Kempthorne confirmed; Risch rises

BOISE – Idaho got a new governor Friday, as Gov. Dirk Kempthorne was confirmed as the new U.S. secretary of the Interior and Lt. Gov. Jim Risch succeeded him in office.

“I am truly humbled by this opportunity,” Risch said in a statement. “Vicki and I love this state and its people, and I will vigorously fulfill my responsibilities as the state’s chief executive.”

Risch has just seven months to serve as governor before yielding to the winner of the November election. He’s running for re-election as lieutenant governor.

But he’s made it clear he intends to be an activist governor and not merely finish out Kempthorne’s agenda or lay the groundwork for the next governor.

Last week, in an interview with The Spokesman-Review, Risch said, “You need to remove from your mind the thought that my administration is the ending of a former administration or the beginning of a future administration. It is an administration in and of itself.”

Risch set a press conference for Tuesday morning to announce his staff and plans for his inauguration. Rumors are circulating that he’ll fire some of Kempthorne’s department heads. He also has another hotly anticipated decision to make: Who will succeed him as lieutenant governor.

House Speaker Bruce Newcomb said, “I think he will be engaged and he definitely will make change. He’s started that way already.”

A week ago, Risch stirred speculation around the state by saying he’s open to the idea of a special summer session of the Legislature on property tax reform, if lawmakers can come to a new agreement on the issue.

But Newcomb said even though the state now has a $137 million state surplus, he doesn’t see any new consensus between the House and Senate on major tax shifts, such as moving school operations funding from the property tax to the sales tax. The House repeatedly passed proposals to do that this year; the Senate repeatedly killed them.

“The fact is, in my discussions with members of the Senate, I don’t see the Senate saying that we’ve changed from where we were at the end of the session, and I know the House has not changed significantly,” Newcomb said.

Risch is a successful trial attorney who spent $350,000 of his own money to defeat then-Lt. Gov. Jack Riggs in the Republican primary in 2002 before winning the office in the general election. He also served 22 years in the state Senate, including 12 years as majority leader and six years as president pro tem.

Risch was known for a strong leadership style in the Senate that brooked no dissent, and he was notoriously caricatured as “Feldmarschall von Risch” by a House member.

“The trains ran on time in that legislative sessions were handled more efficiently,” said Boise State University political scientist Jim Weatherby.

Weatherby said the “old Risch” back then was known for being “dictatorial, intimidating, inflexible and ideologically oriented.” But then he was defeated in a 1988 re-election bid, and when he returned to the state Senate as an appointee in 1995, he’d changed. He quietly began working his way back up the leadership ranks and was majority leader again by 2002.

“The new Risch is more pragmatic, a problem solver who reaches out, is more approachable, more flexible,” he said.

Risch had been expected to run for governor this year, taking on Congressman Butch Otter in the Republican primary. But after Otter announced his candidacy nearly two years in advance and piled up endorsements and campaign cash, Risch announced he’d run for re-election as lieutenant governor instead.

That was just before President Bush nominated Kempthorne to be the next secretary of the Interior, but Risch didn’t change his mind after the nomination. This November, he’ll be the first sitting governor in Idaho history to ask voters essentially to demote him back to the lieutenant governor’s post.

He’ll be opposed in November by former Idaho Congressman Larry LaRocco, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran against Risch for the state Senate in 1986.

Kempthorne, Idaho’s governor for two terms, is a former U.S. senator and mayor of Boise who made children’s issues, highway and park improvements, Medicaid reform, supporting Idaho National Guard troops through their largest-ever deployment and a crackdown on methamphetamine his top focuses in office.

Asked in March how he’d like to be remembered as governor, Kempthorne cited all those issues, plus that he “was one of us,” someone who enjoyed the state and its people. And he said he hoped people would remember that “he did a pretty decent job.”