Minnick Hopes to Beat Bill Sali
Boise Businessman Walt Minnick Will Run for Idaho’s First District
By Jill Kuraitis, 11-13-07
Boise businessman Walt Minnick will announce Wednesday that he’ll challenge Larry Grant and Rand Lewis for the Democratic nomination for Idaho’s First Congressional District.
Former Gov. Cecil Andrus will travel with Minnick for a campaign tour, which starts at 9 a.m. on the College of Idaho steps in Caldwell. He’ll announce in Boise at the Idaho Historical Museum at 10:30 a.m. then hold events in Lewiston and Coeur d’Alene.
The nominee will face Republican Bill Sali, the incumbent, or Matt Salisbury, an Iraq war veteran. Sali won the nomination two years ago out of a large group of candidates.
Grant, the Democratic candidate in 2006, lost to Sali.
Lewis, a former University of Idaho professor and expert in international affairs, is a retired military officer. He lives in Coeur d’Alene. Minnick lives in Boise and Grant in Fruitland.
Minnick lost to GOP Sen. Larry Craig in 1996.
Minnick, 64, has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Whitman College and his J.D. and M.B.A. from Harvard. He is Chairman of Summerwinds Garden Centers, and was President and CEO of Trus Joist International, a timber company. He was Chairman of the Board of the College of Idaho in Caldwell, serves in various advisory roles at Boise State University, and supports several local educational projects. Minnick served in the U.S. Army as an economist at the Pentagon during the Vietnam years, afterward joining the Nixon White House staff under Egil Krogh.
After Grant lost to Sali, Idaho Statesman political columnist Dan Popkey quoted a few Idaho Democrats who were angry with Larry Grant for running a lackluster campaign, squandering goodwill with unreturned phone calls and offers of help, not listening to campaign advisors and declining to campaign aggressively against Sali’s far-right philosophies.
Some Democrats think Popkey’s column opened the door for party members to talk about their disappointment with Grant, leaving room for a challenge primary.
Minnick has been married for 17 years to A.K. Lienhart-Minnick, former anchor at all three network TV stations in Boise. They have two young children. Minnick also has two older children and one grandchild.
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I read your post with some interest.
First, a small correction: Larry Grant lives in Fruitland, not Boise.
As for the comment about the 'lackluster' campaign...Larry came closer to winning that seat than any Democrat in a decade. He came within 4 percentage points of winning it and held Sali to less than 50 percent of the vote. The Republicans were so frightened of losing to Larry that they sent VP Dick Cheney out here twice to make campaign appearances for Sali, and GOP bigwig Dennis Hastert came here for a visit. The national Republican Party dumped a half million dollars into Sali's campaign in the last two weeks because they feared losing the seat. I would hardly call that a 'lackluster' campaign.
As for listening to advice, I can assure you we got campaign advice by the truckload. A lot of it was conflicting advice; very little came from people with actual campaign experience; and a tiny fraction came from people who had actually won a race. Larry listened to all of it, weighed all of it, and made his decisions. That's how a campaign works.
In the interest of professionalism, are you going to do a full disclosure to the readers of New West on your friendship and prior professional relationship with Walt and AK?
Don Rosebrock
Communications Director
Grant for Congress
Don I am pleased to see Larry's hard work so far in this campaign. I got to meet him for the first time last month. But I should have met him before the last election.
Dan Popkey wrote the remarks, not me.
I have no professional relationship with Minnick. I once spent a few hours stuffing envelopes as a volunteer for his campaign, eleven years ago.
A.K. Minnick is my close girlfriend.
You know, Don, your immediate attack response really should be tempered down just a slight bit. I know politics is a dirty business, but there was little here to actually get your gander in a huff.
Being a 'close girlfriend' of the candidate's wife is the type of
disclosure that is important to let readers exercise their judgment on the regarding the source of a political analysis.
I explained to Jill earlier that I didn't intend my post to be an attack and apologized to her if she interpreted it that way. I was trying to be straightforward and direct in making my points. I read a lot of blogs/comments/websites and find the posts that wander off into loopy rhetoric to be distracting at best and annonying at worst; thus my effort to stay on point.
Your apology to Jill also wouldn't have been necessary, were it not an attack style response.
Grant's campaign was lackluster. He played the nice guy in a race that was winnable if only he had gone after some of the most obvious weaknesses that Sali had in a much more public manner. What Jill said is that the Democratic community regarded it as lackluster, which is her opinion of how the responses to Grant's campaign added up in the aftermath.
How hard would it be to google Idaho Democratic responses to the Grant loss or the responses to what appeared to be a mediocre campaign?
Here
Instead of slapping yourself on the back repeatedly for running a close second place (also called LOSING), maybe you could learn some lessons from those that were right in the first place.
I believe there is a general consensus that Larry Grant ran an impressive, yet lackluster, campaign that ignored the support and advice of many professional political types. In addition, the mere fact that in a small state like Idaho, you call Jill out for her "relationship" is a tad shrill to say the least. I suppose you are going to call Governor Cecil Andrus out for his relationship to Walt Minnick in supporting him today. Do you wish to question Andrus or Minnick's contributions to the Democratic Party? What sort of effort did you or Mr. Grant make to help Mr. Minnick win a Senate seat in 1996??
Honestly, this is about defeating Bill Sali, nothing else.
If someone repeatedly told everyone about how they ran such a close race, as if that were all that was even possible, would you keep them on your campaign? How can someone be so self-satisfied by losing?
If Grant does, in fact, check out the blogs and internets, then let me make this suggestion: fire the guy that continually reminds himself about how great it was to take second place.
I'm sorry Don, you just rubbed me the wrong way.
Grant's biggest problem was lack of name recognition since he was a political newcomer. He's picked up some slack. Its been a long time since Walt ran so he faces similar problems. But timing is everything in this gig. I haven't decided on who to support this go so I look forward to an airing of the candidates positions. Electability will be the key issue in the primary race.
The nature of politics in Idaho is that reporters and politicos switch places pretty frequently. It's not the best situation, but there you have it. We have only one of me at New West to cover this race, so this issue is always going to be there. I will, of course, be as scrupulous as possible about equal space and coverage, but people will still read things into what I write. I'll continue to put my disclosure at the bottom of all articles about the race, but I wish everybody would move on and discuss the difference between Minnick, Lewis and Grant. Stories about both coming up this week.
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