NAMPA, Idaho — 18-year incumbent republican representative Brent Crane faces his first democrat opponent, Cliff Hohman, in two election cycles
- Representative Brent Crane has been on Nampa ballots since 2006.
- Cliff Hohman is Crane's first democratic opponent in four years with concerns of schools, reproductive healthcare, and housing costs.
- Both candidates agree that there is a supply and demand issue concerning housing and the cost of living.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
Representative Brent Crane has been on Nampa ballots since 2006. After 18 years in the legislature, Crane's responsibilities have grown and now chairs the Ethics & House Policy Committee and the State Affairs Committee.
"And so as a result, those issues tend to come to you," Crane says. "Not you taking those issues to the legislature. And so I end up playing defense probably more than offense. I never walk in with a legislative agenda and say, 'I'm going to do this, this, and this.' Other than my agenda is always 'I'm going to go in, I'm going to serve the people of District 13, and I take that mandate with me.'"
Enter Cliff Hohman, Crane's first democratic opponent in four years. Schools and reproductive healthcare round out Hohman's top three concerns. The first: housing costs.
"So this past spring, our legislature passed a bill, passed a law that banned basically renter's protections. The bigger problems are just the supply and the demand problem, the basic economics. That's hard. That will take cooperation between state and the local level, the county level, and probably even with the federal government. Is there federal money that's sitting on the table that we could take?" says Hohman.
Crane says he also wants to find solutions for homeowners.
"And it's a good thing that people want to move here, but it has created a entry-level housing issue. So what are things that the state could look at?" wonders Crane. "You could look at potentially some tax credits for first-time home buyers. You could look at incentives in that type of arena that could potentially help those folks out that are looking to try to get into an entry-level home. "
"Are there any sort of rental protections that should perhaps be looked at?" I ask of Crane.
"I don't know what you would put in place. Are you going to tell the guy that owns the building that his costs are going up, that he can't pass those costs on to the renters, that he just has to all of a sudden operate at a deficit or a loss? So inflation is driving a lot of this, and that's why we need a new president in the White House."
But Hohman believes there are sources of money that haven't been tapped into for federal housing programs.
Hohman says, "Because we have this philosophical aversion to taking money from the federal government, we have this great libertarian streak in Idaho."
