Representing Idaho's Independent Values In Congress

Press Release

C.L. "Butch" Otter is now the governor of Idaho, but on October 24, 2001, he was serving in the U.S. House as the representative for Idaho's First Congressional District. The country was still reeling from the events of 9/11, and on that October day the House voted on the Patriot Act, a sweeping measure which we now know compromised the core Constitutional rights this country holds dear.

But given the mood of the public and their leaders, the level of political posturing and the heated rhetoric of that time, no one was surprised by the lopsided results of the vote in the House. The Patriot Act was approved overwhelmingly, 357 to 66. Only three Republicans voted against the bill, and one of them was Otter. Some pundits in D.C. may have been surprised by his vote, but it surprised none of us in Idaho who know well Butch's independent, libertarian values, values rooted in Idaho's history and culture.

Cecil Andrus is a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, but in October 1988 he was two years into what would prove to be his third of four terms as governor of Idaho. Andrus was and is a committed conservationist who got his start in Idaho politics after working as a lumberjack and helping run a saw mill. He has never been afraid to encourage the intelligent, careful use of Idaho's natural resources, but he has been just as insistent about protecting natural resources and keeping this state pure.

That's why in 1988 he had finally had enough. The U.S. Department of Energy, over the objections of Andrus and many others in Idaho, had for years been shipping radioactive nuclear waste to a storage site near a national laboratory in Eastern Idaho. Federal officials were not listening, so Andrus made them listen: He sent troopers to the state line and ordered them to stop a train with nuclear waste bound for Idaho. The train sat on the tracks for weeks before finally being shipped back to Colorado.

Frank Church first came to national attention in 1956 when, at 32, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was known in Idaho as a World War II veteran and brilliant young attorney who had lost a bid for the Idaho Legislature. However, in 1956 he stunned the state and won the Democratic primary before going on to win election to the U.S. Senate. He quickly made a name for himself, winning appointment to the Foreign Relations Committee and championing western causes such as wilderness conservation and dam construction.

In 1975, Church was named chairman of a special committee to investigate allegations of abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. He took up the cause with vigor and without regard to the views of some in the Washington, D.C., establishment who felt that his inquiries were, to say the least, impolite. He pushed for reforms and got them: curbing illegal wiretaps, ending burglaries of American citizens, stopping the harassment of Civil Rights activists and exposing plots against foreign leaders.

Senator Church, Governor Andrus and Governor Otter all reflect something important to Idaho. As elected leaders they represented Idaho's spirit of independence, its citizen's insistence on doing what is right and just, and our rich history and heritage of a libertarian culture which arises from the land and forests of our state. Representing party, ideology and self-interest were not on the list of priorities for those three men, and they are not on the list of priorities for the people of Idaho.

As a Congressman, the values I am charged to uphold are the bedrock upon which my state and its people base their daily lives: Hard work. Personal freedom. Paying for what you spend. Insisting upon limited, effective government. A right to privacy. The opportunity to succeed. Voting to uphold those values has given me the status as the most independent member of Congress, an honor for which I am quite proud.

However, over the last several months it has become clear that our nation's political system too often forces the placement of party and ideological interests before the interests of individual states and citizens. And that means the only thing wholly represented in Washington, D.C., is the dysfunctional culture of Washington. D.C.

We must change our political culture from partisan to effective, from angry to collaborative. Doing that requires more than a desire and willingness to change. It takes more than sending new people to Congress who, like me, are not afraid to cross party lines. It will in fact take a new devotion to independence, to personal freedom, to the core values defining us as a people.

It will, in short, mean making Washington, D.C., a lot more like Idaho.

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