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<div><font color="#000000">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.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Mark Solomon</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"
>http://www.ridenbaugh.com/index.php/2006/05/24/stickin-or-splittin/#<span
></span>more-333</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Stickin' or splittin'<br>
by Randy Stapilus <br>
<br>
For quite a few Republicans, the situation has turned agonizing. But
that doesn't necessarily mean the situation will turn them.<br>
<br>
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.)<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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:<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
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?</font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">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.</font></div>
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