Zollinger’s comments on the grocery tax and election were spot on. The real shame in Idaho politics was allowing Governor Otter to win a third term. He is and always will be a crony establishment politician. He takes care of the lobbyists and those that keep him and the rest of the establishment in office.
We saw it with the racetrack gambling machines, his veto of CBD OIL, the Wi-Fi deal, the Corrections Corp of America fiasco, and his infamous veto of repealing the grocery tax. The grocery tax is the most regressive tax we have in our state because it affects the low and middle-income people to such a great degree, but Otter doesn’t care, as he is a tax-and-spend governor. This governor is not a man of the people anymore but an elitist crony.
As Zollinger said, we have three candidates running for governor and I think he made some interesting observations. Little is going to get the old guard ranchers and agriculture voters along with those who represent the crony establishment. Tom Ahlquist is the new guy on the block who is making a lot of promises. The problem is we have no idea how he will govern. A lot of ideas but no details as to how he will implement them. Representative Zollinger is correct in his assessment of Tom, in that he will take the more moderate voters or, should we say, the new crony establishment. This makes him the Trojan horse in this race.
To make my point, I listened to an interview Mr. Ahlquist participated in a week or so ago with Melissa Devlin and in his conversation with her on Healthcare, he said the following and I quote. “Let’s see what happens with our exchange in the next few month’s/years as my friends that are CEO’s of the health insurance companies are not real happy right now with what’s happening.” You can hear the interview by going to this link and listening to the podcast at the 30-minute, 30-second mark. This is what we have been talking about in our previous articles. He talks about his friends who are CEO’s of the insurance companies so you have to ask yourself the question, is he going to take care of his friends or will he do the right thing for the people of Idaho?
If Representative Zollinger is right and we are just about to turn Idaho’s legislature conservative in 2018, then the real question is, why would we want to elect Tom Ahlquist who would be a moderate governor for the next four years? Mr. Ahlquist is just a little too cozy with the elite establishment in this state and that really bothers us along with the fact that he has no real details in his plan for Idaho. We believe Representative Zollinger makes a valid point about the competition for governor. He pegged pretty well with his call that Labrador who has a long track record of being a maverick conservative will garner 35 to 40% of the vote giving him enough to win the election in 2018. We must also consider the fact that he is a seasoned politician having served in the Idaho Legislature and as congressman for the first congressional district.
Tommy Ahlquist is an unknown who has never been in government and therefore we have no voting history for him. We don’t even remember a time when he has opposed Governor Otter on any legislation in the past. While we find some of his ideas refreshing—like his talk about cutting the budget by $100 million—we have to wonder where these cuts will be made. Tom has billed himself as a businessman who is savvy when it comes to the competitive bidding process, and he talks about that in an interview with the Spokesman Review where he is quoted as saying. “This is my business. We’ve invested $331 million in the state of Idaho. All of that has been with competitive bids and grinding of budgets and pro-formas, where we make things happen. We can do exactly that same thing with tax dollars.” We would like to know how many of those projects his company invested in were Urban Renewal projects and were partially financed by our taxpayer dollars. As we have said in previous articles, we are also concerned about Mr. Ahlquist’s wish-y-wash-y view of Common Core and the sanctity of marriage. Tom needs to lay out his plan a little better if he wants Idaho’s voters to take him seriously as a candidate for Governor of our state. You can spend all of the money you want but if the people don’t believe you can do the job it is all for naught.
“We Get the Government We Deserve”
