[Vision2020] Stapilus on Sali

[Mark Solomon]

I'm posting this because it reflects my own personal experience as a 
lobbyist for three consecutive Legislative sessions and my attempts 
to work with Mr. Sali.

Mark Solomon

http://www.ridenbaugh.com/index.php/2006/05/24/stickin-or-splittin/#more-333

Stickin' or splittin'
by Randy Stapilus 

For quite a few Republicans, the situation has turned agonizing. But 
that doesn't necessarily mean the situation will turn them.

The locus of agony is Bill Sali, who with 25.8% of the vote yesterday 
won the Republican nomination for the Idaho 1st district U.S. House 
seat. (Incumbent C.L. "Butch" Otter is running instead for governor, 
or so the paperwork says; Otter himself was on the far side of the 
country on election day and unavailable for conversation with 
Idahoans.)

Sali is typically described as a very conservative Republican, but 
that has nothing to do with the concern afoot. Nor does it have to do 
with his stands on issues or with his voting record, neither of which 
is very different from scores of other very conservative Republicans 
who have served with him in the Idaho House over the last 16 years.

It has more to do with something apparent to people who have worked 
around the Statehouse, apparent to Republicans and Democrats and 
liberal and conservatives alike. We have no interest in piling on or 
slinging mud, but there's a broadly-held reality here that 
experienced Idaho political people know and that most Idahoans do 
not, and now it has become of importance. (We should add here: We 
have no personal animus against Sali; our dealings with him, mainly 
from some years back, have been cordial enough.) There is no gentle 
way to put this:

Sali was not remotely competent as a state legislator. To watch him 
stand to debate was to see the House chamber almost physically turn 
off: Members would pick up reading material, stroll away, get on the 
phone. To see him carry a piece of legislation was to see that bill's 
chances of passage instantly halved. Skillful legislators build 
bridges; over 16 years, Sali steadily burned them. To hear Statehouse 
staff gossip about him (which they're technically not supposed to do 
about any legislator, but of course like people everywhere will from 
time to time) is to join in either nervous laugher or an uneasy sense 
in the pit of the stomach. There has been the overriding feeling, 
developed over all those years, that the man simply isn't very 
bright. When the Republican leader of the Idaho House, Bruce Newcomb, 
last month raged against Sali by spluttering, "That idiot is just an 
absolute idiot," his choice of perjorative was revealing: It was 
simply the first that came to mind. Were you somehow to poll a broad 
crossection of the legislators, staffers, lobbyists, reporters and 
other Statehouse types who have watched doings in the chambers over 
the last decade and a half, and asked them who was the weakest, least 
effective, legislator in all that time of all the hundreds who have 
passed through, Sali would be much the best bet to top the list - and 
that is not at all an exaggeration. This does not have to do with 
extremism or choice of issues. This has to do with raw ability to do 
the job.

That is a considerable part of the reason people like Newcomb, who 
patiently developed admired leadership skills over many years, and 
doubtless his predecessor as speaker Mike Simpson, now congressman in 
the other House district, have such bad cases of heartburn today. To 
Simpson, a highly skilled legislator. who according to lore once 
threatened to pitch Sali out of a Statehouse window, is probably 
spending the day in a dizzy nausea as he mulls the idea of 
co-legislating with him.

Most of the work that most people do is largely invisible to most of 
the outside world - even the work of public officials. When we elect 
people to do a job, we usually make that choice based on limited 
criteria. We see where they say they stand on a hot button issue or 
two. We observe if they've gaffed themselves during campaign season. 
We know what party they claim, and maybe a philosophical tag. Maybe 
we have a handle on their religious beliefs. But the jobs we ask 
these people to do - be it county commissioner, mayor, state senator, 
U.S. representative - encompasses much more than most of us typically 
observe. Unless you're one of the several hundred people who hang 
around the Idaho Statehouse, for instance, you have little real idea 
what your legislator is like as a legislator. The public gets a few 
raw details - some of the pro or con votes, maybe an occasional juicy 
quote - but little view of the accumulated work that legislators do 
over the course of a session, and beyond. Among themselves, and 
within that world, there's a common knowledge of who is contributing 
in a useful way (whatever their philosophical viewpoint) and who 
isn't. The voting public only seldom gets access to that base of 
knowledge, which is one reason (we don't mean to imply the only one) 
why strikingly useful legislators sometimes get dumped and useless 
legislative couch potatoes get returned year after year.

How, in our system, do you counter that? We have no idea. People like 
Newcomb and Simpson may be contemplating that question today too, but 
we doubt they have any magical answers either.

So let's bring this back down to the question making its way around 
news reports and Boise's downtown on this day-after: Will Sali's 
nomination in the 1st district cause the Republican Party to split 
apart, with the prospect that many split off to vote for Democrat 
Larry Grant, or will its constituency largely line up behind him?

Our speculation, for now: More the latter than the former. The 
problem a lot of organization Republicans have had (for years - this 
is not new) with Sali has nothing to do with his opposition to 
abortion or his stand on other issues. It's more specifically 
personal, and how can they - or Democrats, for that matter - get into 
that subject without sounding as if they are engaging in a personal 
attack? (Which, in a sense at least, they would be.) If Sali 
positions the general election campaign as consisting simply of 
another "conservative" Republican running against another "liberal" 
Democrat - which is the tack he took on election night - what exactly 
is the comeback that doesn't sound petty, bitter or spiteful?

The root of this is that few voters really know much about their 
candidates, their elected officials or the jobs that they do. And 
until they take the trouble to learn before they vote, the Sali 
problem - in the broad sense - will go on.
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