By Jesse Stanchak and Bob Benenson, CQ Staff

As a House Republican freshman facing a tough Democratic opponent, Rep. Bill Sali should be able to find comfort in the strong Republican voting tendencies of Idaho’s 1st District — a place that gave President Bush 68 percent of its votes just four years ago. But if any incumbent needs that kind of inherent partisan advantage, it is Sali, whose rough-edged demeanor again is an issue this year after a 2006 open-seat election in which he took just less than 50 percent of the vote and won by a 5 percentage-point margin.

Though he was able to fend off Democratic business executive Larry Grant’s upset bid last time, Sali faces what appears an even stiffer challenge this time from Walt Minnick, another business-oriented Democrat who used to be a Republican and was an aide during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Minnick, an avid outdoorsman, also has political experience from his 1996 Senate bid against Republican incumbent Larry E. Craig .

Minnick reported total receipts of $2.3 million as of Oct. 15, more than twice Sali’s $982,000 — these days a rather modest amount for an incumbent facing a serious challenge. Minnick also has topped the $780,000 that Grant raised for the 2006 race by a 3-to-1 ratio. And Minnick has been additionally aided by an infusion of independent expenditure advertising in the 1st District by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which is much better funded than its partisan counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). According to the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute, the DCCC had a total of $411,000 into Idaho 1 through Tuesday, compared to just $18,500 on Sali’s behalf by the NRCC.

CQ Politics, which takes past voting behavior and demographics into account in handicapping elections, has held the Idaho 1 race at a very tenuous Leans Republican rating, meaning Sali had an edge but an upset by Minnick was a plausible scenario. But the growing financial disparity between the parties in this contest — and the fact that Minnick had a 51 percent to 45 percent lead in an Oct. 18-19 poll by SurveyUSA, the only published independent poll to date in the race — has prompted a rating change to No Clear Favorite.

It is hard to envision that Sali’s problems in this election are mainly a matter of his strongly conservative views. They should, in fact, be among his political strengths. The western of Idaho’s two House districts — which includes part of the state capital of Boise, Nampa and cities such as Coeur d’Alene in the state’s panhandle — is a pretty conservative place, as evidenced by that landslide vote for Bush in 2004 and similar margins run up by Sali’s Republican predecessor, C.L. “Butch” Otter , whose successful 2006 run for governor opened up the 1st District seat. Sali was boosted in his 2006 race by the support of national conservative organizations such as the Club for Growth.

It is the way Sali has addressed his views, and his overall demeanor, that appear to be the cause of the problems he has had in congressional politics. These matters came up during the six-candidate campaign for the 2006 1st District Republican primary, which Sali won with just 26 percent of the vote. According to one anecdote, Republican Mike Simpson , who this year is a shoo-in to win a sixth term in the 2nd Congressional District, once threatened to throw Sali out of a window during a heated discussion when both served together in the state House.

For a time it looked like Sali might have toned it down a notch after he got to Washington. He was elected as president of the small Republican freshman House Class of 2006, and joined the Republican Study Committee, an influential coalition of House GOP conservatives. But before long he was protesting the fact that Keith Ellison — a Minnesota Democrat whose 2006 election made him the first Muslim to serve in Congress — took his the oath of office on the Koran, and objecting to a Hindu prayer being offered as a benediction in the Senate. He also introduced a bill proposing to weaken Earth’s gravity that was intended to lampoon Democratic-led efforts to raise the minimum wage, calling the two proposals equally absurd.

More recently, in the midst of a campaign in which he did not need any more controversy, Sali was in the news for joining aides in what was reported as heckling a Minnick spokesman and a local TV reporter who was conducting an interview.

Yet Randy Stapilus, a veteran observer of Idaho politics, told CQ Politics that the behavior by Sali that some see as out of bounds could actually benefit him among others in a Western state where voters are noted for their skepticism of the federal government.

“Yeah, it feeds the notions that he is, perhaps, not the most serious guy. But that’s not always such a bad thing,” said Stapilus. “There’s a political tradition of voters wanting to send a kind of long middle finger to Washington, and Sali is part of that.”

Nonetheless, this year’s primary, held May 27, suggested that Sali still has problems even within Republican ranks. He was held to 60 percent of the vote by Matt Salisbury, an Iraq War veteran who had little name ID or campaign money.