Alright so a few people noticed that Anne Pasley Stuart filed papers to run for the Senate seat I now fill. It is a slightly long story but the gist of it is this: I miss the House. Anne said she was going to retire from her house seat and the legislature so I thought wow, I miss that larger more chaotic, wild and humorous body, I could go back there. Why not?
I figure if you are going to stand in front of the train day after day you need someone there to keep you smiling when you scrape yourself back up off those tracks. So yes, I'm planning to go back to the House. I hoped Brian Cronin would fill my Senate seat. But now that's where it got complicated. I will miss many of my Republican colleagues in the Senate, especially the four Republican leaders I've come to be quite fond of. Some of the best law makers there just hide that humor and others do what is brave now and then when they can, though not as often as I wish.
The friends I left in the house in both parties will keep me going for the long haul so I can stand up between the marble walls day after day to say what needs to be said when it needs to be said. And I miss the policy work of Revenue & Taxation and Judiciary & Rules. I loved those committees. But really we need more reinforcements, we need folks to understand that we need help in here. From one end of the state to the other we need you all to do the hard thing and run for the legislature, run to stand up with us when all this is so wrong. We need you teachers and students, nurses and parents… in Canyon County and West Boise, in Eagle and Coeur d'Alene, Moscow and Twin Falls, Emmett and Idaho Falls. This is not a presidential election year so the attentive and policy oriented tend to be the ones who vote. This leads to more rational outcomes. That is good for Democrats and moderate Republicans.
Next year in the House and Senate we could be a larger minority, stronger, more able to work with the more reasonable factions to get things done, to stop the worst of what is killing our economy and decimating more and more jobs. Until then we just have to tell it how it is and make sure voters understand that gutting education was a choice and that if we all get involved this year it doesn't have to be this way.