<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Idaho\u2019s top Republican candidates for governor gave voters three distinct options to choose from Monday during their second televised debate, which included plenty of jabs at each other\u2019s campaign tactics.<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador, a four-term congressman, pushed his aggressive economic plan to cut nearly a $1 billion of the state\u2019s taxes, or roughly 30 percent of the state\u2019s annual general fund budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have $3 billion in tax loopholes, some of those benefit the state, most of those do not benefit the state,\u201d Labrador said. \u201cYou can actually do a tax shift. That\u2019s what tax reform is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Labrador added that he was opposed to the state picking \u201cwinners and losers,\u201d and said he was against the state\u2019s current structure to help incentivize business to move to or expand in Idaho because it harmed the current businesses in the state.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Boise developer and first-time political candidate Tommy Ahlquist said he would apply a business model in order to find and eliminate wasteful government spending, as well as bring fresh ideas to a state that has long been run by the political establishment.<\/p>\n
Unlike Labrador, who said he would require all agency directors to reapply for the positions, Ahlquist said if elected he anticipated keeping both new and old director heads to oversee the state\u2019s agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can have all the plans you want in life, you can have all the task forces, but if you don\u2019t have action, if you don\u2019t follow through, you won\u2019t get anywhere,\u201d Ahlquist said, who has previously promised that unlike Gov. C.L. \u201cButch\u201d Otter, he would not create any task forces if elected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to change the status quo,\u201d Ahlquist added.<\/p>\n
Lt. Gov. Brad Little maintained that Idaho was on the right path to continue growing and attracting new businesses, but his experience working with Otter and the Idaho Legislature was needed to ensure the state\u2019s future success.<\/p>\n
Little proposed tax cut plan would cost Idaho around $116 million in its first year, which includes reducing the general fund by $27.9 million to lower the top personal and corporate income tax rates by a tenth of a percent and $9 million for the business equipment property tax break.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had revenue over these past two years that went up $400 million, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a stretch at all to give the taxpayers during these good times half of their money back,\u201d Little said, returning to his previous campaign promise that he would cut $350 million in income taxes over the next several years but not at the expense of cutting education.<\/p>\n
All three candidates once came out again in support of eliminating the sales tax on groceries. On education, all three shied away from endorsing a path to a government-funded preschool – which Idaho currently does not fund.<\/p>\n
Labrador was the only candidate to come out against changing Idaho\u2019s laws that allow families to cite religious reasons for medical decisions without fear of being charged with neglect or abuse. Little and Ahlquist said they would have to consider the legislation before weighing in on the issue.<\/p>\n
Ahlquist refused to answer directly if he would sign legislation allowing women to be prosecuted if they had an abortion, saying he didn\u2019t want to participate in a \u201ctheoretical\u201d situation. Little and Labrador both agreed that while they opposed abortion, they thought charging women with first-degree murder – which would allow for the death penalty – went too far.<\/p>\n
In between talking about policy positions, the candidates took time to critique each other\u2019s attack ads.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably one of the most disturbing ones was I was driving my 15-year-old daughter a couple of weeks ago and she pulled up an ad that was being run by one of my opponents with me dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit saying that I was a dirty, filthy racist,\u201d said Ahlquist.<\/p>\n
Labrador quickly responded that while the claim came from one his supporters, he did not support the ad and neither was his campaign involved in the ad.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy campaign had nothing to do with that blog and I actually asked him to take down that picture because I found it to be offensive,\u201d said Labrador, who then accused Ahlquist of lying about Labrador\u2019s support of President Donald Trump and his immigration involvement.<\/p>\n
Little said the biggest lie that\u2019s been spread about him so far during the campaign was by Ahlquist\u2019s campaign that he was not a conservative and that he would raise taxes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve governed, whether I was serving the Senate or as lieutenant governor, with the lightest possible hand of government,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Idaho’s top Republican candidates for governor gave voters three distinct options to choose from Monday during their second televised debate, which included plenty of jabs at each other’s campaign tac BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Idaho\u2019s top Republican candidates for governor gave voters three distinct options to choose from Monday during their second televised debate, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[34,513,25,514],"class_list":["post-2938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","tag-politics","tag-raul-labrador","tag-social-issues","tag-tommy-ahlquist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}