KOOTENAI COUNTY
DEMOCRATS

"The People's Voice"

Quarterly Newsletter, Winter, 2010 

THE YEAR AHEAD

By Thom George - Central Committee Chair 

Happy New Year 2010!

One year ago we were coming off the heady days of an election that saw the Democrats capture the U.S. House of Representatives, The United States Senate and the White House. Although Idaho Democrats didn’t enjoy the same level of success in local races, in the 1^st Congressional District we did manage to defeat Bill Sali and sent a Democrat to Washington for the first time since 1994!

What a difference a year makes. Today, the economic crisis still grips the nation; our country’s involvement in the war in Iraq is diminishing, while our military commitment in Afghanistan is escalating. The economic crisis that began in the housing market has spread to all sectors of the world’s economy and job loss has surpassed home loss as the primary fear of many Americans.

President Obama continues to work for his ambitious agenda, but the enthusiasm across the country, so prevalent a year ago, has been tempered by people’s concerns for their jobs, their homes and their future.  The Tea Party movement that was created to oppose the President’s agenda has preyed on the fears and concerns of citizens to mobilize a very vocal opposition to the President and to all who wear the label Democrat.

Here, in deep red Idaho, we face the same challenges we have always faced, a Republican Governor who would just as soon dismantle government, a GOP super majority in the state Legislature that would not hesitate to eliminate the State Parks Department and cut the budget for Health and Welfare while at the same time wishing to refuse stimulus dollars from the Federal Government, in the name of state’s sovereignty.

It is under these challenging circumstances that we as Democrats must once again come together to oppose the policies of the Republican party that only serve the interests of some citizens of Idaho and to propose candidates and policies that will work for the good of everyone. We need to stand up and be counted. We need to step forward and run for office. We need to give our time, talents, and treasures to our party and our candidates so that they may carry this message to the voters here in Kootenai County and around the state.

At the top of our ticket we have Walt Minnick (D-ID) running for re-election and striving to do what hasn’t been done in 18 years and that is win re-election to Congress and be the voice we need in Washington. The voice that voted for SCHIP providing health coverage to 11 million children, the Public Land management Act (the most significant conservation bill in 15 years), and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Complementing the ticket is Keith Allred, formerly of the non-partisan, public policy organization Common Cause, who has announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Keith is well-known and highly respected around the Idaho Statehouse and will do a fantastic job leading this state through the challenging time ahead.

Locally, the well respected Dan English is running for reelection to County Clerk where he is still the lone Democrat in the Kootenai County Courthouse. We all need to help him maintain this precarious position. And George Sayler continues to represent the citizens of Coeur d’Alene with dignity and compassion in Boise.

But we need to do more for Dan and George, we need to recruit qualified and enthusiastic individuals to put their names on the ballot alongside Dan, George, Keith and Walt. People who will represent all the people in Idaho, not just the ones from their own party. Are you that person? Do you know that person?

The candidate recruitment committee is interested in hearing your suggestions, please call me at 208-660-4761, or email me.

Sincerely,

PEOPLE IN POLITICS

MEET KEITH

Keith Allred was raised in Twin Falls, Idaho.  A fifth-generation Idahoan, he grew up fishing on Silver Creek and hunting in the mountains near the family homestead his great-great-grandfather Allred grubbed out of sage brush over a century ago.

During high school, Keith spent summers working on his grandpa Gerber’s cattle ranch in Roosevelt, Utah, where tough times meant that he was often the lone hand working 1,200 acres and 400 head of cattle.

Keith graduated from Twin Falls High School in 1983.

After high school, Keith earned his B.A. in American History, studying for two years at Brown University before graduating from Stanford University.  Following his graduation, he served for two years in the Germany, Hamburg mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  While still an undergraduate, Keith was struck by the way in which our founders’ insights into human nature resulted in a government of checks and balances.  A Ph.D. in organizational behavior and social psychology at UCLA allowed him to pursue these interests.  For the following decade, Keith taught leadership, first, as a professor at Columbia University and, then, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where his specialties included negotiation, conflict resolution, persuasion, and individual and group decision making.   [READ MORE]

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GOING MAVERICK

An Article from The Inlander
By Kevin Taylor

His party on the left and his state on the right, Walt Minnick has blazed his own trail in his first year in office.

During a visit to Coeur d’Alene last month, Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick was still reveling in a highlight-reel moment from his first year in Congress. Just the day before, he took on the Man.

OK, the Man in this case happened to be from his own party — longtime Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. The Man, in a slightly more abstract sense, was also President Barack Obama, who had been pushing hard all fall for new financial regulations to protect consumers from predatory lending practices.

Minnick objected to splitting regulators into two agencies — creating a new one to handle consumer protections — and proposed that the government instead only tweak the existing system.

It was a showdown playing out Dec. 11 on C-SPAN. And there was Minnick — the freshman, an independent-minded Westerner and member of the Blue Dog Coalition, the rare Democrat ever to be elected to Congress from Idaho — gesturing from the podium in a blue blazer and vividly striped tie.

“I don’t often disagree with my committee chair,” Minnick was saying in Coeur d’Alene, “but yesterday I was debating him on the floor of the House!”

Minnick’s eyes were still sparkling. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, it was a terribly wonky debate, which thrills a detail-oriented businessman who has a Harvard MBA. “As a businessman, I know about derivatives because we used them,” he says.

Second, it’s an adrenaline rush for a junior member of the caucus to lead an insurrection on the House floor, which is what Minnick was doing by pitching his alternative proposal. It was defeated by five votes and only after Democratic leadership extended the vote until they got what they needed.

The moment on the House floor says a lot about Minnick, a former timber industry executive who has carved out a spot in 2009 as a maverick congressman, and as the atypical freshman with high-level business acumen.

The moment also says a lot about the state of Congress because the windup to Minnick’s floor debate — “How many times, Madam Chair, are we going to create a massive new federal bureaucracy …” — has been replayed by Republicans wanting embarrass Minnick’s own party.

The trim and affable 67-year-old shot onto the political scene in 2008 with a narrow and stunning defeat of one-term incumbent Republican Bill Sali, becoming just the second Democrat elected to Congress from Idaho’s 1st District since 1966. But in his first year, caught between Idaho and the Beltway, Minnick has found the political footing to be tricky.

GOP national leadership has made it a priority to recapture the seat and takes every opportunity to try and tie Minnick to a liberal administration.  [READ MORE]

COMMUNITY NEWS

An Article from The Spokesman Review
By Jacab Livingston

HE SCULPTS IN WOOD

Veteran, retired steelworker carving gift for president

In a garage-turned-art shop on a plot of forested mountainside west of Rathdrum, Bruce Wright nimbly worked his hands over a wooden disc almost as wide as a dinner table.

Wright, dressed in blue slacks and suspenders, hunched over the thick slab of red alder as classical music drifted out of the building’s large sliding doors.

He gripped a chisel and carefully carved a letter out of the perimeter of the piece, a hand-carved presidential seal 34 inches across and weighing 20 pounds; the 66-year-old retired steel welder was a study in dexterity and deliberate craftsmanship.

“I can't really draw that well,” Wright, a Colville native, confessed as he took a break from carving to show some examples of the pieces he’s made through the years, many of which adorn the inside of the Rathdrum-area home he shares with his wife, Paula.

“But I’ve always liked to carve. I got into it about 20 years ago, and after I retired, I started doing it again.” About the work in progress, he added, “We voted for President Obama, so I thought I’d do something to commemorate his election. I’m proud of America, and I think we’re proud because that means anybody can be elected.”

He’s already 60 hours into the seal and has at least another 40 to go before it’s finished. Wright’s wooden works often take weeks to complete since he does everything without the aid of power tools. Despite the hours he puts into each hand-carved sculpture, he often gives them away to friends and family or donates them to

In the next few weeks, Wright and his wife will try to and figure out how to ship the engraved presidential seal to the White House, which they estimate will cost a few hundred dollars. “If it’s not something they want, then at least it will make good kindling,” Wright said jokingly.

(Reprinted with permission of the author)

The Kootenai County Democrats have enlisted the help of Congressman Walt Minnick (D-ID) to help get Bruce’s artwork to the Frank & Bethine Church Banquet, in Boise, ID on February 27, 2010, and then on to President Barack Obama, in Washington, D.C. 

Albert Wilkerson has generously volunteered to pay a substantial part of the cost necessary to send Bruce and his artwork to Boise, if you would like to help defray the expenses associated with this event, please contact Thom at 208-660-4761.

GUEST HIGHLIGHT
Democracy Dinner features reknowned leader

GERARD COMMITTED TO SOCIAL JUSTICE

The son of a union miner, Leo W. Gerard started working at Inco's nickel smelter in Sudbury, Ontario at age 18. Inspired by a lifelong commitment to economic and social justice, Gerard rose through the ranks to become the first president of the new USW. Before being elected to his first full term by acclamation in 2001, Gerard had served as the Steelworkers' seventh international president, having been appointed to the presidency by the union's International Executive Board upon George Becker's retirement.

The second Canadian to occupy the USW's highest office, Gerard immediately embarked the union on a course of renewed activism, demanding — and winning — government action to halt an unprecedented flood of illegal steel imports and negotiating precedent-setting labor agreements that positioned the USW as the decisive force for a humane consolidation of the industry. Gerard also secured a prescription drug benefit for the retirees of liquidated steel companies, financed by hundreds of millions of dollars of VEBA contributions negotiated with the new companies.

Gerard also serves on the U.S. National Commission on Energy Policy and is a founding board member of the Apollo Alliance, a non-profit public policy initiative for creating good jobs in pursuit of energy independence.

View Leo Gerard's appearance on Bill Moyer's Journal.