City Government
Firefighters Pay Bieter More Than Peavey-Derr’s Entire Fund Raising
November 1, 2015 
It comes as no surprise that nearly every builder, developer, and engineering firm along with lots of lawyers and realtors have made campaign payments to incumbent Mayor Dave Bieter’s campaign war chest. In the game of politics, you have to pay to play.
A post by Randy Stapilus at Ridenbaugh Press reveals Bieter has been paid $180,000 from supporters compared to Judy Peavey-Derr’s paltry $15,000.
The GUARDIAN took a look through the numerous pages of big spenders to the Bieter campaign and noted that firefighter unions from just about every town in Idaho made combined payments of about $17,000 to Boise’s mayor…that’s more than Peavey-Derr’s entire take so far. We noted smaller individual payments from firefighters and even volunteers as well.
Even with a former union lobbyist now chief of the Boise FD (“chief officers PAC” paid $500) and the current Boise FD union president on the Greater Boise Auditorium District Board, we find it hard to understand why firefighter unions from Washington, Spokane, Blackfoot, Middleton, Chubbuck, Ketchum, Nampa, and Pocatello–to name a few–would pony up $1,000 each to see Dave Bieter re-elected in Boise.
Are there plans afoot for a run at Gov. or Congress for Boise’s about-to-be fourth term mayor?
A story last year in the IDAHO STATESMAN by Sven Berg adds some perspective to the politics of pay and the pay to politicians. It showed Boise firefighters make on average $40,000 a year more than their union brothers in Salt Lake–$85,000 plus about $50,000 in benefits.
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Comments & Discussion
Comments are closed for this post.
Nov 1, 2015, 3:12 pm
Is this what they mean by “fill the boot?”
Nov 1, 2015, 3:36 pm
EyeVote: touché!
Nov 1, 2015, 4:55 pm
If the people of Boise considers what this says, I would think it would be your best interest to elect a new mayor. It would be best if you could possibly find one that can’t be bought but that probably is not possible.
Nov 1, 2015, 7:29 pm
Editor, will they ever let you put your warning sign up down at the river? How many people would have benefited by now?
Full-time fire departments with a part-time demand? Five guys with a big red truck and a lawnmower/rake/shovel/etc!
Summer fire season? Sure they’re needed. So do what for-profit companies do and flex the force up and down as the fire risk changes.
Reading some books by Ben Carson (or his ghost writers) about entrenched politicos being the ruin of America. Hope he’s for real.
Nov 1, 2015, 8:06 pm
Behold the baby kissing, gold shovel wielding, library conjuring, park constructing, skyscraper erecting, almighty corporate lapdog and lifer incumbent… Dave Bieter!
When a guy stays in politics longer than a few years, he slowly turns into a whore for the special interests. They don’t pony up all that cash just cause he’s a swell guy.
Nov 1, 2015, 8:31 pm
I don’t think that Peavy-Durr could have spent “only” $15,000.00 and paid for the 7 robo calls we’ve had, plus all of the social media ads, plus all the yard signs. Are super-pacts at work here?
EDITOR NOTE–Just going by the public records.
Nov 1, 2015, 9:02 pm
It’s not hard to understand. It’s hard to justify.
Nov 2, 2015, 8:16 am
Is Peavey-Derr likely to try to bust the union? Maybe that is the worry. As an establishment politician, I can’t imagine she would though (not that it doesn’t need to be done).
Nov 2, 2015, 10:49 am
When you look at Judy’s reports you have a different group of Lawyers and developers. But she just hasn’t raised as much money…..Beiter got to his group 1st.
http://cityclerk.cityofboise.org/media/311115/peaveyderr7daypregeneral.pdf
I honestly thought after her being in politics for her whole life she would have raised more money than she has.
In the words of Hillary Clinton…. what difference does this election make?
Nov 2, 2015, 11:12 am
They say honesty is the best policy, but one has to remember that, by default, dishonesty is the second best policy.
To ask Mayor Dave to return the monies from Spokane, Blackfoot, Middleton, Chubbuck, Ketchum, Nampa, and Pocatello would make him honest and he is not about to do that as that would mean he could not defraud the taxpayers for the sake of his developer buddies.
Well at least you don’t have any developers on the city council like Nampa does.
Just remember growth for the sake of growth is the specialty of the cancer cell.
Nov 2, 2015, 11:50 am
Calling campaign contributions “pay” is misleading and snarky. But, I’m all in favor of snarky.
“Corporate lapdog” is a good description of Bieter, but Peavy-Derr would be even more so. You can’t be pro-business and pro-worker. You guys keep calling Bieter a liberal. He’s not.
Nov 2, 2015, 1:09 pm
With refferance to firefighters they have always been active and very generous contributors to the candidates of their choice. Not surprising that firefighters from other jurisdictions contribute to Boise campaigns as other than the incestuous mess of lawyers and bank executives in Boise they have the best paying jobs and work hours of anyone in the city. Other towns always point to Boise at contract time.
Nov 2, 2015, 3:19 pm
Who they get it from and WHERE they spend it is always interesting.
for example, McClean sent some dough ($2,100) to a person in New Hampshire – for broadcast advertising – The named recipient, Denis Landis, is well listed as “The Cook’s Cook”. What?
BUY LOCAL?
It will be a good story AFTER the elections to see how much money is left in the coffers.