Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Idaho Libertarian runs against GOP 'good old boys'

Libertarian Bujak’s candidacy could be trouble for Otter - Spokesman.com - Sept. 6, 2014: - Betsy Z. Russell, Spokane Spokesman-Review:

September 6, 2014 - "If Libertarian candidate John Bujak succeeds in his bid to appeal to disaffected Republicans who voted against Gov. Butch Otter in the GOP primary, he still might not win, but he could pull enough votes from Otter to give Democrat A.J. Balukoff a chance.

"Bujak, the former GOP Canyon County prosecutor, made headlines in recent years for his own legal troubles: He represented himself in five criminal trials in the past three years and was acquitted in every one.

"'After what the party did to me in Canyon County, I didn’t trust a lot of the leadership – certainly after seeing the way that Republicans run politics behind the scenes here in Idaho,' Bujak said. 'They surround themselves with their buddies, they give deals to their buddies, they give contracts to their buddies, and when something happens that is unethical, they all just look the other way.'

"Bujak has a law degree from Gonzaga University, he’s a Navy veteran, and he’s been a deputy attorney general for the state Human Rights Commission and a lawyer in private practice. But he says when he went into politics, serving as the elected prosecutor in Canyon County, 'I hit a brick wall in the form of what I would call the "good old boys".'

"He clashed with the county’s power structure over reopening a notorious attempted murder case in which the Idaho Innocence Project had unearthed evidence that a young woman may have been wrongfully convicted, a victim of mistaken identity. That young woman, Sarah Pearce, is free now, though her conviction stood.

"Bujak found more and more issues on which to disagree with other county officials and ultimately had to resign.... Now he’s running for governor, seeking to capitalize on Idaho conservatives’ unease with Otter, who took 51.4 percent of the vote in the primary against tea party-backed GOP state Sen. Russ Fulcher."

Read more: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/sep/06/libertarian-bujaks-candidacy-could-be-trouble-for/
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