Otter, Allred win primaries

BOISE - Republican Gov. Butch Otter won Tuesday's primary, advancing to face Democrat Keith Allred in November.

With 60 percent of precincts counted, Otter, 68, was leading five rivals with 55 percent of the vote.

Allred, 45, a former Harvard University professor and government reformer, also won handily, besting Lee Chaney Sr. of Preston with 81 percent support.

The Otter-Allred matchup is already off to a rancorous start.

Allred, of Eagle, has criticized Otter for backing the 2010 Legislature's move to cut public education spending in the year starting July 1 amid a budget crisis. That prompted the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, a business group that backs Otter, to lambaste Allred on an attack website, saying he favors a budget that would have left Idaho in the red.

"Clearly, they expect we're going to be able to run a tough race," Allred said. Allred contends the economy is showing signs of picking up, so lawmakers and the governor irresponsibly low-balled the budget by ignoring more optimistic tax revenue growth projections for 2010-2011.

Allred, who outraised Otter $240,000 to $193,000 between Jan. 1 and May 9, expects he'll have to raise more than $1 million win.

"We did it with a lot more donors, with a lot of small checks," Allred said. "We're on a very good path to November."

Otter, who lives on his ranch in Star, has been in public office continuously since 1987, including four terms as lieutenant governor and three as U.S. representative starting in 2000.

Speaking at a GOP party in a Boise motel Tuesday evening, he lauded the Legislature's "heavy lifting" - cutting budgets, rather than raising taxes like neighboring Oregon and Washington state - and insisted that set Idaho on a course to lead the country out of the recession.

"I know it's been tough, but we've got a better day coming because of what we've done in the past," he said.

Otter also underscored his opposition to federal initiatives including President Obama's push to reform health insurance that includes mandates to buy coverage. Idaho and more than a dozen other states are suing over that plan.

"We were going to push back on Washington, D.C., and their constant effort to try to tell us how to live in Idaho," he said.

Of Otter's GOP challengers, the two best known were Ada County Commissioner Sharon Ullman and former elk rancher Rex Rammell from Rexburg. Both courted voters from the tea party movement, making hay of Otter's failed 2009 push to raise Idaho's gas tax.

Rammell secured 25 percent of voters, with Ullman tallying just 8 percent.

Rammell, who spent the last weeks of his campaign pulling an inflatable dinosaur behind his vehicle, also ran in 2008 as an independent for U.S. Senate against winner Jim Risch. Last May, he pledged that if he lost the 2010 primary to Otter that "the era of Rammell in politics will come to an end."

A Tuesday evening phone call to Rammell wasn't immediately returned.

In addition to the gubernatorial vote, Lt. Gov. Brad Little, a 2009 Otter appointee, won the Republican primary.

Little was leading two GOP rivals with about 67 percent; the Emmett rancher will be the favorite in the November election against an outsider Democrat, Eldon Wallace.