A couple of quick election-related items for your Tuesday:
Brandon Woolf. The incumbent state controller, appointed last October, plans to run for a full term in 2014.
Woolf will make his plans official on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Woolf was appointed to succeed Donna Jones, who resigned after suffering serious injuries in a 2012 auto accident.
The controller is, in essence, the state’s elected bean counter, in charge of keeping the state’s books and managing the state’s payroll. The policy role is limited, although the controller does sit on the state Land Board, the five-member panel that manages state endowments that support public schools, among other beneficiaries.
Woolf already figures to have company in the 2014 Republican primary: Todd Hatfield of McCall has filed paperwork in advance of a possible challenge. Hatfield received 43.6 percent of the vote in an unsuccessful 2010 challenge to Jones.
A crowded primary? And speaking of the May primary, expect lots of Republican candidates.
That’s the forecast from state GOP chairman Barry Peterson of Mountain Home. Peterson, 66, says next year could be the busiest primary of his lifetime — as discontent with President Obama drives candidates to file for races up and down the ticket.
“People are going to say, ‘By God, we’re going to do something,’” Peterson told the Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey. “Obama’s behavior and know-it-all positions and lack of real credentials for what he claims to be — I think all of that inspires people of a different ilk to say, ‘By darn, I’m going to do something now.’”
