Presidential candidate making campaign interesting

Editor's note: An earlier version of this column had the time incorrectly listed. It is now listed correctly.

I have to admit I am pretty excited that presidential candidate Ron Paul is coming to Sandpoint on Monday.

My guess is he will be the only candidate who will make it north of the Kootenai County line this political season and is probably the only active presidential candidate to ever visit Sand-point.

Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower have all visited here but I have been told it was after they were in office.

Why am I excited for Rep. Paul’s visit, you ask?

For starters:

• He makes watching the Republican debates fun.

• He is the only presidential candidate who hasn’t flipped and flopped on … almost everything.

• The longer the primary and caucus season continues, the more sense he makes. Try to say that about Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney.

I am not a betting man but I have a feeling that Rep. Paul is going to win the Bonner and Boundary county cauci on Tuesday.

Why not come out to the Bonner County Fairgrounds at noon on Monday to meet a man who won’t be president but is keeping it interesting and is worth a listen?

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A handful of Sandpoint-area merchants kicked in a few dollars around Valentine’s Day to sponsor a $300 local shopping spree as part of the Bee’s Great Valentine’s Giveaway.

Daily Bee advertising saleswoman Jodi Berge picked Leanna Cox’s name from more than the 2,000 tickets that were entered.

Part of the deal was the winnings had to be spent at participating businesses, so we had a quandary about how best to enforce the buy local rule.

We decided to just give Cox the money and I asked her to keep a log of where the money was spent.

The Panhandle State Bank employee was true to her word and turned in her log last week. Here’s how she spent $300 at local businesses.

• $30.15 — Second Avenue Pizza, dinner. Her winning ticket was drawn from a Second Avenue entry form.

• $50.88 — J.C. Penney, for a work outfit.

• $13.77 — Sears, for a lawn tractor filter.

• The rest went to Big R for: backpack sprayer, $84.79; boot scrubber, $19.07; greeting cards, $14.15; fishing line, $29.66; garden seeds, $10.83; fishing lures, $15.87; and a box of ammunition, $37.09 for a total of $306.26.

“We had fun,” she said. “We wanted to spread it around as much as we could and it was great seeing all of these stores.”

•••

The seventh annual Daily Bee Adult Spelling Bee turned into a marathon Friday night as the D.A. Davidson “Sophisticated Sesquipedalains” and the Keokee “Spellologists” duked it out for 20 words AFTER surviving a barrage of words that took down the Daily Bee, Washington Elementary and East Bonner County Library teams.

The event was settled in sudden depth (pun intended, save your calls) after both teams parried with: hauberk, scheherzadian, syzygy, callipygian and tokamak — just to name the easy ones.

After nearly three hours, Titina Z. correctly spelled daguerreotype and D.A. Davidson took home the coveted, three-foot-tall trophy for a second year.

The Daily Bee team finished third but almost finished dead last when the team’s jelly bean balloons almost suffocated several team members.

The high brow entertainment almost came to an end when Sheriff Daryl Wheeler handcuffed Titina Z. (aka, The Hot Polyglot) and threatened to haul her away for being an illegal spelling alien.

As he applied the cuffs, our seemingly straight-laced sheriff mentioned that handcuffs most couples use are made of fur. Hmmm. The audience kicked in $75 to keep her in the contest.

The teams spelled a combined 125 words and sent pronouncer Kathy Hubbard scurrying for as obscure as words as possible.

Newspapers in Education and adult literacy programs raised nearly $2,000. Their victory secured, the D.A. Davidson team quickly exited the competition late Friday night and headed straight to Eichardt’s for a quick nightcap — with the trophy on the bar for all to see.

•••

Bonner County Sheriff’s log: Dog complaint at Twin Rivers Road on Feb. 21 at 10:08 p.m. Officers responded to: “Report of a dog having been shot in the Athol area.” Ouch.

Four Sandpoint Police officers responded to a call on Feb. 29 at 10:07 p.m. on Florence and Cedar concerning a suspicious circumstance. “Officers located the source of yelling in the area: it was two siblings playing with Nerf guns.”

David Keyes is publisher of the Bee and has a reward out to have a photo of Rep. Ron Paul holding up the Daily Bee.