Brad Little Biography
Brad Little (Bradley Jay Little) is an American politician serving as the 33rd Governor of Idaho since January 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 42nd Lieutenant Governor of Idaho from 2009 to 2019. He previously served in the Idaho Senate from 2001 to 2009 where he chaired the majority caucus and represented Legislative Districts 8 and 11 (change due to redistricting in 2002).
He won the 2018 gubernatorial election against Democratic nominee Paulette Jordan, the seventh straight gubernatorial victory for the Republican Party in Idaho.
Brad Little Age
Brad Little was born on 15 February 1954 in Emmett, Idaho, United States. He is 65 years old as of 2019.
Brad Little Net worth
Brad Little earns his income from his businesses and other related organizations. He also earns his income from his work as a politician. He also earns his income from Government relations. He has an estimated net worth of $ 10 million dollars.
Brad Little Education
Brad Little graduated from Emmett High School in 1972. He then attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, he was a member of the Idaho Alpha chapter of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agri-business in 1976. Little married Teresa Soulen of Weiser in May 1978, and they have two sons and five grandchildren.
Brad Little Image
Brad Little Politician
Brad Little was a member of the Idaho Alpha chapter of Phi Delta Theta fraternity and earned a bachelor’s degree in agri-business in 1976. Little married Teresa Soulen of Weiser in May 1978, and they have two sons and five grandchildren.
Little has had an extensive dual career tending to his family’s ranching interests (his grandfather was the “Idaho Sheep King”) and in public service. During the 1981 and 1985 legislative sessions, Little represented his father, David Little, in the Senate on a temporary appointment due to illness, during which time he served on the Finance and Resources Committees.
He has also managed his family’s ranching operation, Little Land and Livestock, for almost thirty years until his son, David, became a manager in 2009 when Little was appointed a lieutenant governor.
He continues to work as the head of Little Enterprises, Inc. (a diversified farming and cattle operation), and is currently a member of the board of directors of Performance Design Inc. – a small Boise-based manufacturing company.
Little has also been involved in a variety of private organizations and companies based in Idaho and the Mountain West. Little is a former chairman of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI), “The Voice of Business in Idaho,” and was a member of its board for twenty years (1981-2001).
He is also the former vice-chairman of the Idaho Community Foundation and the Emmett Public School Foundation, and the former director of the Idaho Wool Growers Association and the University of Idaho Foundation.
He has also served in the past on the board of directors of Home Federal Bank, a small Idaho-based regional bank recently acquired by Bank of the Cascades, High Country News, and the Idaho Foundation for Excellence in Education.
Brad Little State Senator
Brad Little was appointed by Governor Dirk Kempthorne to fill a state Senate vacancy in May 2001 and represented what was at the time District 8, which covered a part of Gem County surrounding and north of Emmett, and all of Boise, Valley, and Adams counties, and the southern portion of Idaho County.
Following a change in district boundaries due to redistricting in 2001–2002, Little was elected in the fall of 2002 to District 11, which then encompassed all of Gem County and the northern portion of Canyon County, including the communities of Middleton and Parma.
He was subsequently reelected senator from the 11th legislative district four times. Little was also elected in 2003 by his Republican peers to the party leadership position of Majority Caucus Chair, which he held until 2009.
Brad Little Lieutenant Governor of Idaho
On January 2009, Governor Butch Otter appointed Little to the office of Lieutenant Governor to fill the vacancy left by former Lt. Governor Jim Risch’s election to the U.S. Senate in the 2008 election cycle. Little was sworn in by Otter on January 6, 2009, and confirmed by unanimous consent when the Idaho Senate convened on January 12, 2009.
Little was subsequently elected Lieutenant Governor in 2010, defeating two opponents in the primary election, and two opponents from the Democratic and Constitution parties in the general election. He was re-elected Lieutenant Governor in 2014.
Economic development and trade missions
Little focused on economic development as lieutenant governor, for example helping to persuade energy bar producer Clif Bar & Company to build a new food manufacturing plant in the state in 2013.
Little also took part in and led several trade missions. He led a Friendship Mission to Basque Country in Spain in 2010, during which he met President of the Basque Government Patxi López. During this meeting,
Little and López agreed to establish a Basque Economic Development Office in Boise, Idaho, which “would provide resources and services for Idaho and Basque companies to ease collaboration on research, sales, and collaborative programs.”
Little later signed the Euskadi-Idaho Friendship Agreement, which affirms the friendship and cultural affinity between the Basque Country and Idaho, which is the residence of the largest Basque community outside of Spain itself.
He was also a member of a 2011 Idaho trade delegation which traveled to Mexico and Brazil. He commented after the trade mission that “we found tremendous interest and opportunities in both countries for Idaho products and services.
This trip strengthened key trade relationships and established new customers for Idaho businesses.” The Idaho Department of Commerce estimated that the mission resulted in sales of more than $30 million.
Legislation
In the 2014 legislative session, Little sponsored Senate Bill 1354, an anti-“patent troll” bill. The bill protects companies from abusive or “bad faith assertions of patent infringement” to collect an extortionate licensing fee.
Brad Little Governor of Idaho
In June 2016, Brad Little announced his candidacy for the Idaho gubernatorial election in 2018. He said that Idaho National Laboratory will be a priority if he becomes governor. Little was endorsed by incumbent Governor Butch Otter, former governors Dirk Kempthorne and Phil Batt, and U.S. Senator Jim Risch. During his campaign, Little called for a phased-in $350 million reductions in the state income tax and the elimination of the Idaho grocery tax.,Little won the Idaho Republican Party primary, beating both Raúl Labrador and Tommy Ahlquist with 37.3% of the vote. In the general election in November, he easily defeated Paulette Jordan, the Idaho Democratic Party nominee, by over 130,000 votes.
Brad Little Endorsements
In addition, some groups select votes that tend to favor members of one political party over another, rather than choosing votes based solely on issues concerns. Nevertheless, they can be invaluable in showing where an incumbent has stood on a series of votes in the past one or two years, especially when ratings by groups on all sides of an issue are compared. Website links, if available, and descriptions of the organizations offering performance evaluations are accessible by clicking on the name of the group.
Most performance evaluations are displayed in a percentage format. However, some organizations present their ratings in the form of a letter grade or endorsement based on voting records, interviews, survey results and/or sources of campaign funding. For consistency and ease in understanding, Vote Smart converts all scores into a percentage when possible.
Brad Little Platform
Brad Little defeated Democratic challenger Paulette Jordan on Tuesday to become Idaho’s next governor, immediately saying he’d assert Idaho’s independence from federal authority. “I look forward to working with President Trump to continue to allow Idahoans to be the masters of their own destiny,” he said in a victory speech.
“Idaho has been fairly successful but we have more to do in taking back the authority that the federal government over the years has taken, whether it’s in the area of education, transportation, health care, public lands management and all the areas of regulation.” Little’s win came as no surprise in the deeply conservative state, despite significant national media attention given to his opponent.
Little has been lieutenant governor since 2009 and has vowed to continue retiring Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s legacy of leading the state’s recent explosive growth. “That’s my ultimate goal: To enhance that prosperity going forward,” Little said. “We still have work to do.” One of Little’s first challenges could be to deal with a voter initiative involving Medicaid expansion.
“I want to come up with an Idaho solution if Medicaid passes,” he said earlier in the evening, noting that could be easier with Democrats getting a majority in the U.S. House. “I think, actually, the fact that the Affordable Care Act isn’t going to change dramatically maybe gives us leeway to do some better things.”
Opponent Paulette Jordan, a former state lawmaker and member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, was the first woman to earn her party’s nomination in Idaho. She didn’t immediately concede but said her candidacy created a movement.
“They said it wasn’t our time,” she told a cheering crowd before Little had been declared the winner. “They said it wasn’t your turn. What did we say? What did we say? No, this is our time.” Little was raised in Emmett, part of a longtime sheep ranching family with a massive livestock operation. He has served 16 years in state government and was appointed to lieutenant governor in 2009 to replace U.S. Sen.
Jim Risch, who was headed to Congress. Little has a pro-business reputation and has been criticized and lauded as a political carbon copy of Otter. Little will head a state experiencing a bit of a boom, with a rapidly growing population, low unemployment rates and housing costs that are skyrocketing in some areas.
The growth will likely make some pressing issues even more urgent, including widespread deferred maintenance on roads and other infrastructure and a shortage of qualified tech workers. On education, Little would like to see school districts consolidate resources to reduce overhead costs, putting any savings into education programs. He would take the same approach for city and county highway districts.
He’s also a proponent of more career technical education programs and letting colleges and universities keep the sales tax generated on their campuses with the money going toward lowering tuition costs. Jordan, a member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, grew up in a ranching and farming family in northern Idaho.
She was elected to the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Council the governing body that leads the sovereign nation and was elected to the Idaho House of Representatives in 2014, where she served on the business, energy and state affairs committees. She resigned from the statehouse earlier this year to focus on her gubernatorial run.
Jordan during her campaign noted that Idaho continually hovers near the bottom when it comes to national rankings of education spending. She wanted to see an opt-in universal preschool program for kids, improved pay and incentive programs for teachers and increased opportunities for high school students to earn college credit.
Jordan said the funding for those programs can come from savings elsewhere including some criminal justice savings from decriminalizing marijuana, and some savings from expanding Medicaid.
Jordan represented some big “firsts” in the heavily conservative state of Idaho. She was the first woman to win her party’s nomination for governor (though Idaho hasn’t elected a Democrat to the top seat since Cecil Andrus almost 30 years ago). If she had won, she would have been the first Native American governor of a U.S. state.
Brad Little Inauguration
Brad Little, the policy-minded former lieutenant governor known for his fiscal conservatism and ranching background, used his inaugural speech to reiterate his commitment to building on the legacy of his predecessors as Idaho’s 33rd governor. “They are why Idaho is a leader in fiscal responsibility and the preferred home for Idahoans and many new residents from other states,” he told a crowd of about 1,500 people in a speech on the Capitol steps.
“They are why we’ve continued to grow our investments in quality education. And they are why our personal income growth is the fastest in the country.” Little spoke for just nine minutes. He said he would seek to reflect shared Idaho values and aspirations. Stepping up to lead Idaho in the midst of rapid urban growth, he paid homage to Idaho’s roots.
“For generations, Idahoans have faced the challenges of living in the Western frontier and forged a better future for the next generation,” Little said. “Idaho pioneers did the hard work and made the hard decisions to create opportunities for their families and those who followed.”
All four living former governors attended the ceremony. Much pomp and circumstance greeted the newly elected officials cannon-fire shook the ground, and four A-10 planes flew overhead too much applause. Friends call Little a policy wonk. Former state Sen. Joe Stegner, a Lewiston Republican, said that early in his career, Little found it hard to “calm his overactive mind and string together four complete sentences on the same subject.”
The governor abstained from mentioning policy initiatives until his State of the State address on Monday. He did, though, make a point to emphasize Idaho’s constitutional responsibility to free public education. “We must keep cultivating the skills of our citizens as we progress from a historically agrarian society to a modern information-driven economy,” Little said.
Mention of national politics was absent from Little’s speech. Instead, he chose to keep the attention on Idaho and its history. He mentioned the federal government only to push back against Washington’s “overreach.” He called for “Idaho solutions where Idahoans enjoy the liberty of being masters of our destiny.”
As a former rancher, Little reflects the state’s agrarian base, which is slowly shrinking as counties like Ada and Canyon urbanize. In an introduction, first lady Teresa Little shared a portrait of the Little family history, going back to the pioneers who arrived in Idaho when it was still a territory, and to the governor’s Scottish grandfathers who traveled to Idaho from Scotland in the 1890s to seek work herding sheep.
“Your ancestors may be indigenous to this beautiful land or you yourself may have just arrived,” she said to the crowd. “Our family is happy, honored and humbled to join hands with each and every Idahoan as we step into this brand new year with a new governor.”
Judy Hinman, the governor’s sister, said her brother has been involved in politics since he was 14. He carried the state flag at a Republican National Convention. “He was made for this,” she said. “He has politics in his blood.” Other state elected officials were also sworn in unofficially because the legal swearing-in comes Monday. The officials include a new state treasurer, Julie Ellsworth, who succeeds Ron Crane.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra, State Controller Brandon Woolf, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and Secretary of State Lawerence Denney all were re-elected in November and will begin their new terms Monday. All are Republicans. The inauguration also saw the swearing in of Idaho’s first female lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who has aligned herself with President Trump and pushed back against federal government intervention in Idaho.
In the crowd, Tom Bailey, 65, brushed off questions about Little he was there for McGeachin. “She’ll represent the state well,” Bailey said. “I’d like to see more of state funds go to the eastern side of the state instead of this Taj Mahal in Boise,” he said. He drove four hours from Idaho Falls for the inauguration, the first he has attended.
The inauguration was also the first for members of the Minico Young Republicans, a group of teens who drove nearly three hours to the Capitol. “I’m excited to see how this new government affects our state as a whole and our local communities,” said Hana Pfieffer, a Minico High student. Inauguration celebrations continue Saturday, with a ball open to the public in the Capitol Rotunda.
Tickets are available for $25. The Idaho Republican Party is hosting a private fundraising reception ahead of the ball. Jason Lehosit, former executive director of the state party, declined to provide the Statesman with a list of guests or sponsors.
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