When the lieutenant governor’s seat opened up in 1986, Otter pondered a political comeback. The state was in an economic slump, and Otter had firsthand knowledge of how to get companies to trade with Idaho and provide jobs. His new campaign had less to do with ideology than with the nuts and bolts of business and economics.
Otter was the party’s choice and the overwhelming favorite for the nomination, but he was challenged by an eastern Idaho Republican organizer named Chuck Lempesis. A political nobody, Lempesis started to gain traction by slamming Otter’s pornography bill vote, his statements on drug use, and his unwillingness to ban abortion. (Though a practicing Catholic, Otter has been reluctant to involve the state in that issue.) On primary day, Lempesis held Otter to 58 percent, robbing him of eastern Idaho and the Mormon vote. On election day, Otter barely won—he was almost felled, again, by weak support in the east.
Lt. Gov. Otter wasn’t humbled by his narrow victories. His first month in office, the state legislature voted to comply with a Reagan administration requirement that states raise their drinking ages to 21 in return for federal highway money. Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus had left town when the bill was passed, leaving Otter in charge. He vetoed it.
The controversial Otter was back. State Rep. Mack Neibur, a Mormon Republican, commented that the drinking age veto “just about shot [Otter] in the butt.” But Otter remembers that veto as a symbolic stand that made sense to voters.
“Initially they were a little concerned,” he says. “But I wrote in my veto message about the 10th Amendment, and then in my letter I asked President Reagan, ‘What happened to my great champion of states’ rights?’ Here was the big government telling the states what to do.”
Otter rolled to re-election in 1990. He mulled a run for governor in 1994. But two events in the summer of 1992 roiled the waters for him. On July 31, he participated in, and won, a “tight jeans contest” at the Rockin’ Rodeo Inn in Boise. It was a silly story that would have bothered only the most starched-shirt Idahoans, if not for what happened the following night. Otter was driving his Jeep on I-84 in Canyon County when police saw him swerve across the lanes. When they pulled him over, he claimed he was only trying to grab his cowboy hat after the wind blew it off. The officer gave Otter a sobriety test. He failed it.
Otter’s gubernatorial ambitions were sidelined as he was sentenced to 72 hours of community service and 16 hours of alcohol awareness meetings. “It was my mistake,” he says today. “I took personal responsibility for it. That’s how our laws work. That’s how our system works.”
Otter hung on to his job in 1994 and 1998 as the GOP moved on. When Helen Chenoweth-Hage, who represented Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, retired in 2000, Otter put his hat in the ring, and he faced all the criticism of his character and his philosophy anew. Dennis Mansfield, a Christian conservative activist, pounced on the DUI conviction as proof that Otter couldn’t represent Idahoans. “Just what we need in Washington,” said one of his ads. “Another bad example for our children.” Otter faced Mansfield head on, made no apologies, and beat him by 21 points. In November he steamrolled the Democrats’ candidate and headed to Washington.
No one knew quite what to expect from Butch Otter on the national stage. He voted to approve President Bush’s tax cuts. In May 2001 he voted with most Republicans (including Mike Simpson) in favor of the expansive No Child Left Behind Act. But after September 11, Otter’s libertarian streak sliced through the Republican caucus. When the PATRIOT Act came to a vote, he was one of three Republicans to oppose it. (The others were Ron Paul of Texas and Bob Ney of Ohio.)
“I understood what the arguments were,” Otter says today. “In the original version of the bill they included sunsets, to look at the laws again in four years. But I knew that once the government takes powers for itself, you’re never going to get your personal responsibilities back.”
In the 2002 election Otter faced Democrat Betty Richardson, who said she would have voted for the PATRIOT Act. It was a closer election than the 2000 race; Otter’s victory margin shrunk from 30 points in 2000 to 18 points in 2002. (Richardson says she doubts the PATRIOT Act was much of an issue.) A few months into the 108th Congress, an emboldened Otter offered the amendment defunding sneak-and-peek searches. It passed in a landslide, 309 to 118. Before party leaders sliced it out of the bill, the move earned him the ire of the Justice Department and the support of most of the voters back home.
“It really helped me when [Attorney General John] Ashcroft came out against the amendment,” Otter says, “when he went on tour supporting the PATRIOT Act. That didn’t go over well in Idaho.”
Those were the highlights of Otter’s House career. At other times, he acted with the GOP majority to pass bills libertarians strongly opposed. Otter provided a crucial vote for the 2003 law that created a new Medicare prescription drug benefit, expected to cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years. When a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning came to the floor, Otter stuck with his party and voted for it. “In the West, we have what is called a brand,” Otter explains. “That brand is yours; you put it on stuff that you own. And that flag is our brand, as Americans. Anyone who wants to burn that up—they can’t defile my brand with their free speech.”
That wasn’t the only time the congressman’s libertarian streak disappeared. Otter also voted for the 2005 House bill intervening in the Terri Schiavo case, overruling Florida courts to keep a brain-damaged woman on life support. He has voted for all the Republican iterations of immigration reform, even when they criminalized Good Samaritans who aid illegals. (“We need to get the border under control,” Otter says, “and then we can decide what to do about the people who are already here.”) He has voted for several versions of campaign finance limits.
Since he declared for governor in 2005, Otter has kept up a political juggling act. He’s voted against some funding packages for the Iraq war and for Hurricane Katrina relief. But as his supporters back in Idaho Falls know, he voted for the original Iraq force resolution. He’s walked back his previous support for privatization of Social Security. He reversed his position on privatizing Idaho’s public land after his opponent, Jerry Brady, relentlessly pounded the issue.
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