STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
The Blaine County Democrats will hold a meeting and potluck from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21, at the Democrats’ new headquarters at 101 Empty Saddle Trail in the old Marketron building.
The community is welcome
The Blaine County Democrats have been busy since moving into their new headquarters, hosting a variety of events for local legislative candidates Ron Taylor, Ned Burns and Karma Fitzgerald and bringing in a few of the 1,093 candidates running on the November ballot for Wood River Valley residents to meet in person.
Among them: Tom Arkoosh, a lawyer who decided to run for Attorney General in late July after the original candidate on the Democratic ticket bowed out.
Arkoosh said he is running as a non-partisan since, he said, the office of Attorney General should be non-partisan. He wasn’t a member of either party for many years but, he said, he believes Idahoans should have a choice in the November election.
The fourth-generation Idahoan told of growing up in Gooding where at 15 he helped his father trail sheep through Quigley Canyon. A University of Idaho law school graduate who also attended Harvard, he has practiced in nearly every field with particular emphasis on water law, civil litigation, criminal law and administrative law over his 44-year career.
He played a key role in the Snake River Basin Adjudication.
He said he is determined to apply the consistent rule of law when it comes to such issues as water, reproductive health and education.
“I don’t want to sit down and talk with those downstream about giving up Idaho’s water, as my opponent has talked about,” he said. “What’s there to talk about? We need to protect our water.”
Conservatism, he added, means an Idahoan can say, ‘It ain’t nobody’s business but my own.’ I promise protection of that ideal.”
Arkoosh noted that a long list of Republican officials have endorsed him, including former Sec. of State Ben Ysursa, former Idaho State Treasurer Lydia Justice Edwards and former Idaho attorney general and Idaho Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones, who is serving as his campaign treasurer.
As of Friday, 54,648 donors had given nearly $44 million to the candidates, with a lot of the focus on the attorney general’s race between Rep. Raul Labrador and Arkoosh. That’s a sign of voter enthusiasm and attention to issues like abortion, Boise State political expert Charles Hunt told KTVB.
Hunt said Arkoosh had raised more than $200,000 just since joining the race two months ago, while Labrador had raised $775,000. Arkoosh’s haul is pretty remarkable in a Republican state, Hunt said, and it indicates a sizable number of people are concerned about Labrador’s far right stance on such topics as COVID, vaccines and election denial.