“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  The federal estate tax is repealed for 2010.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Minnick backed a failed effort that would have repealed the estate tax for another two years.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 a 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.

The poll was conducted by Bob Moore, who said that Minnick’s advantage may be due to his status as an incumbent, a position that comes with greater name recognition.  ”Labrador is trailing because he is less well-known than Minnick,” said Moore.  He noted that of those polled, 38 percent believe that Minnick deserves to retain his seat, while 40 percent of likely voters want him to be defeated in November.   Of those who are familiar with Labrador, Moore noted, 41 percent prefer the Republican, while Minnick received 36 percent.

“I have to say that I am very heartened by this polling data,” Labrador said in a prepared statement.  “Obviously, I would rather be ahead – but I am satisfied that the polling shows Idaho is ready to make a change, that this race is more than winnable.  I am excited by the opportunity of earning the votes of those undecided today.”

Additionally, 61 percent of those polled said they would support a Republican candidate who pledged to check the agenda of Democrats and President Barack Obama.

John Foster, campaign spokesman for Minnick, brushed off the polling data.  ”Obviously Walt has a lot of support, but we’re not focused on polls. Walt is spending his time continuing to work hard and be an effective leader for Idaho,” Foster said.

This isn’t the first time Labrador has been behind in a race during this election cycle.  Polling data released during his primary election fight with Vaughn Ward showed Labrador trailing 18 points less than two weeks before coming from behind to win the race.  The data does conflict somewhat with an independent poll released in June by Greg Smith, a Republican pollster.  Smith said that Labrador was leading Minnick by 12 points in early June, though the Smith’s findings were challenged by Foster, who said Smith has a reputation of inaccuracy.

In all, Minnick has raised more than $1.9 million in this election cycle and has about $1.1 million in cash on hand.  Foster told IdahoReporter.com that the numbers are indicative of his candidate’s broad support base. “We’re very pleased by the support Walt continues to receive. I think it’s a good indication of how pleased people are with his hard work for Idaho, and their hope that he will continue to run a very strong campaign,” said Foster.

But would the Democrat’s dollars have been higher had Republican Vaughn Ward, the man originally thought to be the biggest threat to Minnick’s re-election bid, won the May Republican primary?  Foster doesn’t think so.  ”Walt’s supporters are solid, no matter whom his opponent might be. Walt’s business sense and bipartisan approach attract support from across the spectrum, and that support has done nothing but grow since he took office,” said Foster.    The man who won the Republican primary and will face Minnick, Raul Labrador, inspired some new donors to the campaign, believes Foster, who told IdahoReporter.com that 47 percent of all donors to Minnick in the latest reporting period were new donors.  Foster said that he believes that some of the new money is coming from former Ward supporters who felted jilted over Labrador’s victory and are now crossing over to support the Democrat.

The Labrador campaign has yet to release its fundraising numbers for the same quarter and the campaign’s spokesperson, China Veldhouse Gum, has not commented on Minnick’s numbers. At his last check-in with the FEC on May 5, Labrador reported having raised $173,712, though that number included a total of $90,000 in personal loans from Labrador to his campaign.

Labrador said that Minnick, who took the seat from Republican Bill Sali in 2008, votes in the interest of Idahoans only when it is politically expedient for him to do so.  ”He has a knack for voting the right way for Idaho when his vote is not needed by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership,” Labrador said.

He slammed Minnick for his votes to reinstate the estate tax, also known as the death tax, as well as his support of abortion.  He said that at his core, Minnick is a hard-line Democrat.  ”I will not allow him to deceive the people of Idaho about his record,” he said. “Mr. Minnick is a committed Democrat.  We must remove Minnick from Congress.”

One of the major points of Labrador’s campaign is Minnick’s vote to support Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the U.S. House.  Some reports suggest that Minnick might be willing to reconsider his support for the California congresswoman, but Labrador told  delegates Minnick’s vote wouldn’t help Idaho Republicans.  “My friends, don’t you believe it for a minute.  It does not matter who he votes for; you will still have a Democrat as speaker and you will still have Democrats heading committees in the House.”

Labrador won a hard-fought primary race against Vaughn Ward, who bested Labrador in the money race but suffered a series of campaign mistakes.  Labrador took a moment to address Ward supporters who might be hesitant to support him in November. “I also want to thank those who supported Vaughn Ward and other candidates in the primary.  You should really be proud of your hard work and dedication to principled conservative leadership.  I hope that I can earn your trust and your support,” Labrador said.  Ward, who planned to take time off from politics to spend time with his family following his primary defeat, is not in attendance at the convention.

Congressman Mike Simpson  called on Republicans in the room and the state to focus on Labrador’s race in the 1st District.  ”If Republicans work together, there is no way we cannot take back the 1^st District,” Simpson explained.  He then went on to call on convention-goers to open up their pocketbooks for Labrador.  ”Raul’s going to have to raise a whole lot of money to win back this seat.”   Simpson handed Labrador a check for his campaign war chest on the convention stage.

Simpson pointed out the balance of power in the U.S. House may hinge on the 1st District race.  “If we can’t win back Idaho’s congressional district, then we probably won’t take back Congress,” Simpson said Idaho Republican Party chairman Norm Semanko said the party is firmly behind its candidate and called on Republicans to unite behind him.  ”We all need to do everything we can to help Raul,” said Semanko.

Here is video of Labrador’s speech:

Part 1:

Part 2:

One ardent Ward supporter, who asked not to be named, said Ward would likely have trouble being at the convention, which the source referred as a “celebration party for Labrador.”  Ward, he said, feels spurned by the party and may still have his feelings hurt over his loss in the primary.  ”It’s hard for me, so I imagine it’s hard for him.”  The Ward supporter said that he has spoken with the former candidate recently and believes he’s sitting the weekend out and is spending time with his family at their home in Eagle.

Labrador is slated to speaker Saturday afternoon before the convention wraps up.  Labrador aides tell IdahoReporter.com that his speech is crafted to bring Idaho Republicans together after the explosive primary.