By MIKE PATRICK

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — The Tommy Ahlquist Express rolled into the Lake City last month and has been picking up CEO-powered speed ever since.

Ahlquist, a southern Idahoan who served more than 40,000 patients as an emergency room physician before building more than 2 million square feet of commercial property in Idaho over the past 10 years, was one of the three announced Republican candidates for Idaho governor who participated in a GOP forum here July 21. But you already knew that.

What you might not have known is that before the forum, a group of a dozen regional CEOs grilled Ahlquist, U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador and Lt. Gov. Brad Little. The scope of questions from the CEOs, who represent a broad spectrum of business interests, included health care, education, government spending, personal property tax, dealing with the state’s drug problem, competing with other states for businesses and jobs, and more.

Behind closed doors and facing identical questions from the same CEO presenters, a revelation unfolded, said Ron Nilson, organizer of the intense interviews.

“I can clearly say that not a single one of us was for Ahlquist before this,” he said, adding: “ — maybe because 11 of the 12 had never met him before.”

While Nilson didn’t disclose the names of all the CEOs who participated or specify how many have decided to support the Ahlquist campaign, he did say, “All of them were very impressed with Tommy, and more than half would vote for Tommy today.”

Ron Rock, one of the majority owners of Northwest Specialty Hospital in Post Falls and its board’s lone adviser, quipped that initially, opinions were all over the place.

“Anytime you get a group of 12 CEOs together, you’re going to get about 13 opinions,” he said.

Without naming names, Rock pegged Ahlquist’s popularity among the CEOs even closer to the unanimous end of the scale.

And Dr. Lorna Finman, CEO of a Post Falls-based defense contractor whose technology is used to jam deadly IEDs, said of Ahlquist: “You could ask him anything on any subject and he’d go very deep. You absolutely knew that he understood not just what the issues were, but he had a solution.

“I think we were all just blown away.”

So blown away that Finman, previously a powerhouse supporter of Labrador, agreed to serve as Ahlquist’s state co-chair.

Finman, who also serves as CEO of STEM Revolution in Boise — a nonprofit K-12 education organization — admitted that her conversion has come at a cost.

“Oh yes, very much so,” she told The Press when asked about pressure she’s gotten since her switch. “The heat I’m taking is just sad and disappointing, frankly.”

Similar pressure might explain why other CEOs in the group have not made public pronouncements on their gubernatorial preferences. But a little heat has never bothered Nilson.

He’s the founder of Ground Force Worldwide in Post Falls, a mining equipment manufacturer. Nilson also is a former North Idaho College trustee and a fundraising fanatic for numerous local nonprofits. Since the grueling but enlightening CEO-candidates experience, he has pitched his tent in the Ahlquist for Governor camp despite having favorable relationships with both Labrador and Little.

“I believe Raul is a good family man, and I’ve traveled with Brad Little,” he said. “But we’re looking for definitive answers on the most important issues facing our communities today. And Tommy has the best answers.”

Nilson understands that Ahlquist doesn’t have the name recognition of his opponents, but said Ahlquist is winning support wherever he goes.

“His conversion rate when he meets people is unbelievable,” Nilson said.

For Rock, who had met Ahlquist twice before the CEO sessions, the process was an opportunity to look at all three Republican candidates through the lens of “picking someobody who could run Idaho the way they would run a successful, profitable business, with basic politics aside.”

And?

“My end-all impression — I’m only speaking for myself — particularly with my health care background and health care issues, I came out being totally supportive of Tommy Ahlquist,” Rock said. “No small factor there that he’s a physician and I think he really understands the health care issues.”

Transparency, competition and free enterprise are health care values Rock said he and Ahlquist share.

“Raul, in all fairness to him, had a good handle on some of the issues related to health care,” Rock added. “I just was not impressed enough with his answers to switch my support to him. I know Brad personally and I think he’s a really nice guy, but in the answers I got from him, he didn’t have the depth of understanding of health care issues. I think that when push comes to shove, Brad’s going to depend on Blue Cross to give him his answers. And that’s just not an acceptable place for me to be.”

Education ranked high on the most important topics list for the CEOs in general and Nilson and Finman specifically.

“I think Idaho can be much more of a player in the country on education,” Finman said. “But I think the difference was, in a lot of main areas, he [Ahlquist] had a depth of knowledge and understanding and, more importantly, solutions. He had solutions that made a lot of sense to me.”

Nilson said a line was drawn in his political sand when Labrador and Little both gave public education in Idaho high grades. Ahlquist did not.

“Tommy said, ‘This is a tough question. I want to give it a C but I know it’s a D,’” Nilson said. “He said, ‘Why aren’t we focusing more on grade 4 for reading and grade 8 for math? And why don’t we have educational choices for our children?”

Nilson was also deeply impressed with Ahlquist when the candidates were asked, “What is the greatest failure you’ve had, and how did you deal with that?”

Nilson went into detail on Ahlquist’s description of a foray into real estate speculation at the pinnacle of his success as a doctor and businessman — just before the market crashed.

“He said he woke up one morning and asked, ‘What have I done?’” Nilson recalled.

Ahlquist, who had combined family interests, support from friends and other investors in the ill-fated enterprise, called everybody together and explained the dire position, Nilson said. Ahlquist vowed to work double shifts at the hospital and do all he could to alleviate the group’s tenuous position. He was able to sell some property, Nilson said, and the group recovered.

That was a very different story than those shared by Little and Labrador.

“Brad’s was a typical political answer,” Nilson said. “Raul’s answer was that he didn’t really have any failures in his life. And Tommy’s was transparent and open. But the follow-up question was, ‘If you could take that away, would you?’ Tommy’s answer, which moved the hearts of so many of those CEOs, was, ‘How can I? What I learned during those times prepared me for the job I’m doing today.’”

On the issue of tax reform, Rock said, “I think Tommy was the only one who really gave us an answer. The others both said, ‘Yeah, we need to take a look at that, but Brad wanted to have a task force. The last thing a CEO of a business says is, ‘We have a problem. Let’s get a task force.’”

Rock acknowledged that politics and business are not the same.

“You cannot run government at the speed of business,” he agreed, “but if you don’t try, you are going to forever be in the groove of accepting mediocrity, and I can’t accept that.”