Guest opinion by Melaleuca’s Frank VanderSloot

A BIG CHANCE INDEED

During his debate with Butch Otter sponsored by the City Club, AJ Balukoff’s closing statement was, “I hope you’ll take a chance and vote for me for Governor.” When he said that, I thought to myself, “If we elected him we would be taking a big chance indeed!”

AJ is a very nice man. In fact, I like him a lot. But it’s hard to find anything in his background that would qualify him to be Governor.

I feel it’s important to clarify my position on this because many editorials in various newspapers across Idaho have speculated that at some point I was going to endorse AJ as Governor.

Although that speculation is false, I know what created it. Each year, at the Melaleuca Freedom Celebration, it’s a tradition that we always invite a dignitary to be the guest conductor as the Symphony plays Sousa’s Stars & Stripes Forever. Past guest conductors have been Gov. Butch Otter, Senator Jim Risch, Laurence Denny, etc. This year, we invited AJ Balukoff to be our guest conductor. That ignited a statewide rumor that Melaleuca was endorsing AJ’s candidacy for governor. That was not our intent. We just wanted to give AJ some exposure since almost no one had ever heard of him. We also wanted to demonstrate that we can disagree adamantly and still be good friends. We simply don’t believe that people who have different political persuasions are the enemy.

As much as I like AJ as a person, it’s hard to imagine what causes him to believe that he is qualified to be Governor. He ran a small CPA firm and is chairman of a school board. But it’s difficult to believe those things qualify him to govern the entire state.

He criticizes Idaho for having one of the lowest expenditures per student in the nation, as if the only valid measurement of success is how much money we spend – a mistake that many Democrats make. He fails to note that Idaho students rank 8th in the nation in reading and 15th in math. Idaho’s system is working much better than the ones AJ would have us follow.

AJ has already spent about $1.5 million of his family’s inherited wealth on his campaign. Yet he’s still behind in the polls. His solution? Spend more money! There seems to be a theme here typical of all liberals. The solution is always to spend more money! I suspect that AJ has his wife’s permission to spend their family’s money. But I think Idaho citizens should think twice before placing him in a position where he could also spend theirs. That would be taking a big chance indeed!

Frank VanderSloot