Vice President Cheney Visit To Boise -- A Success?

Last week, Vice President Cheney made a quick stop in Boise to help the campaign of Bill Sali, the Republican nominee for Congress here in the Idaho 1st Congressional District. Normally, a visit from the Vice President would be a big deal. In this case, though, it appears that more people were inconvenienced by the traffic back-ups caused by the visit than actually got to interact with the Veep.

What interested me the most is that the candidate Mr. Cheney was supporting seems to either have an incompetent staff, or they're trying to hide something. Here's the first paragraph of the press release they put out describing the visit from the Vice President:

We are so grateful for the tremendous support we received for the Vice President's visit yesterday! Approximately 200 to 250 people showed up to welcome Vice President Cheney and show their support for Rep. Sali. We not only added significantly to our war chest, but we had a wonderful time! Thank you to all of you who came to support Bill. I would especially like to thank those of you who purchased photo's and participated in the Roundtable event. Our volunteers were wonderful and I would like to thank them for their hard work and time. We should have pictures on the website in the next few days.

(Emphasis mine.) Now, it would seem to me that when people show up for an event with the Vice President, the Secret Service checks out everyone who's going to be in the room ahead of time. Somebody had to know who was coming to this event -- you don't have someone just show up at the door to get in to see the Vice President. Does the Sali campaign really not know how to keep track of a list that was given to the Secret Service to count how many people were there? Do they honestly expect us to believe that they don't know exactly who was there? Are they trying to counteract the reports that actual attendence was in the 150-200 range, and don't expect people to remember their claim when the actual numbers come out? Maybe this is a team that isn't quite ready to go to Washington. (On the other hand, if they can explain exactly what it is they're talking about that belongs to the photos that people purchased, I'll decide they might be maturing as a potential Congressional staff).

Or, maybe they were just embarrassed that so few people showed up to support their candidate in conservative Idaho even with the VP as a draw. Maybe they're even a little scared. I would be too, with a strong candidate like fiscally conservative, socially moderate Larry Grant running against Mr. Sali.

(For my readers from outside of Idaho -- I think this race is going to be big. If a Democrat can beat a Republican in Idaho, we're possibly looking at a replay of 1994 here, but with the other party winning.)