From the Panhandle

A Positive Piscine Portent for Idaho’s Democratic Gubernatorial Hopeful

By Cate Huisman, 7-22-10

	The candidate's image from his website.

Keith Allred thinks things are going to be different this time. He has to. He’s a Democrat running for governor in Idaho.

Allred took a swing through Sandpoint earlier this week and stopped for coffee at a home on Second Avenue, where he was joined by far more people than there were chairs for, all wanting to hear his vision for the state that sits mostly south of us.

He tends to list things: Here are his four reasons why it’s different this time:
1. His popularity numbers are going up while those of his opponent, incumbent governor Butch Otter, are going down.
2. He has raised more money than he has spent, while again, for Otter the opposite is true.
3. Independents who have supported Republicans in the past are supporting him now.
4. Some particular poll numbers are looking pretty promising—although he did not feel at liberty to divulge details on those yet, he indicated that they added a fourth reason to be optimistic.

The candidate also mentioned a general frustration with political parties and lobbyists, and his record cannot help but be better than Otter’s in that area, because he has not held political office before. Instead, he believes that his experience as a mediator and his familiarity with Idaho and its issues—he’s a fifth-generation Idahoan—will help him more effectively involve the resources and ideas of all citizens to govern the state. His organization, The Common Interest, has been successful in bringing together individuals of both parties to cut property taxes for homeowners and to defeat proposals to build a private prison and raise car registration fees.

Allred also thinks Otter is vulnerable because Otter cut state funding for public education; Otter was the first governor of Idaho in history to do so. People are unhappy about that, and Allred doesn’t think it was necessary. He thinks education could have been protected if
1. Taxes had been collected more aggressively: “Butch Otter has let tax deadbeats steal textbooks from Idaho school kids.”
2. Otter had used income projections that were closer to reality.
3. The state had filled up the shortfall with some money from an endowment fund.

And a final positive indicator is the attention that the Idaho governor’s race is getting beyond Idaho. Keith’s wife Christine noted that he had recently floated the Henry’s Fork in a flotilla with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. Allred hooked a 22-inch rainbow just as the reporter was drifting by. “If the fish are supporting us, the votes will follow,” she said.

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