True to his word,
GOP gubernatorial primary candidate Rex Rammell held a townhall
meeting in Salmon the other night that drew thirty mostly elderly
folks; not many, but double the recent caucus of the Lemhi County
Democrats. Rex started with an invocation and a Pledge of
Allegiance, two things that the secular Democrats — with their
blasé views of eternity and patriotism — dispensed with. Though
the Democrats had better food. Rex served tepid, soggy spaghetti;
odd in itself considering the red meat that would come later.
Poor Rex had parked his spiffy Palinesque blue tour bus in a
parking lot in the middle of town for the whole day, as a draw.
Everybody in Salmon must have seen it. It was plastered with his
campaign info, and a large painted Rex-Head smiled at passersby
all day. Maybe they were clued-in about his spaghetti recipe.
Rex’s crowd — despite their age — were feistier than the
Democrats. I wouldn’t describe them as Tea Partiers, but if they
share traits with them, it’s because they’ve been Tea Partiers
their entire lives. One old cowboy wore a foot-long sheathed
hunting knife on his belt. Rex himself wore an elegant charcoal
gray suit, a red tie, and a flag lapel pin. He’s slightly gray
and wears glasses, giving him the look of a nerdy
accountant.
He had an opening act, a guy named Ron Gillett, a Stanley
stockman and outfitter, who is Idaho’s most well-known anti-wolf
advocate. Gillett — white-haired, barrel-chested, in his 60s —
is something of a folk hero due to noteworthy past confrontations
with wolf supporters, including one where a woman named Lynne
Stone had him arrested for assault resulting from a scuffle that
she claimed injured her neck. Gillett told vivid stories about
how wolf packs literally tore apart and ate their prey — whether
wild elk or domestic cattle and sheep — alive. Luckily, we had
already enjoyed our spaghetti dinner.
Rex might have made a mistake with the gory anti-wolf
opener, especially as delivered by the fire-breathing Gillett.
After he took over, the crowd was up for more of this, and it
spilled over into his presentation. For a few minutes he lost
control of his cranky audience. At that point they would’ve voted
for Gillett for governor. Rex wanted to move on to state
government fiscal policy, taxes, and other banalities. “Okay, one
more question about the wolves, and then we’ll move on.” Rex’s
solution for those hundreds of wolves descended from the 1995
Canadian transplants? If elected governor, he promised to notify
the federal government to immediately remove them, or he would
order Idaho Fish and Game personnel to shoot them on sight. Good
luck with that one, Rex. At one point he gave out his website
address, and another oldtimer in the back blurted out: “I don’t
have a computer in my house, and I’ll never have one!” To which
Rex inquired as to the possibility of the man viewing the website
on a neighbor’s computer. The takeaway here is that Rex can
forego a Twitter account as a campaign communication tool.
The wolf discussion was actually a facade masking the
contentious issue of the management of federal public lands in
Idaho (63% of the state) and other Western states. Rex firmly
believes that these vast national parks, national monuments,
national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) holdings, etc.,
actually belong to their home states. This states rights argument
is rooted in the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and has
been hashed-over for a century in the West. When discoursing
about this, Rex uses the words “sovereign” and “sovereignty.” He
tells his sympathetic listeners that if elected, the Department
of the Interior and Department of Agriculture — and other
interested federal agencies — won’t have anything to say about
the management of those lands, because they will belong to the
people of Idaho. By coincidence, Utah governor Gary Herbert is
lately considering legal action to attempt to supersede the
Interior Department, and encourage private sector energy
development on off-limits BLM tracts in Utah. This may be typical
local federal-bashing in an election year, or it’s another
manifestation of our contemporary volatile national political
conversation in a bad economy. Either way, it’s a throwback to
the old Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s.
The Sagebrush Rebellion: In 1976, the majority Democrats in
Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act
(FLPMA). It established a system of administering BLM western
lands, presuming those lands would never be privatized or
governed by particular states. First term Utah senator Orrin
Hatch introduced contrary legislation in the U.S. Senate in 1980
with sixteen co-sponsors, including another freshman, Malcolm
Wallop of Wyoming. Hatch conceded that national parks and
national monuments belonged under the purview of the Department
of the Interior, but that BLM holdings, mostly sagebrush (hence,
the “Sagebrush Rebellion”), were good for local economic
development such as mining and ranching, so states and counties
deserved a say in their management. Hatch’s legislation went
nowhere in a Democratic Congress, but Ronald Reagan’s
inauguration in 1981 gave the Sagebrushers a friendly ear in the
Oval Office. Reagan appointed energy development-friendly James
Watt as Secretary of the Interior, and Watt battled FLPMA and
environmental groups at every turn, and to the satisfaction of
Western conservatives, until his legendary public gaffes forced
his resignation in 1983.
Rex Rammell’s small government conservatism makes him a
plausible candidate for Idaho governor. He promises tax and
spending cuts and fiscal responsibility in Boise. But the
Sagebrusher shtick is a loser. The federal government has managed
(actually “mismanaged” is the better word) the Western public
lands for over a century. But only a dwindling minority of
Westerners (as in Rex’s mostly elderly audience) think the states
would do a better job in administering them without subjecting
them to political and corporate corruption. Though some might
argue the latter is preferable to the past forty years of
enviro-inspired litigation in the federal courts with no end in
sight.
Rex has famously challenged his opponent — incumbent
Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter — to a debate before the May 25 GOP
primary. Otter probably will oblige, since the Idaho Legislature
recently concluded business for the year, and it’s suddenly the
campaign season. But Rex is impatient. Just last week he told the
Idaho Falls Post-Register: “I absolutely believe he’s
scared of me. He knows that he could be beat by Rex
Rammell.”
