A brief comment about Dave Sheldon’s “My Turn.” As a registered Republican, and have been for more than 30 years since I became old enough to vote, I will disagree with his main assertions: Open primaries offer equally open invitations to “sabotage” the candidates entering public office, between the two main political parties. If Mr. Sheldon fears the Democrats helping to nominate a “weaker” Republican candidate during the primary season in order to beat that same politician in the general election, the same argument could equally apply to Republicans crossing over and doing the same thing. Didn’t Mr. Larry Spencer change his party affiliation recently? Couldn’t the Democrats equally argue that Mr. Spencer did so in order to “sabotage” other Democratic political candidates for public office? I’d say so.

Instead, Mr. Sheldon should look more internally to the factions that exist within our party. Where such factions as “Rally Right,” or other so-called “conservative” groups, want the Republican candidates for political office to take purity tests, usually ideological and often religious. Thus, the more “out there” the ideological views become, the less representative of the general populace the candidate for office becomes.

I am not going to hold it against Mr. Dan English to want to put into office politicians who are materially in touch with the voters and their needs. That is what is meant by a “qualified candidate.” Whereas, the ideological radical typically is not. Given the state of the state legislature in its last session, special interests inclusive of the NRA were more front and center to the kinds of laws being passed than anything the citizenry of Idaho would have preferred. Mr. Sheldon doesn’t have to worry about Democrats “sabotaging” prospective candidates; we Republicans have already done that to ourselves.

JOAN E. HARMAN

Coeur d’Alene