By David Goerg

REXBURG—Madison High School was the site for a multi-county Republican Fall Banquet on Saturday, Oct. 16, attended by around 400 people from Madison County and the surrounding areas.

The event featured remarks from Gov. Brad Little, Rep. Mike Simpson, and Idaho Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder. The banquet was emceed by Sen. Doug Ricks.

Also present at the event were congressional candidate Bryan Smith, who recently announced his candidacy for Idaho’s second congressional district; Art Macomber, candidate for Attorney General; Ed Humphreys, a candidate for governor; and Debbie Critchfield, a candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

LITTLE

Little briefly mentioned his efforts to improve literacy in Idaho’s education system, along with infrastructure spending, and more especially, statewide improvements in broadband technology.

In September, Little joined 25 other governors to request an in-person meeting about border issues with President Joe Biden. He recently returned from a tour of the U.S./Mexico border, a trip he took on Oct. 6 with nine other governors.

At the banquet, Little focused much of his remarks on the border crisis.

“When [the drug cartels] surge some group of Haitians, Peruvians, Columbians, Venezuelans, Guatemalans—fill in the blank—they are doing that as bait, so somewhere else, they can get drugs across,” Little said. “We have to send a message all the way down to South America that our borders aren’t open. It has to happen right now. We have to [stop] those people from getting across the border.”

Little said one of the reasons for the urgency in securing the border was the amount of drugs coming into the country.

“The streets down there are just absolutely full of narcotics,” he said. “Three out of ten of these narcotic pills have lethal doses. … It’s one of the most critical issues.”

Little concluded his remarks by heralding traditional conservative values.

“Right now in Idaho, things are pretty good,” he said. “If we continue on the route we are on, our kids will continue to choose to stay right here in Idaho.”

SIMPSON

Simpson gave what he characterized as a “state of the union” address for Idaho.

“This is not going to be a state of the union like you’ll hear from Joe Biden,” Simpson began.

Simpson was very critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the Mexican/American border. He claimed that the Biden administration’s abandonment of Trump’s border wall project was largely responsible for the current crisis at the border.

He said that Biden had mishandled and botched the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“I can tell you that if Trump had been President, this exit from Afghanistan would have been entirely different,” Simpson said. “The reality is, our enemies don’t fear us, and our friends don’t trust us. That’s the state of our foreign affairs right now.”

Simpson denounced a variety of national issues, including nation-wide efforts to defund the police and perceived assaults on election integrity through ballot manipulation.

“Those are some of the things that are happening in Washington,” Simpson said.

He said that the biggest issue of all was federal spending.

In addition to criticizing the trillions of dollars of spending and appropriations, he claimed that the programs and plans that manage this funding are conducted in a fundamentally dishonest way. According to Simpson, proponents of spending often claim that programs will be “sunset” or discontinued after a certain number of years, when such is not the case.

“A lot of these programs if you start them, you are not going to end them in five years, you are going to keep going on,” he said. “It’s a dishonest way of scoring what its actually going to cost.”

WINDER

Winder spoke about certain accomplishments that the Republican party had accomplished through the senate, including provisions made by the legislature to call themselves back into session with a 60% percent majority, and efforts to protect Second Amendment rights during “extreme emergencies.”

 “I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the media makes us look like we’re a little dysfunctional, sometimes,” Winder said. “But I can assure you that the House and Senate leadership work together all the time trying to get things done and trying to find that sweet spot to get legislation done.”

Winder also defined the relationship between the two houses of Idaho’s congress as being necessarily combative.

“We have two bodies of natural tension,” he said. “Remember, our forefathers set our government in such a way that there is a natural tension between the (legislative) and executive branches, and it’s also supposed to be there between the legislative (House and Senate).”

Winder put in a plug for maintaining traditional values, something he believes is important to keeping Idaho a great place to live.

“We are fortunate to live in Idaho. It’s still the best state, and it gravels me to no end when people move to our state because it’s such a great state, and as soon as they get here, they try and change it,” Winder concluded. “We need to keep our traditional values.”

See more local news and events at rexburgcommons.com, and be sure to check out our community calendar.