“Freedom has always come from a box,” declared the handsome farmer, clad in a plaid shirt and dungarees, brandishing a shotgun, and looking directly into a camera to make a home-made TV commercial, “If not the ballot box, and not the jury box, then at last resort, the cartridge box.” 

He then cocked the shotgun and fired, underscoring the point he made that firearms should be taken up to defend freedom, but only as a last resort.

That was Caldwell County fruit farmer Steve Symms, then 34 and a first-time candidate for office. In seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in Idaho’s open 1st Congressional District, Symms ran as a genuine outsider and full-fledged fighter for the free market.

Having pulled off a stunning upset in the primary and then handily winning the general election, Symms went on to become one of the early “new right” House members of the 1970s before unseating four-term Democratic Sen. Frank Church in one of the most-closely-watched Senate races of 1980.

When the news broke Friday that Symms had died at age 86, the Gem State lawmaker who had retired from office 32 years ago was remembered throughout Idaho and in Washington — both for his unflinching libertarian principles and the common touch he evinced that was so effective in winning over voters.

As the grandson of the founder of the Symms Fruit Ranch in Caldwell, Idaho, Steven Douglas Symms was born to be a farmer. His only experiences outside the family farm best known for its delicious apples were his years acquiring a degree at the University of Idaho and a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps. Discharged as a 1st lieutenant, Symms would often say he regretted that his unit had never been activated for an invasion of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Upset that their local Methodist Church was continually preaching liberal politics, Steve and wife Fran joined a group of worshippers that bolted to form a rival church. Symms also joined a discussion group headed by livestock breeder-turned-anti-government-columnist Ralph Smeed, in which there were spirited talks about the excesses of government and required readings of the works of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Smeed, who later formed the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives and the Idaho Freedom Foundation, joined with Symms to co-publish a libertarian newsletter known as the Idaho Compass.

When Republican Rep. Jim McClure decided to run for the Senate in 1972, the state GOP establishment made it clear it wanted State Senate Majority Leader Wayne Kidwell to be the new congressman from the Boise-based 1st District. Smeed and Symms felt this was the opportunity to elect one of their own to Congress. Legend has it the two flipped a coin to decide who would run. 

Symms reportedly won the coin toss and launched a campaign featuring his iconic “cartridge box” spot and speeches to small groups in which he urged voters to “take a bite out of government” and then bit into one of his farm’s apples.

In a major upset, Symms defeated Kidwell and then went on to win easily in the fall. He became a swashbuckling conservative in the House, taking on causes from the repeal of the 1968 Gun Control Act to denying funding for the transfer of the Panama Canal from U.S. control. Symms also vigorously opposed creation of the Departments of Education and Energy in 1979 and in 1976 was one of only nine GOP House members to support Ronald Reagan for president over incumbent Gerald Ford.

Symms’ challenge to Sen. Frank Church, a 24-year incumbent and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was inarguably one of the hardest-fought and most reported races for anything outside of the presidency in 1980. 

A cerebral and polished orator, Church seemed to take everything seriously. Symms often spoke in incomplete sentences, and occasionally told off-color jokes. Church championed federal control of lands in Idaho, while Symms was an early leader in the Sagebrush Rebellion to push back against federal authorities over property.

In his two previous re-elections, Church, local sources agreed, took two years before the voting convincing constituents to forgive his liberal record and somehow accept that he was a conservative Westerner like them. Not so in 1980, as the National Conservative Political Action Committee crafted independents ads reminding Idahoans that Church was a leader in the giveaway of the Panama Canal, and that he had helped uphold government control of lands in rural Idaho. 

Recalling the Senate race of 1980, former GOP State Chair Trent Clark wrote in the Idaho Statesman Journal that the perception was that “Church was a creature of ‘the swamp’ at ease among the elite of Washington, D.C.” … Symms was at his best among factory workers, truckers, loggers, and farmers.”

With more people voting in the red-hot Senate race than in the contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Symms eked out a win by 4,262 votes out of more than 430,000 cast.

Sen. Symms may have been a bit more reserved than Rep. Symms, but his principles remained unchanged. Symms was usually tied with or just a bit behind North Carolina’s storied Sen. Jesse Helms as the most conservative senator, with just under 100% in the annual American Conservative Union ratings. 

He took seriously the 1980 Republican platform and brought up its calls for ending the Departments of Energy, Education, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development — only to have his proposals for a shut-down or at least spending limits voted down with the help of Republican colleagues.

A stalwart supporter of President Reagan’s domestic and overseas agenda, Symms also convinced Reagan to scrap the 55-mile-per-hour national speed limit.

As columnist Clark recalled, “he simply asked Reagan to be Reagan, posing the question, ‘What is the federal government doing setting speed limits in Nampa, Idaho?’”

Facing two-term Democratic Gov. John Evans in 1986, Symms was a top Democratic target in a Democratic year. But his fellow conservative activists rallied to him and, with a boost from an appearance by President Reagan, Symms staved off Evans by 51.5% to 48.4%. 

By 1992, however, it would appear that Symms’ consistent votes against regulation and greater government were catching up with him. He came under intense fire in 1990, for example, as one of six senators to oppose the Americans for Disabilities Act. Facing another well-funded and aggressive Democratic challenge, Symms chose to retire from office at age 54.

Steve Symms was, removed from politics after so many years, remote and silent. But to those who reported on him or simply knew him, the farmer from Caldwell, Idaho, is remembered as someone with bedrock beliefs and his very own way of spelling them out. 

Symms himself may have delivered his best self-characterization when he said: “Big people discuss ideas. Small people discuss people.”

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
 

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