Phil Batt

Philip Eugene " Phil" Batt ( born March 4, 1927 in Wilder, Canyon County, Idaho ) is a former American politician of the Republican Party. He was from 2 January 1995 to January 8, 1999 Governor of the State of Idaho.

Career

Batt, who earned as a farmer with the cultivation of onions and hops his livelihood, took his first political office in 1965 when he was elected to the House of Representatives from Idaho. Two years later he moved to the Senate of Idaho, where he remained until 1979. From 1979 to 1983 Batt served as Lieutenant Governor of Idaho. In 1982 he ran for the office of governor and was defeated only narrowly Democratic incumbent John V. Evans. The later Governor and Senator Dirk Kempthorne launched his campaign here.

After he had taken over the leadership of his party in Idaho at the beginning of the 90s, it was possible this to be again clearly strongest force of the state. Then he turned himself in and re-election. In 1994, he ran again as governor. After the victory in the internal party primaries with 48 percent of the vote, he sat down in the actual election against Larry Echohawk, the Attorney General of Idaho, with 52 percent of the vote through.

Although opinion polls showed an agreement of around 80 percent for his administration to Batt decided not to stand in the next election. Among the merits of his tenure include the enforcement of a compensation payment for agricultural workers; Moreover, he managed to complete an agreement under which the amount of nuclear waste emplaced in Idaho was limited. In the four years in which Batt served as governor, belonged to the Cabinet of Idaho higher percentage of women than any other U.S. state.

After the end of his political career, Phil Batt operated as an author. In 1999, he published his memoirs under the title The Compleat Phil Batt: A Kaleidoscope; Followed in 2002 by a collection of humorous short stories ( Life as a geezer ).