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Told she'd never walk, Ahrens is running again |
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August 4, 2017 |
By Mike Weland
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Idaho
District 1 Republican Senate candidate
Danielle Ahrens. |
Danielle Ahrens has never shied from a
challenge, taking on one of Idaho's most popular
sitting Senators twice when, after having
volunteered to serve in Boise and seen
first-hand, she determined that our North Idaho
voices were not being heard.
And not only did
she run, in 2014 she did so after being told
she'd never walk again.
The child of a career soldier, Danielle was born
in 1959 on Luke Air Force Base, Glendale,
Arizona, and she moved often as her family
traveled from base to base.
When she was 12, the
family moved to Davis, California, where she
graduated high school in 1977 and went on to
earn business and psychology degrees in
Sacramento, then attend the POST Academy to earn
credentials in criminal justice and corrections.
She worked as a corrections officer for the Yolo
County Sheriff's Office for about seven years,
upholding, she said, a family tradition of
public service.
She had a friend who moved to North Idaho in
2006, and for over a year, she visited at least
once every 90 days, seeing first-hand the
seasons, and in the course of it, she fell in
love, possibly hearing the call of her
great-great grandfather, one of the early
settlers in the Snake River country back in
1837.
Whatever it was that drew her, once she moved
here, she said, she fell in love with both the
people here and the traditions long held dear.
“I'm one of the rare ones who moved here and
want it to stay just as it is,” she said.
She worked her ranch in the Samuels area,
raising hogs, and she got into the politics
slowly over the years, a step at a time, getting
involved with the Bonner County Farm Bureau, the
Bonner County Republican Central Committee and
several community organizations, including the
Community Action League and Life Choices
Pregnancy Center, Sandpoint, where she still serves on
the board.
She joined the Board of Directors and became
Government Affairs Chairman of the Bonner County
Farm Bureau, and was elected Colburn Precinct
Committeeman in the Bonner County Republican
Central Committee. She was Bonner County
Republican Central Committee Chair from 2014 to
2016, and she now serves as Legislative District
1 Representative on the Bonner/Boundary
Republican Central Committee.
Involved politically since about 2010, she said
her approach to answering questions and serving
her constituents has long been to get involved
at the source, in our case, Boise, and to put in
time “in the trenches” to see the reality of
what is going on.
She volunteered over 1,000 hours in various
Boise government offices and on the staffs of
candidates and in groups working to achieve
goals, including the fight against Obamacare.
In
time, she said, she began seeing a disconnect
between what she was hearing at home and what
she was hearing and seeing in the halls of “the Great State
of Ada.”
“Our voices weren't being heard in Boise, in
government or the legislature,” she said. “Those
who should have been advocating for us here in
North Idaho were instead listening to
lobbyists.”
She listened and learned, trying to promote
North Idaho causes from the outside until 2012,
when she faced off against Republican Senator
Shawn Keough, who had been serving since winning
her District 1 seat from Tim Tucker in 1996.
Danielle's platform has been consistently the
same ever since; be there for the constituents of
District 1, serve your two terms, train your
replacement and go back home and live with the
laws you helped create, work with integrity,
honor and respect for the people you are
privileged to serve.
Now, as then, she has defined the goals she intends
to work toward when elected, summed up
succinctly in three words; Schools, Business,
Resources.
“Funding for education is not getting to our
schools,” she said, “though 68-percent of our
state budget is for education. The money is
there, but it's being siphoned off before it
gets to the schools, forcing districts across
the state to put out their hands and beg for
levies, which splits our communities.”
There is no good excuse for that, she said, nor
any good reason why it can be so difficult to
start and grow a business in Idaho.
“It's incredibly difficult statewide to launch a
business due to excessive and often unnecessary
rules, regulations, taxes and fees,” she said.
“We should encourage entrepreneurs and those
with the ideas and courage to open small
businesses. We should encourage those willing to
try, instead of making the process such a maze
people throw up their hands and give up.”
Mining, logging, farming, waterways, hunting,
fishing -- North Idaho is rich in resources,
Danielle said, stating what we who live here all
know. But she also speaks of the traditions of
generations, of camping and huckleberry picking,
of pulling together with neighbors to get
through storms, snows, wildfire, landslides and
many more perils we face year in and year out
that go right along with the good things we
share.
“Maintaining traditions and values is
essential,” Danielle said. “Our resources must
be well tended, but kept accessible and not
locked up.”
Something else that hasn't changed from her
first campaign to now is Danielle's sense of
humor or the sparkle that shines through even
when discussing the hardest topics. But you have
to sit with her for a spell before you get a
hint of the steel in her, the perseverance and
determination that lie just beneath the surface.
When she ran in the primary on the Republican
ticket for the District 1 Senate seat in 2012,
she garnered a respectable 1,976 votes to
Keough's 4,671.
“Most who serve really want to do good for their
fellow man,” she said, “but often fall into the
personality contest of politics. “When looking
at someone who is running for office, actions
speak louder than what they say. Are they
looking for a position, or seeking to continue
the work of years? And once they're elected, you
have to keep them accountable. Make sure they
have the time to devote to serving in the spot
they are seeking. Make sure they're accessible.”
She ran again in 2014, and made an even better
showing, garnering 2,997 votes to Keough's
3,484, but what few saw was that she was still
struggling after a January 2013 vehicle
collision broke her neck and came just a whisker
from leaving her a quadriplegic.
Danielle was a passenger in a car that was
rear-ended by a teen driver on a cell phone.
“I knew instantly that this wasn't good,” she
said. “I heard the sound of my own neck snapping
and felt an immediate tingling clear down to my
feet.”
In the hospital, her doctor told her initially
that she was not likely to ever walk again.
“That was not an option for me,” she said, “and
I set out to prove him wrong. I came out
stronger, more determined, with a stronger
desire to achieve and accomplish those things
that are important to me.”
Not a single step was easy.
She's had five surgeries, two cervical and two
spinal, including a triple vertebral fusion last
April. She endured grueling and painful hours in
physical therapy.
“I'm super determined and I never give up,” she
said, a slight smile belying just how painful
the memories. “God has a purpose for me. I'm sure
of that.”
Danielle still lives on the ranch, midway
between Bonners Ferry and Sandpoint, though she
had to give up raising hogs after the collision
as it's troublesome heaving the feed.
She's divorced, the proud mother of two grown
daughters.
When her oldest daughter, Amanda, a Bonner
County Juvenile Detention supervisor, brought
her fiancé home to meet the family, he was
grilled on the family's tradition of service
above self and public service.
Bonners Ferry Police Officer Willie Cowell, she
said with a laugh, has lived up to those family
standards very well!
Her daughter Alexus, just 20, recently graduated
from Boise State University with degrees in
political science and communications.
To learn more about Danielle and her candidacy,
visit www.AhrensforIdaho.com or
visit her on
Facebook.
You can call her at (208) 610-8894 and/or email
her at
danielle@ahrensforidaho.com or at
daniellerahrens@gmail.com.
And if you do, don't be surprised if it's you
who has to ask how you can contribute to her
campaign rather than her launching immediately
into the subject; asking for donations, she
said, is a necessary part of most any political
campaign, but the part she finds least
appealing.
“Oh well. If you believe in something so much,”
she said, “you find a way.” |
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