near Yellowstone National Park.

Rammell has named the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Risch in a civil lawsuit filed in 7th District Court.

At a news conference in Boise, Rammell said Risch’s political career is nearing its end, making 2008 a bad time to run for U.S. Senate. Rammell hopes to rely on his credentials as a former elk rancher – he’s since sold his eastern Idaho property – and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Idaho’s largest religion, to win over voters.

“Jim Risch is too old to become a U.S. senator. You don’t become a U.S. senator in the sunset of your career,” Rammell said, adding to reporters, “I am a member of the LDS church, which is a significant portion of the electorate.”

Rammell denied he was running for vindictive reasons. Animosity over the elk escape would be settled in court, not at the polls, he said.

Risch said Rammell is just bitter over the 2006 elk fracas and is using the race as a chance to get even. Age should have little bearing on who becomes U.S. senator, he said, pointing out that Ronald Reagan was nearly 70 when he took office as U.S. president in January 1981.

“I’d imagine somebody told Ronald Reagan the same thing when he ran for president,” he said.

Risch, a Catholic from Milwaukee who came to Idaho in the early 1960s, said Rammell is also unrealistic to expect votes based on his church affiliation. People “don’t vote by religion, they vote by how they feel in their hearts,” Risch said.

Though Rammell contends he’ll take votes from Risch and turn the general election next November with Democratic candidate Larry LaRocco into a closer contest, Risch said he’s not concerned about that.

“Every major election in this state, whether it’s for governor, U.S. senator, or president, has an independent candidate,” Risch said. “Invariably, they draw about 3 percent of the vote, or a little less.”

In the 2006 race for lieutenant governor when Risch beat LaRocco 58 percent to 39 percent, third-party candidate William Charles Wellisch from the Constitution Party won 2.3 percent of the vote.

LaRocco, so far the only publicly declared Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, also estimated Rammell could expect to win just 2 percent to 3 percent of voters, based on other races with independent candidates.

Still, LaRocco, who served two terms in the U.S. House for Idaho from 1991 to 1994, did say Rammell’s conservative, property-rights ideology would likely draw more disaffected Republicans than Democratic-leaning supporters.

“At the end of the day, it’s a favorable development for me,” LaRocco said. “It’s a very interesting development, that somebody who obviously felt strongly about the primary didn’t feel like there was room for him in the other party. It’s a strong indication that some voters might be abandoning the establishment and looking for new leadership.”

In addition to Rammell, one other independent, a man who has legally changed his name to Pro Life from Marvin Richardson, has filed with the secretary of state. Five Republican candidates also have filed: Fred Adams, of Idaho Falls; Richard Phenneger, of Coeur d’Alene; Scott Syme, of Wilder; Neil Thompson, of McCall; and Hal James Styles Jr., who lists his address in Desert Hot Springs, Calif.