BOISE -- Republican state Sen. Sheila Sorensen has submitted her resignation to the Senate's GOP leader, calling for the party's candidate for her seat in the November election to be appointed to fill the vacancy.
"It would give him a slight edge as an incumbent," Sorensen wrote in the letter to Senate President Pro Tem Robert Geddes of Soda Springs.
Sorensen, who served 12 years in the Senate after six in the House, announced her decision to step aside last fall after her husband, plastic surgeon and former state legislator Dean Sorensen, joined a medical practice in Maui. She has been traveling between Idaho and Hawaii since then.
Conservative Republican Dave Baumann faces Democrat Kate Kelly for Sorensen's seat in the fall. It is one of the races Democratic leaders believe they have a strong chance of winning.
State Democratic Party Director Maria Weeg called it inconsistent for Sorensen to want to turn her seat over to Baumann after blasting his political views as unrepresentative of voters in the southeast Boise district that includes Boise State University.
"That's not the kind of senator I thought Sheila Sorensen was," Weeg said. "The senator we knew was a moderate who stood up in that district against the Senate leadership on key issues. That kind of independent thinking marked her service."
Sorensen, whose letter was received by state officials Friday, said her resignation would be effective upon the appointment of a successor.
The Republican legislative district committee will now meet to select up to three nominees to replace Sorensen for the remainder of the term which ends Dec. 2. Gov. Dirk Kempthorne will have 15 days after submission of that slate to appoint the new senator.
For the past six years, Sorensen has been the chairwoman of the Senate State Affairs Committee, which is made up of the leaders from both parties and handles many of the most controversial issues brought to the Senate from abortion and gay marriage to liquor sales and open records.
She played a key roll last March in heading off attempts to force a vote in the Senate on a House-passed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Idaho. She called the proposal unnecessary since the state already had a law banning gay marriage and warned that putting the issue before voters would subject the state to a divisive political campaign.
