Bill Sali's Sprint...Idaho's "Chariots of Fire".

Those who read this blog know of my support for Bill Sali. He and I have been friends for almost 18 years. When he was first elected to the Legislature, I met him there, when I was a lobbyist with Focus on the Family's Family Policy Council in Idaho.

We hit it off well. When Helen Chenoweth ran in the successful 1994 Primary, I was her Campaign Committee Chairman. When she honored her Contract with America, I was endorsed by Bill Sali as I ran for her seat against then-Lt. Governor Butch Otter, who ultimately prevailed.

Six years later Butch Otter decided to give up the seat and run for Governor. I looked at the Congressional Seat and considered running for it once again.

I met with Bill at a dinner with our wives at their work's Christmas party and we discussed the possibilities of either of us running. He asked me not to run. I considered his request and I honored him. When he won the Congressional Seat, other than his family, I was the one most proud of Bill Sali.

So what I have to say, regarding his 2008 race against Walt Minnick should have some weight to it.

Bill Sali needs to sprint to November. Not run. Sprint.

The 1st CD race victory trophy will go to the candidate who maniacally runs to the finish. Like Eric Liddle, the main character in the film Chariots of Fire, the head has to be tipped backward, the hair flowing and the arms flailing...wildly.

No one in DC will really care whether Bill Sali pulls off a successful race. Too many seats are in flux. They say they care, but not really. Freshmen are proven fodder for "the guns of November".

But ALL of Idaho will care. D's and R's.

Walt Minnick is a businessman. Odds are he will run a methodical race...well timed and not-too-innovative. Break a sweat? Maybe, but more to the point, he'll look a little like Thomas Dewey in the '48 Presidential Race. Calm collected and confident.

However, to wildly mix metaphors (at the even worse expense of combining an Eric Liddle proven-saint and a Harry Truman stubborn-political-mule), Bill "Give 'em Hell" Sali, may have to do just that....in order to break that finish-line tape in '08.

Den

Here's the Wall Street Journal article by Justin Sheck that came out July 15th on the race:

Idaho Is No Longer a Lock for Republicans

By JUSTIN SCHECK
July 15, 2008; Page A3

SANDPOINT, Idaho -- Bill Sali is defying the political odds by making Idaho's first-district congressional race competitive. That isn't good for Mr. Sali: He is the incumbent.

A 54-year-old Republican from Kuna, 18 miles from Boise, Mr. Sali represents one of the most heavily Republican electorates in the U.S. The district hasn't elected a Democrat to the House since 1992; in the 2004 presidential race, 69% of its votes went to George W. Bush.

But through slow fund raising and a combative reputation, Mr. Sali has become vulnerable to his Democratic challenger, Walt Minnick, a businessman with little political experience.

Idaho Republican Bill Sali has become suprisingly vulnerable in his House re-election race through slow fund raising and a combative reputation.

This presents an unexpected problem for the national Republican Party, which is eager to maintain its 199 House seats in the November race. Republicans are depending on strongholds such as Idaho for easy victories so they can focus resources on districts with divided electorates.

A month ago, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said Mr. Sali was safe; now, Cook analyst David Wasserman says the race for his seat is contested. Conservative pundit Robert Novak recently said Republicans "need to worry" about the seat.

Mr. Sali said national Republican leaders assumed his victory "would go on autopilot," until he called attention to his situation. Now, he said, they are paying attention and offering fund-raising help. Federal reports in May showed Mr. Sali had raised about $200,000 less than Mr. Minnick. Data from Boise Republican pollster Greg Smith show 26% of likely Republican voters in the district's two most-populous counties rate Mr. Sali "very unfavorable."

Don Soltman, an executive at the Kootenai Medical Canter in Coeur d'Alene, is a Republican who supports Mr. Minnick. "Socially, I can support him much easier than I can support Bill Sali," he said. Mr. Soltman said that while he typically votes Republican, he finds Mr. Sali's focus on social issues off-putting.

Mr. Sali's trouble with voters such as Mr. Soltman stems in part from a pugnaciousness that has brought him notoriety since 1990, when he became a state legislator. A rock musician and lawyer who home-schooled his six children and says he "gleaned potatoes" as a child when money was tight, Mr. Sali has staked far-right positions with a tenacity that draws criticism from other legislators, including some in his party.

When Mr. Sali was in the Idaho statehouse, he tried to amend a bill that would extend a law against domestic violence to minors because he wanted it to apply only to heterosexual couples. He supported efforts to make divorces more difficult to obtain. He upset some colleagues by insisting on legislation to require parental consent for minors to get abortions after courts frowned on such laws.

After an abortion debate in 2006, then speaker Bruce Newcomb, a Republican, told a group of reporters in the statehouse hallway that Mr. Sali was "an absolute idiot" after Mr. Sali insisted on the statehouse floor that abortions cause breast cancer. "I've not withdrawn my statement," said Mr. Newcomb, who now teaches at Boise State University. Mr. Sali's spokesman, Wayne Hoffman, said Mr. Newcomb -- who supported a Sali foe in the 2006 House primary -- "was frustrated" when he made that comment.

In a separate incident, a Republican Idaho House speaker said he threatened to defenestrate Mr. Sali during a procedural dispute over a bill.

Such imbroglios made Mr. Sali a long shot in his 2006 U.S. House bid. While Idaho is a conservative state, its voters historically mobilize around limiting government power, rather than social causes. Mr. Sali won only 26% of the vote in a crowded 2006 House primary. But that secured the nomination. With help from a visit from Vice President Dick Cheney and funding from the antitax Club for Growth, he beat Democrat Larry Grant in a close general election.

In his first U.S. House term, Mr. Sali continued to raise ire with moderate Republicans back home. He objected to putting a Mexican consulate in Boise. (He says it might encourage illegal immigration.) Last year, responding to a Hindu prayer recited in Congress, he said "multiculturalism is the antithesis" of the U.S. motto, E pluribus unum, Latin for "out of many, one."

Mr. Hoffman, his spokesman, said Mr. Sali feels "we've divided the country by language."

Mr. Sali also announced a draft bill to "propose that the force of gravity, by the force of Congress, be reduced by 10%" to combat obesity. Mr. Sali said it was meant to parody a bill to raise the minimum wage, which he felt ran counter to the laws of economics.

Mr. Sali says his social conservatism is what Idaho voters want. He says his Democratic opponent, Mr. Minnick, is out of step with voters' desires. Mr. Minnick, 65, says Mr. Sali's excessive focus on gay marriage, immigration and guns obfuscates problems such as statewide job losses.

Mr. Minnick, who grew up on a Washington state wheat farm, is working to tout his moderate rural credentials. He has posted YouTube videos of himself skeet shooting. He also has conservative, pro-business roots: The former chief executive of wood-products company TJ International Inc., Mr. Minnick was a White House staffer under Richard Nixon from 1971 through 1974. He became a Democrat before his failed run for the U.S. Senate in 1996.

Mr. Sali hasn't tempered his image. At Idaho's Republican state convention last month, he helped move a riven state party to the right by backing social conservatives and libertarians who ousted moderate party Chairman Kirk Sullivan. Other state Republicans say the shift galvanizes Mr. Sali among right wingers but alienates moderate voters. Since Barack Obama in February drew more than 14,000 supporters to a Boise rally, moderates have worried about rising Democratic turnout.

"It's difficult for any Democrat to win in Idaho," said Mr. Newcomb, the Republican former state speaker. But Mr. Minnick is "a formidable foe," he said, who could capitalize on Mr. Sali's reputation for "poking his finger in people's eyes."

Write to Justin Scheck at justin.scheck@wsj.com¹

Comments

[Dennis Mansfield]

I think Bill DOES have a fire in him to serve.

My question is whether he has a full-on fire to run. Last time was an amazing race...full of amazing events, which allowed him entrance into the House of Reps. He has served well. The issue before us is the General Election race, itself. Kind of like an on-going job interview. Because of Bill's ethics and his hard-working attitude, it is really unfair to call him a laughing-stock. You may not like his politics...ok, so what? But to diminish his personal value as if he's a fool, just won't work.

Bill Sali is one of the brightest men I have ever known. The thing he admits, himself, is that at times he suffers from analysis paralysis - which slows the reaction time noticeably.

Don't dismiss him, though. The discarded political bodies of the GOP's 2006 Primary Race proves that point, as does Larry Grant's political corpse. Walt Minnick is a fine man. He's not a cut-throat. His race will run calmly against Bill...while the DC Dems wil come in to TRY TO obliterate the Congressman.

This will backfire. Idahoans smell DC politics and they don't buy it.

All my D friends, remember Helen Chenoweth. It didn't work then (x3)...and with an invigorated Bill Sali, it won't work now.

That's my call.
Den

[Bubblehead]

I went to Congressman Sali's "town hall" meeting in Nampa last Saturday, and I got the impression that his heart isn't really in it. I think he realizes that while he was surrounded by enough of a critical mass of like-thinking legislators in the Idaho House, in D.C. he's worse than useless and ineffective -- he's a joke who can't even get hearings for his bills. That would be depressing for anyone. I look for him to pay off his outstanding debt from 2006 and make as his top priority not having any debt from this election to carry back into civilian life. Since control of the House isn't at stake, I don't see a lot of national Republicans (and definitely not many Idahoans) giving good money to support a laughingstock.

[F.O.D.]

Do you think Bill has the fire to do this? I have my doubts. Jon and Chris plan to ask him Thursday to do an hour or more with Walt on AM630. Walt agreed to do it whenever. I don't see much fire in either person to win this race. I want to see FIRE in all of our elected officials to help with the HUGE increase in prices of fuel, food, etc. and the immediate move to get our nation 100% free of dependence on foreign energy sources. I want a "JFK 10 year plan-go to the moon" type of plan for energy independence. I think T. Boone Pickens has the idea for our nation.