There's a huge piece of laminated brown paper behind Clint Stennett's desk in Boise.
"Hey Clint! We're 'Primarily' here for you," it reads. It's got a picture of a cowboy surrounded by hundreds of signatures collected during the Blaine County Democratic Caucus on Feb. 5 in Hailey.
Things have changed since Jan. 24 when the Senate minority leader from Ketchum was diagnosed with brain cancer. He's taking work a little more slowly. He's appreciating life minute by minute. His wife, Michelle, quit her job in the Wood River Valley and has moved to Boise to be with him. He's taking long evening walks in the foothills. And his diet has changed.
With a half-hour interview on Monday nearly complete, Stennett, 51, goes to a small refrigerator in his office and retrieves a clear water bottle containing a green liquid.
"We're trying to make my diet as alkaline as possible," he says. "My wife makes this for me. It's like six vegetables or something, which I have before I go to lunch. During a typical legislative session I gain about a pound a week, and it takes me the rest of the year to lose it. This year I haven't gained anything."
There's a scar on the left front side of Stennett's head that reveals where the tumor was removed during surgery Jan. 29. His return to the Senate came less than two weeks later, Feb. 8. Work, he says, has returned life to some degree of normalcy.
"It gives you a reason to get up every day. This is what I wanted to do for years, obviously. I've done it for 18 years. I'm the longest serving minority leader in the state, in its history. I just had a burning desire to get back. That's what keeps me coming back—giving back, a desire for public service."
On his first day returned to the Senate he received a standing ovation from his fellow elected officials.
"This is part of my family, my support system up here," he says. "I'm just happy to be back with them on a daily basis. It's not as intense as it was because I'm not doing a lot of the evening stuff. But a lot of that's socializing. I probably go to one a week rather than three a week."
Cancer, he says, comes with hidden blessings that people might not consider until they or someone close to them is diagnosed: "It changes your perspective in the sense that you really appreciate life."
"I guess what it does for me, is it gives me pause," he says. "I think it makes you appreciate on a daily basis. You live everything moment by moment. It's more crisp and clean. You're more aware. You're more mindful of what's going on on a daily basis. It does change your perspective. If you ever wanted to do something you better start doing it.
"I read somewhere in a book, if cancer's a gift it focuses you on being mindful and on living moment by moment. It focuses you on being really a part of the world, which I hope I can do. I really want to be able to do it here, in this setting. This place gives me purpose and a sense of accomplishment."
Stennett says former Speaker of the House Bruce Newcomb, R-Burley, who retired in 2006 after 19 years in the Legislature, was among the first people to contact Stennett following surgery.
"He's in touch with me every other day or so," Stennett says.
Newcomb was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1993, and has encouraged Stennett to do research and remain positive.
Stennett is receiving radiation treatments at Mountain States Tumor Institute in Boise, and he's receiving chemotherapy through orally administered pills. Those treatments are five days per week. Also, once a month he travels to University of California, San Francisco to participate in an experimental program in which he's taking a drug called Enzastaurin, designed to enhance the efficacy of traditional treatments.
"I've been fortunate and connected with a bunch of people who are suffering from the same disease, and they're doing great, and I am, too," he says. "There are a number of people who succumb to it, but I'm not going to be one of them."
Stennett stabs at a spinach salad over lunch and expresses how grateful he is for his wife's strength and love. He reveals the softer side of a man who typically talks politics and business. He discusses the benefit of positive vision. He appears compelled by ideas presented by quantum physicists. He talks about the spiritual nature of things.
"Christian, Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic—whatever you want to call it. I'm just more spiritual," he says, qualifying that he and his wife are practicing Catholics. "We attend the Catholic church, and it's an important part of my life."
Offered an apology from a man whose job it is to pry about such a personal battle, Stennett brushes it off.
"It's a public thing for me," he says. "I have to make it public. I'm a public figure, and I intend to survive it. And it is curable."
He then describes with greater detail the trials of his treatments. For radiation to be administered he is strapped down and a mask put over his face so the area where the cancer was removed can be targeted more precisely.
"I get a tinge of a headache after the radiation, but I take an Advil, and it goes away," he says. "There's a chance I'll lose some hair during this radiation treatment, but everybody handles it differently."
The chemo, because it is administered orally, doesn't come with the debilitating effects of traditional IV-administered chemo.
"I'm pretty chipper. I feel good. I take a hike for a couple miles every night. That may not last, but I'm praying that it does. It's just an everyday deal." He looks down to his waist where a pedometer is slung from his belt. "I've made 22,000 steps since Friday afternoon. That's something like six miles."
Despite his trials, Stennett is still business. He discusses an amendment to a law that would enable towns like Ketchum to issue additional liquor licenses. He is excited that a bill he's been pushing for five years recently passed the Senate 30-4. It would amend the state's law on confined animal feed operations to enable people living farther than a mile away from a proposed site to comment on the siting. He discusses an executive order undertaken by Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter at his prompting. It will ensure streamlined access to federal resources for communities faced with the expenses of fighting wildfires.
After lunch, Stennett returns to his job. He attends a Senate Resources Committee hearing in which a bill to institute carbon trading is forwarded to the Senate floor. During a discussion on ailing sage grouse populations and the potential for Endangered Species Act listing, he asks pertinent questions about predation and the fluctuating nature of populations of several key sage grouse predators.
After the hearing, he will go for more treatments and return in time for the entire Senate to convene later in the afternoon.
Stennett made his pre-political career as owner of an array of Wood River Valley media outlets. He was elected to the Idaho House of Representatives in 1990. He served in the House for four years before being elected to the Senate. Of his 14 years in the Senate, 10 have been as minority leader.
At the age of 28, he convened a group of investors to buy the Wood River Journal. His share of the investment was $6,000, "which was my total net worth." After buying out his partners, he sold the newspaper three years later, buying television station KSVT the same year. Along the way he bought radio station KSKI, which he owned for about five years.
Now, with an unforeseen life obstacle to overcome, he approaches things with the same positive vision that propelled his careers in media and politics.
"I've never been a statistic. I'm here. I'm a fighter," he says. "The only reason I'm here is strength, courage, conviction and determination."
And cancer, he says, will be no different.
Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, explains how reintegrating into his political life is helping him remain positive while he confronts the ordeals associated with brain cancer. The laminated page behind him contains hundreds of signatures from well-wishers who penned him notes during the Blaine County Democratic Caucus on Feb. 5. Photo by Greg Stahl
