Labrador received $2,000 Tuesday from Vaughn Ward, a Marine who served in the Iraq War and finished second in the May Republican primary for Idaho’s 1st Congressional District. Ward also wrote letters to Idahoans who contributed to his campaign asking them to back Labrador.

“My wife and I are the ones that did it,” Ward said about the letter backing Labrador. “We sat at home over three or four days every night stamping, folding, and signing our own letters.”

Ward publicly backed Labrador the day after the primary, but waited to make another show of support for both personal and political reasons. He held off until after settling into his new job as a CEO for a north Idaho health care company. Ward also said his timing should help Labrador in his race against Minnick.

“Campaigns seem to take a whole new life at the very end,” Ward said. “I thought this would be the most opportune time to do it.” Ward said that the race between Labrador and Minnick is a center point of the national elections, and that Idahoans could help shape the future of the federal government.

Idaho’s lone Republican in the U.S. House member, Rep. Mike Simpson, also gave Labrador’s campaign $2,000 on Tuesday. “Congressman Simpson strongly supports Raul, has contributed $4,000 to his campaign, and hopes he is part of a Republican majority in congress next year,” said Zach Hague, Simpson’s campaign spokesman.

Simpson has an added incentive to support Labrador and other Republicans running for Congress. If Republicans gain a majority in the House, Simpson is in line to become the chairman of a House budget subcommittee that handles spending on environmental issues.

Simpson’s congressional spokeswoman, Nikki Watts, said he is excited about possibly being in charge of the committee and wants to provide oversight of federal agencies, especially the Environmental Protection Agency.

“He’ll be looking at all areas to cut budgets,” Watts said. According to Federal Election Commission reports, Simpson has also given money to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which helps GOP House candidates.

Labrador also received $2,500 from a political action committee affiliated with the Tea Party Express. The group recently endorsed Labrador after previously supporting Minnick. Minnick distanced himself from that endorsement after a Tea Party Express spokesman published a racially-sensitive letter.

Labrador reported $18,100 in large contributions on Tuesday and Wednesday. Candidates for federal office are required to report contributions of more than $1,000 in the last 20 days before an election.

Minnick, who has raised and spent more money than Labrador, reported an additional $19,900 in large gifts this week. That included $1,000 from Rep. Joe Crowley, D-New York, who doesn’t always see eye to eye with Minnick. According to OpenCongress.org, which tracks votes in Congress, Crowley votes least often with Minnick.

As a proud Vandal grad who was born in Idaho and still has plenty of Idaho family roots, I’m honored to endorse Butch Otter for governor of the Gem State. Whether serving in Congress or the Governor’s office, Butch has been a voice for commonsense conservatism. He’s been a strong advocate for fiscal discipline and energy independence. As Governor of Alaska, it was a pleasure working with Butch as both our states bucked a growing federal government power grab in disregard of the Tenth Amendment. Butch has served Idaho with distinction as Governor, and Idaho can’t go wrong re-electing him this November.

This is the second endorsement the former governor of Alaska has made in Idaho this year.  Before the Republican primary on May 25, Palin endorsed Vaughn Ward in his race against state Rep. Raul Labrador for the GOP nod for the 1st Congressional District.  Palin, in a last-ditch effort to save Ward’s faltering campaign after a series of miscues, visited downtown Boise for a pro-Ward rally.  Labrador went on to defeat Ward in the contest.

There has been no indication if Palin will endorse Labrador in his race against Democrat Walt Minnick.

Minnick also outspent Labrador during the summer, including on money for campaign commercials. Minnick held an advantage of more than three to one over Labrador in cash on hand at the end of September.

Much of that campaign money is going into advertising. In an FEC filing, Minnick reported spending $745,000 on campaign commercials, while Labrador spent $23,000 on advertising.

Labrador got a boost for his campaign finance totals by holding a fundraiser in Puerto Rico at the end of September. Labrador was born in Puerto Rico. His campaign received $14,000 from people living in the U.S. territory.

Minnick received far more money from political action committees (PACs) than Labrador. PACs affiliated with banks and food production, including Bank of America, J.R. Simplot, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, gave tens of thousands of dollars to Minnick.

Labrador got almost $9,000 from Republican elected officials in Idaho. He received contributions from Gov. Butch Otter, Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, and 20 state lawmakers.

The general election won’t be Labrador’s first race against a better-funded opponent. The total amount of money raised by Labrador remains lower than Vaughn Ward, who finished second in the GOP primary. Ward raised $547,000 during the current election cycle and returned $7,800 to some donors after losing to Labrador.

In the 2nd Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Mike Simpson brought in $181,000 from July through September.

Other candidates for the U.S. House, including Libertarian Mike Washburn and Independent Dave Olson in the 1st District and Independent Brian Schad and Democrat Mike Crawford in the 2nd District, didn’t file campaign finance reports with the FEC.

Democrat Keith Allred, a former professor, mediator, and founder of The Common Interest staked out his position on repealing the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows for direct election of U.S. senators by the general public, at a debate in Idaho Falls in August.  ”I think it’s simple; the people of Idaho should and can elect their own senators,” said Allred.  ”I oppose repeal of the 17th Amendment.”

Otter’s position is more ambiguous. At a Tea Party rally in Spokane, Wash., earlier this year, Otter said he has “strong objections” to the 17^th Amendment. “You know, that was the first big loss we had in states’ rights,” said Otter at the rally.

The Republican governor, who leads Allred by 16 points according to the latest Rasmussen Reports polling data, also had an opportunity to clarify his position on the 17th Amendment at the debate in Idaho Falls in August.    At the event, Otter explains the historical reasoning behind the enactment of amendment, but never clearly says if he is for repeal of the measure.  ”The 17th Amendment, I think has disenfranchised – it’s been my long-held belief – has disenfranchised the people to some extent,” explained.

After Otter’s answer on the question, Allred pressed the governor to come down in a definite position on the amendment.  ”I tried to listen pretty carefully; I’m not sure where Gov. Otter is on that,” prodded Allred.  The governor responded, saying that he has higher priorities than worrying about repeal of the amendment.  ”Do I think it’s ever going to happen?  No, I don’t,” explained Otter.  ”That’s why my focus will continue to be on the 10th Amendment.”  Otter was instrumental in passing a resolution through the Idaho Legislature that asked the U.S. Congress to enhance states’ right by altering some wording in the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 10^th Amendment states that powers not delegated to the federal government are therefore reserved for the states or for the people.

Otter spokesman Ryan Panitz echoed the governor’s position on repeal. “The governor feels that repealing the 17th Amendment is not realistic at this point in time so therefore he would rather put his concentration and effort on the 10th Amendment,” said Ryan Panitz, director of communication for the Otter campaign.

When asked for his reply to Otter’s clarification, Allred said, “Repeal of the 17th Amendment is wrong.”

Discussion of repeal of the amendment originated in early April at a Tea Party Boise Inc. debate for congressional candidates.  Republican state Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Eagle, and Vaughn Ward, the two front-runners in the 1st Congressional District, came out supporting repeal of the amendment.

The debate on the issue only intensified in June as a result of the Idaho Republican Party’s state convention, held in Idaho Falls.  At the event, delegates from across the state voted to implement a call for repeal of the 17th Amendment into their party’s official platform.  Also included in was a disclosure  statement, dubbed the “loyalty oath,” which will require Republican candidates sign off that they agree with the party’s platform or explain parts which they disagree.  Otter has said he won’t sign the disclosure statement.

“I stand with the individuals, families, farms and businesses affected by this unfair double tax and I commit to working for its repeal,” Labrador said in a prepared statement.  “I have a record of standing up for Idahoans on issues of taxation and I will carry that fight to Washington, D.C.  This is really bad timing for the Democrats, including my opponent, to make the Death Tax permanent when it severely and negatively affects so many lives and depresses the economy.”

The estate tax, often called the death tax by its opponents, taxes the assets of deceased people passed down to from one generation to the next.  The federal estate tax is repealed for 2010.  Unless Congress acts, the estate tax will return next year, taxing all estates worth more than $1 million at a 55 percent rate.

Labrador and other want to repeal it permanently.  The “Death Tax Repeal Pledge” is backed by more than 20 current members of Congress, including Rep. Mike Simpson and Sen. Mike Crapo, and more than 400 candidates for Congress this year, including Vaughn Ward, who Labrador defeated in the May 25 Republican primary.

“Labrador has been a strong advocate for permanently repealing this unfair double tax,” said AFBI President Dick Patten.  “He understands that the Death Tax penalizes family farmers and business owners when they die.  I’m encouraged that he has committed to taking a more active role in the repeal fight.”  The AFBI represents business owners with the sole mission of repealing the estate tax.

Labrador has criticized his opponent, Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick, for a vote in December on legislation that would bring back the estate tax, but increase the exemption to $3.5 million for individuals or $7 million for a couple or a family-owned business, such as a farm.  That legislation has yet to be approved by the Senate.

“Idaho farm families need a guarantee that they can plan for the future without an onerous increase to the estate tax,” Minnick said in December.  “Had we not passed this bill, the law would have required that the tax be increased and the exemption decreased.  In these tough times, that is just not acceptable.”

Minnick backed a failed effort that would have repealed the estate tax for another two years.

Minnick’s campaign spokesman, John Foster, said new proposals to change or repeal the estate tax could come out of President’s Barack Obama’s deficit reduction commission, which will release its recommendations in December.  Crapo serves on that commission.

“I know that Walt’s really looking forward to their findings,” Foster said.

At the rally Wednesday, Baumbach called on those who support the Athol Republican to show up at the ethics panel hearing, scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday in the lower east wing of the Capitol.  ”We’re calling on citizens who love liberty to come to this hearing tomorrow at the Statehouse,” said Baumbach.  ”We encourage citizens to stand up for our conservative legislators.”

Baumbach also blamed Democrats for the investigation into Hart.  ”This ethics hearing … was called my Democrats who have become especially partisan and desperate because their party has failed leadership that has failed our country for the last two years,” he said.  House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston, asked for the inquiry after several media reports were published about Hart’s alleged tax woes.

Here’s video of the full address by Baumbach:

Hart has come under fire recently after a Washington state newspaper revealed that he had more than $300,000 in tax liens placed against him by the IRS and $53,000 from the Idaho State Tax Commission and that he may have improperly used his status as a state lawmaker to keep from paying taxes multiple times. The Idaho Constitution prevents state legislators from being served or arrested while the Legislature is in session.

Baumbach also released a statement Tuesday in support of Hart. The letter slammed Democrats and said that Hart is the target of the inquiry due to his ideological beliefs. “They (Democrats) will say anything to further their socialist cause,” wrote Baumbach. “They will seek to destroy men, like Hart, who oppose big-government panacea at every turn.”

Brian Kane, a deputy assistant from the attorney general’s office who is advising the ethics panel, said at the first ethics panel meeting that lawmakers will need to decide if Hart used his legislative privilege too many times during his years in office.  Bambauch thinks legislative privilege is one of the perks of the lawmakers and that Hart isn’t the only legislator to use it.   “It is pointless to have legislative privilege to avoid the distraction of polemical civil filings, if the Legislature is going to convene an ethics hearing each time the privilege is invoked,” said Baumbach.  ”To punish Rep. Hart would be to open the entire Legislature up to frivolous lawsuits.  This ethics charge alone will have a chilling effect on the legislative process itself.”

Hart is expected to appear before the panel Thursday and is slated to testify.

Labrador said that he didn’t want to be part of the group, but didn’t specify a reason for his choice not to join.  ”I’ve still met with them and still met their financial goals,” Labrador said.  He added that he works with somebody from the NRCC on an almost weekly basis.  The NRCC dubbed 33 Republicans “Young Guns” Wednesday as part of its candidate training and recruitment program.

His absence from the list was likely more noticeable because the man he defeated in the Republican primary election, Vaughn Ward, had the backing of the NRCC and was one of the group’s “Young Guns.”  Andrew Stone, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Committee, said in a prepared statement published in The Hill, “After the NRCC got burned by investing heavily in serial plagiarist Vaughn Ward while Congressman Minnick worked hard in his district and tallied up a cash advantage of 16 to one over Raul Labrador, it’s looking more and more like this district is falling off the NRCC’s radar.”

Minnick has a large lead in the money race; he reported having more than $1.1 million in the bank as of June 30 compared to $69,000 for Labrador.  An internal poll released by the Labrador campaign late last week showed the Republican trailing Minnick by 10 percentage points, though a good share of those polled said they haven’t yet made a choice in the contest.  The two men face off in November’s general election.

CQ went first in switching its rating and said that Republicans might have a harder time ousting Minnick than they previously thought.  ”But Minnick (D) is proving to be an especially tough nut to crack, even in a very Republican-friendly election environment,” wrote John McArdle for CQ.  ”With Minnick’s impressive second-quarter contribution total and the primary election loss of the national Republicans’ preferred candidate, CQ-Roll Call is changing the rating in the 1st district from Tossup to the less-competitive category of Leans Democratic.”  McArdle referred to the primary election loss of Republican Vaughn Ward, who had a steep fundraising edge over Labrador as well as several high-profile national endorsements.

RealClearPolitics changed its rating of the race Wednesday.  Here’s Sean Trende, writer for RealClearPolitics, said about the contest:

This is pretty counter-intuitive given the heavy Republican tilt of the district, but Democrat Walt Minnick has an extremely conservative voting record.  Moreover, his GOP opponent, Raul Labrador, is an ally of former Rep. Bill Sali, who was controversial enough to lose to Minnick in 2008.  Labrador closed the Second Quarter with $60, 000 cash-on-hand to Minnick’s $1.8M.  This race looks like a leans Democrat race for now, not a tossup.

Labrador’s campaign released a poll late last week indicating that Minnick holds a 10-point lead in the contest among 300 likely voters in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District.  An aide to Labrador said that due to the high percentage of respondents in the poll declaring themselves “undecided,” Labrador can win if he raises his public profile and name recognition.   The Labrador campaign raised just more than $100,000 between May 6 and June 30, and has $69,000 cash on hand.

The Labrador campaign suffered an additional setback Wednesday when the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) released its updated list of “Young Guns,” or compilation of names of Republican candidates the NRCC considers viable in fall’s general elections.  Notably absent among the 33 added Wednesday was Labrador.  Ward was on the NRCC’s original list of “Young Guns.”

Labrador and Minnick face off in November’s general election.

Mark Williams is the spokesman for the group and the man who wrote the letter.  He slammed the NAACP for its condemnation of Tea Party followers, and said that NAACP leaders were simply stirring up racial tensions in the country.  The fictional letter, which has since been removed from the Tea Party Express’s website, was written to President Abraham Lincoln from what Williams called “Colored People.”  Here is some of the content of the letter:

Dear Mr. Lincoln,

We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us Coloreds.

As a result of the writings and the group’s failure to rebuke its spokesman, the Tea Party Express has been thrown out of the national Tea Party Federation, a collection of the anti-big government groups across the nation, which boasts 61 members.  Minnick, in response to inquiries by IdahoReporter.com and in a letter to a regional representative of the group, said that while some of the elements of the Tea Party Express are passionate about the future of the country, the letter by Williams was in very poor taste.  ”That’s one reason why my interaction with the grassroots Tea Party movement here in Idaho has been very positive. I find the vast majority of their members to be cordial, polite and sincere. While they disagree strongly with the president and his policies, their passions tend to be focused on issues and not on personalities,” said Minnick.  “Of course, in any movement there are those who take things too far and say or do hateful, hurtful things which harm the cause of the entire group.  However, those who rise to or claim leadership in those movements have an obligation to lead with a respect for the movement and its members, and thus be responsible with words and actions.”

In the end, Minnick said, he didn’t want to be associated with the group if it wouldn’t rebuke Williams. “Instead, the Tea Party Express has apparently decided to stand by Mr. Williams and support him in his own contention that he did nothing wrong. I cannot agree with that course of action. Since the Tea Party Express refuses to reject and rebuke Mr. Williams, I have no choice but to decline your endorsement,” Minnick wrote. “I thank you very sincerely for your kind words about my work as a Congressman, and hope that your group can see the error of its ways.”

(Click here to see the full text of Minnick’s letter: Tea Party Express Letter)

It seemed Minnick was never entirely comfortable with the endorsement in the first place.  He reluctantly accepted the original endorsement, saying that it was a show of his broad base of support.  John Foster, campaign spokesman for Minnick, said at the time of the initial announcement by the Tea Party Express, that he appreciated the group noticing Minnick’s fiscal responsibility, but that he wasn’t thrilled to be lumped in with the like of Reps. Michele Bachmann or Joe Wilson, referred to by some pundits as conservative lightning rods.

Minnick’s opponent, Republican Raul Labrador, said that though the actions by Williams were wrong, people should be slow to condemn all Tea Party-goers.  “As someone who has experienced racism, I condemn the statement of this one individual,” said Labrador, who was born in Puerto Rico.  “But I have met many people of different ethnic backgrounds at Tea Party events and I don’t think the actions of this one person should paint a picture of the rest of the individuals in the movement.”  Labrador also received support from a Tea Party group earlier this year, but on a more local level.  Tea Party Boise, Inc., representing anti-big government advocates in the Treasure Valley, endorsed Labrador in his primary election dual with Vaughn Ward.  The group tapped Labrador because of his political experience in the Idaho Legislature, where he served as a lawmaker for two terms.

The loyalty oath is the product of Rod Beck, a former state senator, who worked with another candidate in Baumbauch’s district, Dan Loughrey, who is running for the Idaho House, to instill the disclosure in the platform.  The document has been ridiculed by several national pundits, but Beck maintains that it is necessary to ensure that candidates claiming to be Republicans will govern by the principles in the party platform.

In his e-mail to Johnathon Parker, executive director for the party, Baumbach said that he is “happy to call a party home which calls for lower taxes, limited constitutional government, and acknowledges the Creator.”  As the language instilled by Beck and Loughrey requires, Baumbach outlined two areas of disagreement he has with the platform.  He said that the U.S. should not be involved with the United Nations in any form and that Idaho Republicans should not work to push policies that support the nation’s membership there.  He also said that courts should focus on the plaintiffs in court cases, but should rather exact justice and fairness according to the laws of the land.

Baumbauch will face Democrat Elliot Werk in November’s general election and is likely the first candidate to sign the disclosure portion of the platform.  The Boise Republican made national headlines when he posted a mashup video showing Vaughn Ward, a former Republican contender for the 1^st Congressional District nomination, in side-by-side comparison with President Barack Obama.  The video shows Ward, giving a speech at the Idaho Statehouse in February, using the same rhetoric as Obama.  The video has had more than 100,000 views on YouTube and was picked up by comedian Jay Leno the night of the Republican primary election, May 25.  The day after the contest, Baumbach admitted the video had undergone considerable editing and that it was essentially a piece of election propaganda.

Several other Republicans candidates on this year’s ballot have said they either will not sign the disclosure or will sign it with exceptions, including opposition to the call in the platform to repeal the 17^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows for the direct election of U.S. senators by voters instead of state legislatures.