Senator accounts for unusual expenses

BOISE – Sen. Joyce Broadsword, R-Sagle, reported some unusual campaign expenditures during this year’s campaign – a pig, a sheep and a pen of rabbits.

“I kept the pig,” the North Idaho senator said. “I paid my campaign back for the meat at market price.”

The rest of the animals – purchased at auction at the Benewah County Fair – Broadsword donated back to the 4-H kids who raised them. “It’s important for these kids to continue in the 4-H program,” she said. “Having people who are willing to support the program and buy the animals makes it work. We get this PAC money without asking for it – this is one way I can put it back into the community.”

Broadsword noted, “I was a 4-H’er myself.”

Before making the unorthodox campaign investment, she called the state and checked that it was legal. “They said, ‘Oh yeah, people do it all the time,’ ” she said. “I was going to buy one anyway.”

On Broadsword’s campaign finance report, she reported an expenditure of $1,120 on Aug. 16 to the “Benewah Junior Livestock Show.” She received a total of $64,321 in campaign contributions this year, and spent $58,390. Broadsword was challenged by Democrat Rand Lewis, who raised and spent just over $2,700 on the campaign.

“I think there are ways you can use your campaign funds, you get your name out there and also provide something for the community,” Broadsword said. “I feel that I get something back – not only the name recognition, but the good will.”

Lawmaker bests moose

One state legislator from North Idaho was feeling very lucky to make it back to Boise this year – and not because of electoral politics.

Rep. Eric Anderson, R-Priest Lake, won re-election this year. But the weekend before he was to head down to Boise for the Legislature’s organizational session, he and his wife Nicky had a run-in with a large and powerful opponent – a North Idaho moose. “It’s one of those things where you wake up the next day and you think, ‘We could’ve been dead,’ ” said Anderson.

The couple was headed south to Coeur d’Alene to shop for a refrigerator just after dark, around 4:15 p.m., on Dufort Road, traveling about 45 mph, when the moose appeared from an unexpected location – Mark Fuhrman’s driveway. The giant animal came through the windshield of the Andersons’ Subaru Outback and landed on the steering wheel, before being thrown out into a roadside ditch.

Anderson suffered a cut on his hand that needed stitches, but his wife escaped “without a scratch,” he said, and the dog was unhurt in the back of the car.

He dismisses the cut on his hand as the equivalent of a “paper cut,” and is still marveling over escaping serious injury. The moose wasn’t so lucky. Its back was broken; some hunters who happened along “had to put it down,” Anderson said.

Jaquet moves to JFAC

Former House Minority Leader Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, said she was ready for something else after 10 years in House leadership. “I’ve done it for 10 years, and there’s something else I’d really like to do, which is JFAC,” Jaquet said. She’s taking the slot on the powerful Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee vacated by former Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise, who retired from the Legislature after six terms.

Jaquet said she’s long been interested in serving on the panel; among those she consulted about the move were former state Sen. Mary Lou Reed, D-Coeur d’Alene; and former JFAC Co-Chair Rep. Kitty Gurnsey, R-Boise.

She acknowledges that the coming session will be a tough one for the budget panel, with plummeting state revenues and tough decisions ahead. It’s an assignment that, even in good years, requires large amounts of research, number-crunching, preparation and negotiation.

“A friend of mine said JFAC will make it so you don’t get Alzheimer’s – it’s like doing the New York Times crossword puzzle,” Jaquet said with a laugh. In her decade leading the House Democratic caucus, Jaquet said, “We grew it 100 percent – the caucus went from 9 to 18” members. In her new role, she said, she’ll be “learning, listening, looking for a middle way.”

Meanwhile, there were no leadership changes in the House or Senate GOP caucuses, and Sen. Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, remains the Senate minority leader.