Terry's Elections Guide and Predictions: Idaho
Governor (Open, Republican-held)
Jerry Brady (D) 49 - Butch Otter (R) 47
I am predicting another upset with this one. Otter is the second Republican congressman with the opportunity to cost his party the governor's office as well as his congressional seat, and Otter has the special privilege of doing so in one of the most Republican states in the union. This election should not have been competitive, but apparently Otter assumed he had this won and barely campaigned for most of the year. I should probably predict this race to go the other way, but Brady has been energetic and I don't think Otter will get his ducks in a row in time.
ID-01 (Open, Republican-held)
Bill Sali (R) 47 - Larry Grant (D) 43
This race is one of the jewels of the much-maligned 50-state strategy that pretty much everyone in DC has finally conceded makes a ton of sense. Here's the story: Howard Dean wants Democrats to compete on the presidential level in all 50 states, figuring that we're not going to win in these rock-ribbed Republican states in the near future, but we have to start trying sometime. This is what he ran on when he ran for DNC chair, and it's what he's done. Democratic bloggers picked up on the theme in early 2005 and argued that Democrats should attempt to run serious candidates in every Republican congressional district in the country, on the philosophy that a few will become competitive in 2006 and most of them will become pickup opportunities years down the line. As it turns out, most of the best chances for Democratic pickups are coming in districts that were not considered threats at the beginning of the cycle and likely would not have received DC attention or funding were it not for the 50-state strategy. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to its credit, was one of the first DC organizations to realize the value of this strategy, and after some acrimony early in the cycle, jumped fully on board and now supports something like 70 challenges to Republican-held districts. What's been most amazing, though, is that many of these serious challenges have come in districts no one thought would become competitive even in the near future, such as here in Idaho's first district. The Republican nominee, Bill Sali, is a state representative who the Republican state House speaker said "That idiot is just an absolute idiot. He doesn't have one ounce of empathy in his whole fricking body. And you can put that in the paper." (Follow this link for quotes that are even worse; look for the one on breast cancer.) The Democrat, Larry Grant, is a really good guy who's honest, hard-working, and exactly what you want in a congressman. Unfortunately, the dynamics of the district and the attack ads against Grant probably put this one out of reach. Maybe a rematch will do it?