Only the most optimistic of Democrats expected this race to get even remotely competitive, but over the past few weeks it has quietly crept from the Solid Republican column to Lean Republican.
This is an open seat. Gov. Jim Risch got promoted to the post after President Bush appointed then-Gov. Dirk Kempthorne Interior Secretary. Risch opted to run for re-election as Lieutenant Governor, rather than challenge Rep. Butch Otter in the Republican primary.
The Democratic nominee is Jerry Brady. Brady has run his family's media company for the past several years and was the nominee for Governor in 2002, taking 42 percent of the vote.
Recent polling shows that this race has indeed gotten tight. A poll conducted for the Brady campaign in mid-October had the Democrat ahead by 2 points, 42 percent to 40 percent for Otter. A Mason-Dixon poll (October 23-25 of 625 likely voters) had Otter up by a point, 44 percent to 43 percent.
Otter, like most of his Republican House colleagues running for Governor this year, is feeling the fallout of voters' unhappiness with President
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