8 vying for state’s top job

BOISE – One candidate lost nearly a third of his body weight in a hunger strike protesting abortion. Another is promising a free taco party for anyone who votes in the primary election. A third wants to fire all of the state’s social-service workers.

The race for governor in Idaho’s primary election features four Republicans and two Democrats. The two winners will face each other plus two third-party candidates in November.

“I realize my chances are slim against powerhouses,” said little-known candidate Jack Alan Johnson, a Boise carpenter. “But I don’t think things are going in the right direction anymore, and I just wanted to have my say.”

All six of the major-party candidates have run for office before, but only one has been elected on a statewide ballot – current GOP 1st District Congressman Butch Otter, who was the longest-serving lieutenant governor in Idaho history and then went on to serve three terms in Congress.

Among the rest, the one who came closest in a statewide electoral bid was former Idaho Falls newspaper publisher Jerry Brady, a Democrat who took 41.7 percent of the vote in 2002 when he challenged Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s re-election bid.

Brady’s primary election opponent, Lee Chaney Sr., of Preston, wants to fire social-service workers because of dissatisfaction over his dealings with agencies regarding a troubled son who’s now in prison.

Chaney said he’s running “so I can wake the politicians up, get ‘em working.”

Brady declined to comment on his primary opponent but said he’s enjoyed campaigning with all the candidates in the race. “I commend everyone,” he said. “I’ve really gotten a kick out of going around with these other guys – everybody but Otter shows up at forums and so forth. … They’ve all got something to offer. But the real question here is who’s going to be the next governor, and that’s a choice between Jerry Brady and Butch Otter.”

Brady said in that match-up, “I am the right man for this time. We are at a time of tremendous transformation in Idaho, and we need someone who is looking over the horizon at the future, who has bold and different ideas, who is firmly planted in the 21st century, and is ready to govern the Idaho of the future, not the Idaho of the past.”

Otter agreed to one debate with GOP challenger Dan Adamson during the primary campaign, but then backed out due to scheduled votes in Congress and declined three proposed alternate dates. On one of those, he hosted a “high-dollar fundraiser” with top campaign contributors in Boise.

Adamson said it was Otter who got him into the race. “I’ve known Mr. Otter for 30 years, and for 30 years I haven’t been very impressed with him,” said Adamson, a former two-term Jerome County prosecutor and candidate for Congress in the 2nd District. “This guy is no executive, he’s no leader, he has no ideas for Idaho. He’s probably 100 percent in the hip pocket of Idaho big business, and I just couldn’t even imagine him being the next governor of Idaho.”

Adamson is the candidate who’s promising the free taco party to voters. That and his “MyIdahoRocks.com” Web site have been quirky features of his campaign.

He joked that he could have offered a hamburger or steak party, but, “I think most people in Idaho are sick of the same ol’, same ol’. … and would try a little spice. So I thought a taco party would be very appropriate.”

Adamson added, “Maybe if we don’t take politics quite so seriously, maybe we won’t have so many people disengaged.”

Otter, who had time only for a quick telephone interview between congressional votes, said he’s running for governor “because No. 1, I think I’m ready. … With my 30 years experience in the private sector, 14 years as lieutenant governor, two terms in the House representing Canyon County, and now the six years I’ve spent back here in Congress, I think I have a very good feel about what’s expected of state government and what’s expected of the governor himself.”

Long a libertarian-leaning politician who’s railed against regulation and big government, Otter this year is listing education as among his top issues. “I think we’re losing our competitive edge in the world,” he said. “I see a lot of our competitors and potential competitors putting the emphasis on math and science in their education system, and I don’t see a similar effort in our education system.”

Johnson, the carpenter, disagreed. “It’s not their math and science I’m worried about,” he said. “That’ll come if you teach them their literary skills, which means comprehension as well as reading. I think we need to go back to basics.”

Candidate Walter Bayes went on a hunger strike for 56 days this year for “equal rights for the pre-born people,” ending his protest only when South Dakota passed a law in March to ban most abortions.

Bayes said the hunger strike landed him in the hospital with bleeding ulcers, and his weight had dropped from 195 down to 140, but now he’s back up to 185. “I come back pretty quick once they got the bleeding stopped,” he said.