Is there a Dick Smith in Governor Otters future?
Times-News Editorial Board April 30, 2009 Twin Falls Times-News Eldon William “Dick” Smith was a Republican farmer from Rexburg and a two-term state senator who was appointed the Idaho Board of Education by then-Gov. Robert Smylie in 1964. Smith was passionate about public schools, and soon became president of the state board. But in the spring of 1966, Smylie was beaten for re-election in the GOP primary by an old colleague of Smith’s from the Senate, Don Samuelson of Sandpoint. Samuelson, who went on to defeat Democrat Cecil Andrus and Independent Perry Swisher that fall, was a teach-’em-the-three-R’s-and-move-’em-out conservative. Skeptical of the way education was funded in Idaho – and especially higher education – Samuelson quickly got crossways with the two politically connected college presidents, Ernest Hartung of the University of Idaho and William E. “Bud” Davis of Idaho State (Boise State didn’t become part of the state higher-education system until 1969). Smith backed Hartu
