OPINION: Jimmy Carter’s years brought about a change in Idaho politics

The last time a Democrat won Idaho’s vote for president was 60 years ago, in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson prevailed in a landslide nationally and narrowly in Idaho, and Republicans have won the state easily since.

In these last six decades, the highest Democratic percentage for the office, 37.1%, was won by Jimmy Carter, who died at 100 on Dec. 29. (Barack Obama in 2008 came next highest, at 36.1%.)

Carter’s numbers fell by about 12 points four years later, a drop more severe than he experienced nationally. Some of that may relate to the candidacy of Ronald Reagan, who was almost preternaturally popular in Idaho.

But Idaho, and its politics, changed during those Carter years in various ways, and probably more than the nation’s did. Not all of it — not most of it, for that matter — was directly attributable to Carter himself. But the Carter era, with all it entailed in Carter’s own action and the opposition to him, was something of a pivot for Idaho, as it would be in many other places. And a president famously unconcerned about the political impacts of his actions was not well positioned to oppose a wave rising up against him.

The Carter administration did have an effect on Idaho directly in a number of ways, in some places economically but not least its environment. Carter’s Interior secretary — the only cabinet member to serve all through that administration — was Cecil Andrus, plucked from the Idaho governorship. He had a real impact on federal lands policy, most famously perhaps in Alaska, but to a great degree in Idaho as well. Carter signed the Central Idaho Wilderness Act (pushed by Andrus and Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho) in 1980, and it formed the basis of what has become the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

Carter may, in fact, have had a closer connection to Idaho in a practical way than any president in the last century. As a naval officer, he worked with the National Reactor Testing Station at Idaho Falls. (The Carter administration years were a growth time for the site.) He vacationed for several days on the remote Middle Fork of the Salmon River, and visited Grand Teton National Park.

Carter took a lot of blame for the reversals in those years in Idaho’s timber industry, though most of the trends that saw its diminishment both predated and followed his time in office. (Northern Idaho’s mining industry cratered during the Reagan years, though Reagan never was blamed for that.) This was on top of the many other complaints against Carter of a national scope, from the economy to the hostages in Tehran to the Panama Canal treaty.

But Carter’s unpopularity in Idaho was something remarkable to see, a ferocious anger out of degree and proportion with whatever disagreements many Idahoans may have had with him, and of a different kind than was normal for Idaho. It was a kind of dismissive fury new to politics in the area, probably made possible by the broader disillusionment of the Vietnam War and Watergate periods. And it has carried through over time.

Democratic presidents since have been able to gain no traction except in the diminishing blue sectors of the state; the mention that a person or candidate is a Democrat often is enough to shut down the listening before another word is said. This was not true a half-century ago.

That change in the social environment was an opportunity for political activists, many of them national rather than local in origin, who fed on a growing sense of cynicism to develop a politics of antagonism — one of far less interest in what one’s own party or preferences could do, and bitter anger toward the other guys, who over time became redefined from loyal opposition to deadly enemies.

These are some of the reasons the Carter years were among the central turning points taking our politics from what was to what is, unfortunately, today. And Idaho turns out to be one of the best case studies for it.

Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor who blogs at ridenbaugh.com. He may be contacted at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com.