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Ever Onward Podcast
The Ever Onward Podcast is your go-to business podcast, offering engaging discussions and diverse guests covering everything from business strategies to community issues. Join us at the executive table as we bring together industry leaders, experts, and visionaries for insightful conversations that go beyond the boardroom. Whether you're an entrepreneur or simply curious about business, our podcast provides a well-rounded experience, exploring a variety of topics that shape the business landscape and impact communities. Brought to you by Ahlquist.
Ever Onward Podcast
The Butch Otter Episode | Ever Onward - Ep. 62
Join us on Ever Onward as we uncover the fascinating journey of Idaho legend, Governor Butch Otter. Born in Caldwell on May 3, 1942, Butch’s story begins on a farm where nicknames were a cherished family tradition. His path took him from rural Idaho to a pivotal role in the global potato industry during his 30-year career at J.R. Simplot, before stepping into the world of politics.
A graduate of Boise Junior College (now Boise State University) with a degree in Political Science, Butch also served in the Idaho Army National Guard’s 116th Armored Cavalry from 1968-1973. His political career began in 1972 as Idaho’s State Representative, and he went on to serve four terms as Lieutenant Governor—longer than anyone in state history—before being elected to Congress and ultimately serving as Governor of Idaho from 2007 to 2019.
In this episode, Butch shares his guiding principles in leadership, reflecting on the values that shaped his decision-making: conscience, constitutionality, constituency, and compassion. He opens up about his time in politics, the friendships that enriched his journey, and his role in expanding Idaho’s presence on the global stage. We also explore his life on his ranch in Star, Idaho, where he and his wife continue to enjoy the land and legacy they’ve built.
This episode also starts by highlighting the innovative expansion of Ahlquist Development, featuring Kekoa Nawahine. He discusses their strategic moves into new markets and projects, sharing insights on scaling opportunities in the real estate and construction industries.
Whether you’re interested in Idaho’s history, leadership insights, or business growth strategies, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration.
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Today on the Ever Onward podcast, we have Butch Otter, an absolute Idaho legend. I'm so excited to finally get him on. We've been trying for a while to get him on and just listen to his story about Idaho growing up here, His years at Simplot, his years as governor of our great state. He is one of the most authentic and tremendous leaders I've ever known. I just can't wait to sit and listen to him tell some stories about Idaho, this place that he loves, his family and leadership. Governor Butch Otter. Prior to Governor Otter, we'll hear from Kakoa Nawahine and Holt Haga for a brief AllQuist update.
Speaker 2:I'm Holt Haga, vice President of Leasing with AllQuist Development, keiko and Alhine also on the leasing team. Yeah, so, keiko, we're here to talk a little bit about kind of our overarching strategy as we look for growth within our portfolio, and I think up until last summer we sort of had a very relatively specialized focus in traditional asset classes, being office, retail and some industrial and flex. We've now sort of, with our transition to Allquist development, we've now got this opportunity to sort of expand our net and broaden our net in terms of projects that we're looking at. So tell us a little bit about kind of what we're looking at, what we're doing now and our you know kind of strategy looking forward for growth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, we've got some exciting years ahead for sure, especially as we start to evaluate new opportunities within our own market, whatever those may look like they've just opened up for us. Like you said, kind of specialized in more niche areas that we've done a really good job of up to this point. But now, moving forward, we can look at things or opportunities or deals that we might not have been able to in the past, and not only in just our market in the Treasure Valley, but also kind of expanding that regionally to other states. Right now we're looking at a project over in Reno, the old downtown Harris building, looking at doing some stuff down there, which is really exciting. It's a big project Two city blocks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, massive Old hotel, old hotel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, massive stuff. So we've got office, they've got multifamily in there. Retail component, hotel, casino yeah, massive stuff. So we got office, they got multi-family in their retail component, hotel, parking, garage, kind of everything. This mixed use that we've gotten really good at understanding how it all needs to flow together and so evaluating that project, um, which is maybe one that we would have done in the past. Um, but now, with these new opportunities, we get to look at where we get to utilize and be valuable as a as, as a whole, instead of just, hey, this is what we're doing office mainly, and a couple other small components from there.
Speaker 3:So looking at different opportunities within our market, looking at different opportunities in other markets, markets, right, and so that just provides a lot for us to be able to go and to put to the test a lot of things that we've learned through the inception of BVA. But a lot of the people here have been doing that. Sorry, I said BVA, allquist. You know it started at BVA. Now we're Allquist. A lot of the people here at Allquist have been doing that for a long time. So being able to, you know, branch out and spread to a lot of different assets and a lot of different projects allows us to really start to grow and face and come across a lot of really fun opportunities. We've had a lot of groups that we've sat down with that are presenting us deals that we get to evaluate now that, like I said, sound like a broken record that we haven't been able to in the past. So we're excited.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it did. When we first, in the infancy of our company back in 2018, you know, we sort of had this strategy of let's focus on what we know, what we're best at, and as we grew, it sort of felt like we were holding ourselves back. And so now to have, you know, this sort of pivot a little bit in terms of the type of opportunities that we're looking at, it feels like the world's opportunities are kind of endless. So it's exciting times at AllQuest Development.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're excited, we're ready for the years to come.
Speaker 1:Well, Governor, this is going to be fun.
Speaker 4:Thank you, let's get at it, let's get at it. How was John's?
Speaker 1:How was my son's? Oh, it was so good. It was so good. We talked a lot about you in it.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He's a great kid.
Speaker 4:Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I give all the credit to his mother.
Speaker 1:Well, so does everyone else. Yeah, no, he is wonderful. It's been so amazing to have him back in town and he's doing so many things. He's involved like everywhere you go. He's there. He's just a wonderful, wonderful person. You've got to be very proud of him and his family and his kids. Has it been nice having him back?
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, it's been wonderful having him back. He spent three years in Australia, yeah, in a plant that actually in Tasmania, in a plant that we built in Tasmania primarily for McDonald's Asia, and got to know the potato business really well. It's a little different than here, but the reason we went to Tasmania was because of the soils and the irrigation so we could irrigate the potatoes. A lot of places you can't do that I was in 82 countries at one time or another for McDonald's, for Simplot, and there's just a lot of countries you can't. But they have bred the potatoes and selfed them out, gone through the stages pre-nuclear and then generation one, and there's no verticillium, wilt hardly anymore, which is generally in wet, hot climates.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's kind of been genetically pulled out and they thrive Well.
Speaker 4:They breed in the strength. Okay, you can't just take potato seed into a country. The Dutch have done a really good job of convincing the world that the bingy which is their potato is the potato and it's not. In fact it's not very good for french fries. You know, you want a nice 10ounce potato that'll strip into the right size french fries.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to get in all this. Hey, here's the first question. Okay, for a kid from Caldwell Right, you've lived a heck of a life.
Speaker 4:I've been richly blessed.
Speaker 1:In your wildest dreams.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:I mean think about, tell us where you started.
Speaker 4:Well, 82 years ago 83 coming up right 83 coming up. May 3rd. Jim Risch and I have the same birthday yeah, the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross, anyway, born in Caldwell. But the story goes a little further back than even that house. For my, my brothers and I built a house. I exempted five acres out of a farm that I had in in Caldwell and right on the river, and so we built them a house and the girls decorated it and painted it and stuff. And for their 50th, wedding anniversary we gave them that house.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, we had a big picnic up at the main house and then I loaded everybody on the hay wagon and we went around and went out and that was the first house my mother ever lived in without a mortgage. Wow, and bless your heart, wow, you know a family of 11, you know you got to hustle. Yeah, you got to hustle. But anyway, my dad, I was out working on the fence one day and fence building is great therapy, yeah, you know. You look back at the end of the day and you say look at how straight that fence is. You can play it like a guitar string, you know practically.
Speaker 4:And he said have you got a few minutes to come and spend with your old dad? And I said sure. So he says here you drive it was his pickup here you drive, and so go down here, turn up here. And finally we were just off of Farmway and the freeway and he said turn in here. So I turned in and he said do you know where we are? I said yeah, we're at the canyon county labor camp. I hired a lot of crews out of here for harvest and stuff. And he says keep going. So we drove on down the street a little bit and he said, okay, stop. This is where we lived when I took your mother to the hospital for you to be delivered.
Speaker 4:Wow. So it's a long way from the labor camp to the state capitol to Washington DC.
Speaker 1:Where was he from? Tell us where, Kansas.
Speaker 4:Kansas. He and my mother were both. My mother was from Cawker City, kansas. Are you familiar with Cawker City, the largest ball of string in the world?
Speaker 1:In Cocker City.
Speaker 4:In Cocker City and dad was from Beloit. Okay, and he farmed. He wanted to go to college In fact he wanted to be a doctor, and his dad just, you know, there was the Dust Bowl days and everything and he said I can't afford it, you're not going. His dad could have afforded it, but anyway, he just farmed. And then when he and my mom got married, they started migrating west and they ended up my oldest sister, who, who will turn 80 or 90 in April, my oldest sister was born in Kansas, and then they they hit Idaho Falls and then they had kids as they came down the river.
Speaker 4:So I had a brother born in Idaho Falls, twin sisters born in Twin Falls, a brother born in Buell and I was born in Colwell. And then we eventually got back to Kansas and my youngest brother, mike, who's six years younger than I am and was born on our kitchen table in the country. It was anyway, as we got them all sorted out Nebraska, kansas, idaho, we just moved around and of course I was born six months after Pearl Harbor. Yeah, and Dad, I was the sixth child. My real name is Clement Leroy. All the good names were gone by the time I was born, so my mother named me after two of her favorites.
Speaker 1:You know, I had Bobby Joe on here and we talked about you too. Oh yeah, and she loves you. Oh, she is, isn't?
Speaker 4:she. I am so proud of her. I'm so proud of my whole team.
Speaker 1:Everybody that was with you has gone on to just be. I mean, there's no surprise here, gov Well, no surprise here, but yeah, but she brought up your name and the CL and the Clement. We talked about you very, very fondly, wonderful, so all the other names were gone.
Speaker 4:So, anyway, I ended up with Clement Leroy and, being Catholic, you know you kind of look back and the nuns, because I was in Catholic schools most of the time. In fact, st Mary's Catholic School in Corning, kansas, is where I started in school, but they call you by your Christian name, they don't call you by a nickname. And then they shortened Clement to Clem. And guess what, If you look at the entertainment world, there was a guy by the name of Red Skelton yeah, oh yeah, who never used a cuss word or told an off-color story or anything like that in his life, a great, very successful comedian. But one of the things that he did was he created these caricatures. Gertrude and Heathcliff were the seagulls, remember, oh yeah. Well, one of the characters that he created was the village idiot and his name was Clem Cadiddlehopper, and so the school kids would start calling me Cadiddlehopper, hey, clem. And the fight was on. And so, in order to bring peace to the schoolyard, the nuns finally relented and they called me Butch.
Speaker 1:And they named you that. No, where did the nickname come from.
Speaker 4:That came from home. Home, that came from home. But every one of us, bernadine and Bernadette, were the twins. They were Dina and Dette. Yeah, I think Geneva became Neva. Yeah, patricia became Pat Sonny or, pardon me, jerome Joseph became Sonny Sonny. Yeah, it's a great tradition, anyway.
Speaker 1:My grandfather same thing with all of his grandkids. He had nine kids and I don't have any grandkids, but with every single grandkid he would call you a nickname, like within the first couple years of your birth. And that's what you were, and that stuck and that's what you were and they, you know you're like where did that name come from? I don't know. Came from your grandpa. Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 4:Well, anyway, that's sort of the history of the nomenclature of Butch.
Speaker 1:Otter. So you grew up farming, you grew up ranching. I think people that know you well will say first and foremost, you're a cowboy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I love it. With 11 in the family, you had to live on a place where you could grow a big garden. Yeah, because my mom would can everything. My mom and then my sisters, my five sisters, eventually learned how to can and, frankly, we still do that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was spring. We may have to run clear to Walla Walla to get asparagus, to pickle it and can asparagus, and maybe you know a few other things, but by and large, fruit, you know, we go to Sunny Slope and pick the fruit and the girls can it. Anyway, we had to live on a farm. We had to grow our own beef, our own pork, our own lamb. So it just became necessary because we couldn't, even as cheap as it was in the grocery stores, you still had to grow your own stuff.
Speaker 1:What were your? If you think back to then, butch, what were your aspirations, do you think as a young man, they changed.
Speaker 4:They changed quite a bit. Pardon me, they changed quite a bit, tommy. I wasn't a good student number one and so the older I got. In fact, fact, at age 16 I quit school completely because in Idaho the code says you have to go to school between the ages of 7 and 16, and after that you're no longer a truant. And so, like all my brothers and sisters before me all except my brother Paul when I got 16, they quit. They stayed home and milked the cows and hoed the garden, you know, or went to town and got a job. And when 16 hit, I was going to join the Navy and see the world. So I went down and took the physical and passed the physical. All right, thank God, they didn't have an academic test and they said well, physically, we'll take you in the Navy, but we would suggest that you go back to school and get your diploma, get an education, and you'll be much more useful and helpful to the defense of the nation that way and so. But we need your parent's signature, even if you're when you're 17. So I went home and told mom and dad what I was gonna do.
Speaker 4:We were living on a farm at Cloverdale and Oberland then, and we had about. We had about 80 acres but we had leased a bunch of ground because we were milking 80 to 100 cows and selling it to Dairy Gold and Meridian. The milk and we had a mixed herd, so our butterfat was up there, but the poundage, the yield on the milk, was probably I'm guessing now because I never tested it probably less than 50 pounds, whereas today you know most of these herds, you're at 87 pounds and 3.8% butterfat. So you get a good and more. You know you get more butter. You get anyway. And dad said okay, we'll sign the papers when you reach 17. But you're not going to sit around here on your butt, you're going to work. And boy did I work. That dairy was something else. I didn't realize at the time, but I would go to school so I didn't have to work the dairy.
Speaker 1:Was your father a disciplinarian? What was he like?
Speaker 4:Disciplinarian. What was he like? Dad was the executioner, mom was the disciplinarian, and it wasn't one of those. Wait till your dad gets home. It was. You're going to have to tell your dad why you did this terrible thing, whatever it was. And then dad would execute. And we had razor straps, you know, I mean the kind that they used to sharpen a straight razor on we had. My mom was a barber at one time Because we moved from military post to military post.
Speaker 4:When they, when they told dad, we're not taking you in because you've got a bunch of kids to take care of, but there's a way that you can serve your country and we're going to put you in the army corps of engineers and make you an apprentice of something. Well, he chose electricity and he became an apprentice electrician and then eventually a journeyman. And that's why I went to 15 different schools between the first grade and graduation, from what is now Bishop Kelly, but then it was called St Teresa's Academy, and I accused dad one time of moving every time the rent was due because we moved so often. But most of my brothers and sisters went through the same thing, anyway. So I quit school, I'm working on the farm. I'm working on the farm and, tommy, I wasn't smart enough to take I thought I was pretty brilliant, but I wasn't smart enough to take that milk check, balance that back against the feed bill to see if we were doing, if we were getting ahead or falling behind. And so after a year and a half of that, I said I need more education, I'm going back to school. And I tried. It was late. It was in October when I finally made that decision. In fact, five days before I was supposed to board the train and go to Salt Lake and take the oath to join the Navy and then go to San Diego. And it was, it was. It was just one of those things where, like I said, I was blessed Because you know, I could have joined the Navy and gone ahead and not gotten any smarter and still been stupefied by a milk check and a feed bill.
Speaker 4:But anyway, I got into the St Teresa's Academy and the nun, sister Josephine Marie, I'll never forget her. She was so sweet initially and she got out a book and she said you're going to need to catch up and the only way you can catch up is you're going to read a lot. And so we were sitting in the parlor right across from her office, with my mom, and so I read a page and she said well, you can use some improvement there too, but I think you can catch up. And so I went in, I matriculated in as a sophomore and couldn't play sports that first year because I was on probation, but I was lucky, I was really lucky.
Speaker 4:And then I was the second out of all nine of us to graduate from high school, and my dad was a very devout Catholic and he wasn't a big believer in education, even though he wanted to be a doctor, and so he would make statements like you don't need any education beyond high school, unless you're going to be a nun or a priest. And so when I graduated from St Teresa's, my first year and a half I spent in Olympia at St Martin's Abbey, benedictine Abbey.
Speaker 1:I did not know this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, well, anyway, I only lasted three semesters. And people say, well, why did you leave? And I said because they told me I couldn't be Pope. And actually it wasn't that.
Speaker 1:You probably could have been Pope if you would have taken that path.
Speaker 4:Oh, I doubt it. The Lord is very forgiving, but I don't think that forgiving, but I don't think that forgiving. Anyway, then I came back to Boise and Lyle Smith when I graduated from St Teresa's. I did play two years of football and three years of basketball at St Teresa's, but Lyle- Smith the stories are.
Speaker 1:You were pretty good, really pretty good athlete.
Speaker 4:I enjoyed it and I think if you enjoy something you're good at it. But anyway, I wasn't a 12, 15-point scorer in basketball, Maybe three, maybe four, but I could get fouled real easy. I could fall down and snap around on the floor like.
Speaker 4:I was injured Anyway, and so I'd get lots of free shots and won a few games in the last few seconds by those free shots, free throw from the free throw line, anyway. But in football I played both ways. I was a linebacker on defense and a running back on offense. But I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed sports and that's why I say, if you see the people that what they're doing, they really enjoy it, they're very good at it because they're dedicated to it. They're thinking about how they can improve all the time. So anyway, I came back and it was still Boise Junior College at that time and Lyle Smith was the coach, so cool, and so he didn't give me any scholarships but he gave me a few nickels for books so I could buy my books. And what they did then think of this, tommy what they did in those days was they got you a job.
Speaker 1:Oh well, a little different than NIL, oh boy.
Speaker 4:One day after practice. Do you know Dyke Nally? No, Well, Dyke was a tremendous quarterback and cornerback and he and I played for Lyle together and we became lifelong friends. He ran the liquor department for Phil Batt, Dirk Kempthorne, Jim Risch and.
Speaker 1:Butch Otter. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, what a.
Speaker 4:Anyway. So I matriculated into Boise Junior College and was there, played spring ball practice for Lyle and a guy by the name of Babe Brown was the coach and a tremendous legend at the College of Idaho and he came over to watch us practice. Brown was the coach and a tremendous legend at the College of Idaho and he came over to watch us practice and told eight of us that if we wanted to come to the College of Idaho we could play on the team over there and he needed certain guys and I was one of them, and Ron McNutt, who was our quarterback, was one guys and I was one of them, and Ron McNutt, who was our quarterback, was one. I think Dyke was offered some help to go to the College of Idaho but didn't take it anyway. So, pardon me, I ended up playing football for a few years at the College of Idaho that's where I got my degree was at the College of Idaho and one day when my first wife and I were both students at the College of Idaho and we had a little apartment on Montana Street and she invited her dad, jr, over for Sunday dinner about 3 o'clock, and so he came over for Sunday dinner about three o'clock and so he came over for Sunday dinner and right in the middle of dinner practically, he said Butch.
Speaker 4:He said I want you to go out west of the city here to that plant and meet Leon Jones and tell him I sent you out there to run that plant. I said to myself whoa, this is moving right along. What was he like?
Speaker 1:What was like? Tell us. I mean, here you are a kid pretty humble kid could have gone a few different directions. Yeah, it sounds like you made some pretty good decisions there early and you end up marrying JR's daughter Right. What was it like meeting him. What was it like being around him.
Speaker 4:What kind of a guy was he? First time I met him was a little scary, and the night that he came home early from a card game because Gay had told him we want to Butch and I want to talk to you. This was the big talk, this was the big talk. And so he comes in and sits in the chair we're at McCall and sits down in the chair and we do small talk, you know, for a little bit. And finally he says well, what do you kids got on your mind? And I froze. I mean, I froze solid. And Gay says Dad, we want to get married. Well, sis, that's up to you. It's not me, you know, I like the kid, he's a hard worker.
Speaker 4:I was working building the Catholic church in McCall at the time and my dad was the foreman, so you know how convenient. So I was one of the workers and anyway, that was in like August and I thought, you know, we'll wait a year or two, something like that. And December we got married. We got married in December In a way. So we're sitting let me get back to the Montana apartment and dinner on Sunday and we're out and run that plant.
Speaker 4:So right after classes the next day I go out to the plant and meet Leon Jones and I tell him I'm Jack Simplot's new son-in-law and he sent me out here to run this plant. And he said and Leon says I know who you are, I was at the wedding. Oh, okay, we got something else in common. And he reached around and grabbed the phone and said Frank, get in here. And he was calling Frank Gimlin who was the plant manager. And so Frank came in and he looked exactly like my DI when I was in the Army, my drill instructor. Anyway, he walks in and Leon says this is Jack Simplot's new son-in-law. Frank says I know who he is, I was at the wedding. And so he says take him out there. Jack sent him out here to run this plant. You take him out there and show him how to run the plant. He said all right, and so out we go, or this thing's probably going to show me my office and uh we walked in.
Speaker 4:The first door we walked through was company stores, s-t-o-r-e-s company stores, and they checked me out a pair of cotton gloves, a pair of hip boots like I was going duck hunting and a bump hat, a white bump hat and he said follow me. So I didn't, I hadn't put all those things on. I put the bump hat on the gloves, carried the boots, then we walked up through the plant and about two blocks later, uh, the next door, he opened and it said, uh, warehouse h, and that was where the potatoes, the raw potatoes, were stored. But now see, this is april. Those potatoes were put in there in september and we didn't have humidifiers and air conditioners to keep those potatoes at 38 degrees, at 99% humidity, so they would preserve, so they would rotten.
Speaker 4:And when he opened that door and that odor hit me in the face, I thought, my god, everything that has died in the last nineteen hundred sixty four years is inside that door. And as we walked in, you could kind of see the potatoes. They were stacked 10, 12 feet deep on each side and we were walking on potatoes but there was a board that you walked on the board. You didn't walk on the potatoes and pink lights. There weren't lights like these. There were pink lights because a light like this would sunburn the potato, turn it green. Yeah, you know, the per diem would turn green and help it rot, and so it was real dim. But your eyes finally adjusted and fortunately god has only given me a no factory memory of about a minute and a half, so that sort of went away and we finally, we walked and walked and walked on these boards and finally I could see a pink light and somebody working under it, down at the end of the boardwalk.
Speaker 4:I'll never forget him, ad Rutherford. And AD was forking those potatoes into what looked like an irrigation ditch and the water was running by real fast and carrying the potatoes somewhere, somewhere and pretty soon. Frank says to me put those boots on. So I put the boots on me, butch, put those boots on, so I put the boots on. He says now you get down in there, ad, come up out of there. And I knew AD was glad to see me because when he came up he smiled and that pink light glinted off the one tooth that he had left. I said, oh my gosh, what have I got myself?
Speaker 1:into Running the plant.
Speaker 4:Come up out of there and he said Butch, now you get down in there and you fork those potatoes into that trough, into that ditch, and if you don't do it, the plant doesn't run. So you're running the plant, tommy. It was probably a total of seven years before I got out the other end of that plant. What an incredible story, what an incredible opportunity. And the old man, old JR, knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what he was doing, didn't he? Because I went from the fresh shipping. I went from running the plant forking the potatoes into running the plant at other stations. So I went to the lye peelers that was next and then the trim room where I had to wear a hair net and pull the deep eyes with a knife out of the whole potatoes.
Speaker 4:He's teaching the business Out of those whole potatoes and then to the cutter deck, where I learned how to change the blades and the GRLs and the Urshels and eventually the OV and the.
Speaker 1:Did you know what he was doing as you were going through?
Speaker 4:Were you appreciating? Not initially, but I've always been kind of inquisitive and I liked learning the new jobs I really did, and it served me well later on in the company did. And it served me well later on in the company because as I finally reached the warehouse, the package line and the warehouse, and then the freezer and loading boxcars with big boxes of french fries, and one day I'm going to say 1966 or 67, I was still working. I had been working in the research kitchens, research and development, where we were developing new product lines and Jack had made arrangements for Ray Kroc, who was the founder of McDonald's, to come, because Ray Kroc always said I will never use a frozen french fry. I mean it was like taking an oath I will never use a frozen french fry. And in our research kitchens he sent his guys in and they prepared I think it was like four or five plates, the way they do it at the stores. And then we fried up some frozen French fries and we had about four or five plates of frozen French fries but they were already cooked. And then in come the taste test and Ray and JR and Ray's guys, ray's, went along and said well, I like this plate and I like that plate. The three plates they chose were frozen and right then, and there JR and Ray Kroc shook hands and cut the deal.
Speaker 4:First, 7 million pounds that Jack ever sold to one customer and I remember when we loaded that first buck car of mac fries he said Butch, that's the first car load of potatoes I've ever sold to a single customer. Wow, with a single label on it. And of course that turned in later to millions. You know, 700 million pounds, a billion pounds All over the world. Well, not initially produced here. I think our first big shipment point around the world was when we had to build the plant in Boardman, oregon, because we wanted to be on the water. You know, the cheapest transportation known to man other than throwing it and you can't hardly do that was to get it in those ocean-going containers and shipping it out of Boardman on the Columbia River and then right over to the Orient. But when you think about it, you know and I don't know if you've ever read anything about Jack, I have, but boy, think about that.
Speaker 1:Think about this place, just his impact. Yeah, and when John was on, we talked a little bit about the impact of JR his drive, his ability to be a businessman, that meeting, what it led to, and then look at Simplot around the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what it's become. Tell us a little bit more about you. Were there for how many years at Simplot?
Speaker 4:30. 30 years, 30. I think I got a little credit in my retirement for all the time that I spent overseas. Because between 1979 and 1991, that's when I served as president of Simplot International, which primarily was to put together a distribution and supply system for McDonald's, Because Ray Kroc decided in about 89, or pardon me, 79, I really want to go around the world. I want to catch up with Kentucky Fried Chicken and those guys, Kentucky Fried Chicken and those guys, and so we created Simplot International. And the first plant that I actually bought a partnership into a plant was in Bergen-Zoom, Holland, Wow, With the Moll Brothers, and we had that partnership and we had that partnership and we taught them how to make some mac fries and eventually we sold that plant and got other plants in Germany, Cologne.
Speaker 4:But doing business around the world is tough and the biggest mistakes and I made mistakes, the biggest mistakes that I made, and when I teach an international business class at Boise State or at the College of Idaho, I remind them all of this I said don't make the mistakes I made because I underestimated their culture and their traditions. Imagine trying to sell French fries to Japanese First off. The whole world eats off the same plate and you've got the entree, so it's meat or fish or something like that, and then you've got the vegetable, and then that third section of that plate is reserved for starch. So noodles and rice and potatoes generally make up the bulk of those choices. And so, aside from trying to deal with the culture because one of the cultures of the Japanese is they never touch their food, hence chopsticks and I even went to the point of saying how can I get a small pair of chopsticks with every order of French fries? Fortunately we had a great marketing support system from McDonald's and they overcame that.
Speaker 4:And my first big contract overseas was 75 million pounds, with a guy by the name of Den Fujita-san who was the guy that got the franchise rights of all of Japan from Ray Kroc and Fred Turner. It was a delight, but I came home when he said, all right, I'll buy your French fries, and it was going to be about 75 million pounds, and I said okay. And I came home and our then president of the company said well, we need a contract. And I said, oh, okay, you know, I figured it makes sense 75 million pounds and we've got to spend 250 million bucks in order to build a potato processing plant. So I got the contract from the legal department and I went back over and gave it to him and he said you come back in two days and so I didn't. When I walked in two days later, he says I can't sign this contract, he said if anything goes wrong, this contract will talk for us. We won't talk.
Speaker 4:So it reminded me of the handshake between Ray Kroc and Jack Simplot. And maybe it was the potatoes, Maybe it's the potatoes in your diet that makes you think like that and have that sort of historical thinking. I doubt it, but when I saw that happen with then Fujita-san from a totally different culture at a totally different time and a totally different world, I thought that's what the first thing I thought of. This is just like the handshake in the research, Because it made sense. If we got a shipment of potatoes over there and somebody didn't like them or whatever, we'd go to court.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Instead of call you.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, did you have any idea? I'm just thinking, all the years and deals and international travel and business and all during all that did you did you realize how that would would help you as a politician later on, with all the good you did with international trade and Idaho, and we feed the world. Was it a connection then? When did the political bug hit? Because what a tremendous resume and what a tremendous life preparation for what you would eventually do. But was it there? When did the politics bug kind of get into you?
Speaker 4:I repeat where I started, when we first sat down here at the mic. I've been richly blessed in my life. What happened was 1972, phil Batt was the president pro tem of the Senate and it was a tradition for him to come home to the Chamber of Commerce. I was working at Simplot and we had a big restaurant there called Smorkets and that's where we had the Chamber of Commerce meeting and Phil Batt gave a talk. Here's what we did in the Senate this year, because this is like May, and they'd been out since, I don't know, february or March, and they'd been out since I don't know February or March. Anyway, he said Larry or, pardon me, jenkins. There was two representatives, jenkins and another guy that was in the real estate business are going to quit the House of Representatives. And he pointed at me and he said I think Butch ought to take one of those seats and.
Speaker 4:I hadn't even thought about it really. Actually, when I came home from the Army off of active duty, which would have been in late January of 69, I had been at Fort Knox, kentucky, the home of Armored I was Armored cab Wow, and they were organizing the Senate and a buddy of mine, dean Summers you've probably heard of Dean's name, anyway, dean Summers was the guy that was in charge of hiring the secretaries and the pages and things like that. Anyway, he said, butch, how would you like to be the assistant secretary and parliamentarian of the state senate? I said I think I'd love it. And so he said, all right.
Speaker 4:And so Jack Murphy, who was then the Lieutenant Governor, swore me in as an officer of the Senate and I spent the 69 and the 70 legislative sessions as Assistant Secretary and Parliamentarian of the state senate, and that's kind of when I got the feeling. And then I ran for the house in 72 and won one of the seats clyde keithley's seat, and jerry jenkins was the other guy. He was the guy in the real estate business and represented canyon county, half of canyon county and, uh, I won. I won that first seat by 36 votes. In fact we didn't know until Friday. Following the Tuesday vote.
Speaker 1:Isn't it?
Speaker 4:interesting how all this happened. Yeah and anyway. So I got in the legislature and I got a couple of good committees. I got on the education committee, which I thought at the time committee which, uh, I thought at the time was kind of the bad boys this is where I put the bad boys uh is on the education committee. And natural resources, and, uh, I enjoyed those. I really did Uh and so and so stayed on those committees for my second term. And then at the middle of my second term my buddies started quitting Lee, barron, morris, clements, ingram stayed, and so did Gines. Those guys stayed.
Speaker 4:So when it came time to run for election I said I'm done. Uh, it's so frustrating to because it takes you a while. You've got to have some seniority to get things done. I found the same thing in congress. Yeah, uh, in was C, only there it takes you about 10 years to get anything done. So I quit and was out in 76. And then there was a governor's race coming up in 78. And I was friends with but was a little disappointed in the talent that we had. That was running for governor. So I ran for governor originally at 33 and 78. Wow, and at 35 and 78. And in a field of it was a cast of thousands, I think there was eight of us in the race and I came in third.
Speaker 1:So I I like to call those bronze medals, governor, because that's where I finished too.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I can certainly understand that. So then I got out. That was about the time Ray Kroc decided he wanted to go worldwide. So that's when I started going worldwide. And Jack said well, butch has studied these governments. That's what I studied at the College of Idaho was government and international relations. I wanted to be a lawyer. That's where my intent was to go be a lawyer.
Speaker 1:So you had the bug, the politics thing, and were you always good at it.
Speaker 4:No, I don't think so. I learned a lot, and I learned a lot from some great friends and some good, tough critics. One of the smartest guys I ever served with was a Democrat. Not that there weren't a lot of smart Republicans too, but this guy Perry Swisher was his name and Perry and his buddy. Anyway, perry was one of these guys that he had ran for governor back in the 60s and was beat out by Don Samuelson and then he switched parties because Perry was initially a Republican. And anyway, perry, I loved to listen to that guy debate.
Speaker 4:When he became a Democrat he was a powerful speaker and I would listen to him and then I'd figure out do I agree with all this and don't I agree with it? And if I disagreed with it, why? I'd want to speak right after him, and the speaker got used to that. So when I would get up and speak on a bill or be carrying a bill, he'd watch for Perry to get up to speak right after me and vice versa. But, perry, I learned a lot. I learned a lot from those guys, so it didn't come really naturally to me. I learned a lot about public speaking and preparing for it in 4-H, in 4-H leadership.
Speaker 1:What about? And this? We've got so much to get to. But were you always? When I think of you? And all the years I've known you, I don't know that I've known anyone who connects with people as much as you. It's pretty incredible to watch. Everyone thinks they're your best friend, gov, no matter where you go, and you talk about you like, oh, I love him, he's one of my best friends, and I've seen that happen in cafes around Idaho. I've seen it in little teeny Lincoln days. I've seen it in business settings. I've seen it with the high and mighty and I've seen it with the little old ladies at a cafe and you treat them exactly the same. Yeah, Was that always part of your?
Speaker 4:nature? No, it wasn't. My dad wasn't a very public person. You know he was passionate about things but rarely got up and spoke in public. But when he did, he always made sense.
Speaker 1:Was he an emotional guy? Did he tell you he loved you? Was he a warm, embracing kind of guy? No, he was cold.
Speaker 4:No, well, he wasn't really cold, but but he didn't demonstrate that.
Speaker 1:Reserved maybe.
Speaker 4:Yeah, mom did, mom did. But you've got to remember, tommy, the time that I was growing up, men didn't hug men. Yeah, you know, they didn't tell each other, they loved each other, like my son, john, and I do, like you and I do every time, yeah, every time.
Speaker 1:we see each other.
Speaker 4:It just wasn't done because you were odd, you were weird, yeah, and fortunately we've grown out of that silliness and you know, I go for 41 years. I went on a ride where there's 1,200 cowboys and we rodeo for a week and when we meet each other, have not seen each other for a year. It's amazing because you really never saw that amongst cowboys, yeah, where they hug each other and tell each other they love each other. Each other and tell each other they love them, yeah, each other.
Speaker 1:And so, like I said, we we've graduated, uh from uh being embarrassed about showing our affection, yeah but, but, but that nature, that that dna gov it comes from, it comes from somewhere, is that is that your mom Was she?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was mom. But I would also say you know it was a lot of the greeting and wanting to make people feel good came from JR. So he could go into a plant and I would go to these plants with him. And I would go to these plants with him and he'd go to what they called the jigger line, which is where the onions would go into the sack, and then you sowed them and he'd say, let me sow one of those. So I learned how to sow an onion sack.
Speaker 4:So incredibly personable, connecting with people and the people. My God, there's JR Simplot sewing my sack of onion. I may save that sack, but he'd shake hands with everybody. And then we would have annual awards. Once you worked at Simplot five years, you would get a five-year award and then 10-year award, 15-year award, 20-year award, and he'd call those people up and he'd treat each one of them and then they'd have a memory together. I remember when you started on the trim line or I remember when you did this and when you did that and it really made people feel. It put value in them. They put that value to themselves. I worked right alongside JR when he started that plant and that was powerful for you, that was powerful for me, but I could also see that it built a great community, yeah, a great, almost a family and I don't use the term friends, because family is so much stronger, but they were family and Jack was the patriarch.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense because we can't possibly hit everything but Congress. And then back to governor Right. 12 years as governor Right, the family of Idaho, oh yeah, what does that mean to you? Because, butch, honestly it is. When I can imagine you watching JR do that in a plant, yeah, but I have watched you do that in Idaho in every setting and it's family to you, yeah. What does this place mean to you?
Speaker 4:I want them to know they're valuable to me, not just their vote, if they've got a comment that they want to make about something. I've done wrong. And certainly I've done some wrong things. But one thing I learned a long time ago about Idaho, and relearned in spades in 93, was when, as lieutenant governor, I got a drunk driving ticket and my toughest race was in 94. I ran against two Republicans, dean Sorenson and Dean Egginson, and squeaked out a primary win, and then ran against John Peavy in the general and the people of Idaho forgave me because they reelected me. You know some of them well, I'm not sure, and I can understand that, but Idaho has a very forgiving nature and when you need forgiveness the most you need it from family, and so that's why I always look at Idaho as family is because they've treated me like their son. They've treated me like one of their own, and that's valuable.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about? I've had the pleasure of hearing you talk about it and I love it. Talk a little bit about your time in Washington, and I know you like getting back here, yeah, but you learned a lot there and I think you've got deep relationships you made quickly back there with really significant meaning for Idaho because of your time there. Tell us a little bit about that experience.
Speaker 4:Right. Well, as you know, it was disappointing. You know, here I thought everybody dreams of going to Washington DC and being in the United States Congress, and I dreamt about it when Helen Chenoweth decided she wasn't gonna run for a fourth term because she had made a pledge of term limits. She later admitted that that was a mistake, but anyway, she held true to her colors. So that was a congressional race in the first congressional district. Uh, there was uh six of us uh in that race and and uh, through the management of jeff malman, yeah, why I came out with about 48 of the vote, and so the rest of the other five shared what was left. I think Dennis Mansfield was about 26% and then Ron McMurray got about 16% of the vote, as I recall.
Speaker 4:But actually by the end of my second term in Congress I was ready to quit and came home and quietly told a few people that for two reasons One, I was not enjoying Washington DC, even though I had secured a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is a powerful, powerful committee, and here we had Mike Simpson on, you know, on appropriations, and now he's a Cardinal. And I think, second, in line for the for the well, the Cardinals, one of twelve, and they're the ones that head up those yeah appropriation committees. You got Jim Risch, who's following a great Idaho tradition, and William Bora and Frank Church, and he's chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Mike Crapo, who's now banking. You know that's a powerful.
Speaker 1:That's powerful, that's a powerful.
Speaker 4:And here I was on Congress. Of course I was serving then with Larry Craig, but we had a very. They watched the Idaho delegation. You know people would say, well, let's go see Idaho and see what they think about this bill or that bill, and so we'd talk about it. But DC I did. I made a lot of friends in DC. I joined Colin Peterson from Minnesota, who was one of Willie Nelson's lead guitar players in the ag.
Speaker 1:What was that? Where they were raising money to save the farms.
Speaker 4:Farm Aid, farm Aid. Anyway. Colin found out that I played the guitar and sang, and so he says why don't you come over sometime and we'll sit around and plink out a few tunes and see what we can do? So we became an item. We had Denny Reberg on drums from Montana, we had probably five guys in the band, total a bass player and lead guitar. Colin was lead guitar, I was rhythm and vocalist, and so we ended up doing a lot of charity stuff for folks that say we want the the. This band used to be the second amendment.
Speaker 1:We want this band that was the name of the band second amendment. Oh man, I know the second amendment, oh yeah, I just didn't know the story, I didn't know the band, I don't know any of this a well-regulated militia being necessary for the defense of a free state.
Speaker 4:The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Period, love it. Anyway. So we got in social circles, which you don't usually. But what I was so surprised about when I first got there was the vitriol, was the angriness that if that was a Democrat, you needed to hate him. You needed to learn how to hate him, yeah. And so I'd been back there maybe a month or two and Jim McClure called me and he said Butch, I'd like to take you to dinner. I said Great. So we went to dinner and during the dinner we were, you know, talking about stuff and I said to jim I said, jim, has it always been this bitter because jim was back there?
Speaker 4:He went back there, I think in 64, uh, when he was in the house first, and uh, he said, no, no, butch, we're a victim of our achievements in transportation. I said, what do you mean? And he said well, butch, before we had these fast airplanes that can get you home in two or three hours, we rode the train, and that was usually a day, a day and a half, two days, and so when we had to ride the train. We maybe only went home three or four times a year, back to our districts. So we'd stay in town and we'd look across the aisle and we'd say, hey, we're going to have a backyard barbecue. Why don't you bring the kids and come on over and visit Louise and I and my kids, sally and Ken? And the kids would play together, democrat or Republican, they'd play together and they got to know each other.
Speaker 4:And so what Jim told me made sense. He said Butch, the only time you see each other is when you're fighting each other on the floor or you're fighting each other in committee. So all you know about each other is what you dislike. You never got a chance to sit down and find out what you like about each other. And it made sense because I don't know. I think I made 33 round trips a year coming home when I retired from Congress. I had a million four hundred thousand miles, just constantly back and forth, just constantly going back and forth. So I liked learning the process back there because it's different than the state process, not that different, but little nuances that make a big difference if you don't understand it.
Speaker 1:And again, probably you take your international business experience now your experience in Washington DC, and now you become governor for 12 years. What a 12 years it was.
Speaker 4:Oh boy.
Speaker 1:Think about all the things. It was amazing.
Speaker 4:When 2008 hit. In fact, people would call me during COVID and say, would you call Brad and tell him this? And I said no, I won't. If Brad wants to hear my opinion on something he knows, he can call me, and he does call me sometimes. Anyway, they said, well, you know you handled that downturn in the economy. You know you handled that downturn in the economy and that was crisis management. And I said yeah, but I had a playbook. I had worked for Simplot for 30 years and we had a few tough years and 84 was one I'll never forget Because I think it may be one of the first times we ever lost money I mean actually lost money and we had to manage our JR and John Dahl and everybody had to manage our way through that. But I had a playbook. There was no playbook for COVID. Brad didn't have a playbook that said this is what you do about the vaccines, this is what you do about the mask.
Speaker 1:Pretty easy to second guess it all now too right. But when you do about the vaccines, this is what you do about the masks. Pretty easy to second guess it all now too right. But when you're going through it and you're trying to protect people and help people out tough.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, and I, quite frankly, I can't think of anything that I really violently disagreed with what Brad did through that process and wouldn't have told him if I did. That says you're a majority of one when you sit in that governor's chair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, big mantle.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's much different in Congress. In Congress, you're one of 535. In the committee, you're one of 70. When I was in the state legislature, I was one of 105.
Speaker 1:You're one of one, so it's the CEO of the state. You did it for 12 years through something just incredible. Well, you had the Great Recession and look how you led us through that. But I think you know, you think about all the other states and the way they prepare and you know the way you led and the way you had us prepared for that Right, had us prepared for that right, um, with with the rainy day fund and just the regulation, and the way you lead in a in a, in a just a real prepared way for what's coming. We, you know we started with this right. What's coming around the corner and how do you get prepared for it. It was a very business-like because that was your background right, um, of all those times plus remember I was 14 years lieutenant governor yeah, that's right, with Cecil Landris, eight years.
Speaker 4:Phil Batt four years. Dirk Kimthorne two years. Yeah, so I watched them and what worked and what didn't work, what was reasonable and what wasn't, what was a proper, and that's the first thing I told the legislature. I said we're going to redefine the proper role of government in Idaho as what is necessary, not what is nice, and that's what we did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was amazing. What are some of your best memories of your time as governor?
Speaker 4:Getting through the recession. Being one of the first states, in fact, I had mentioned to the legislature, I said we can lead this nation out of this recession if we do the right thing. And so one of the things is we didn't raise taxes. Yeah, I remember that we didn't raise any taxes. My first budget in 2007 was $3.2 billion. My budget in 2010 was $2.2 billion. Yeah, so we took a billion dollars out. I remember that there was a lot of gnashing of teeth and you know people being unhappy about some of the cuts that we made, probably the biggest one because I made about a 75% cut in parks. Yeah, and I said you know those, those parks? There's 30 state parks and, uh, they, they're part of the economic engine of that local community and so that local community ought to recognize that and participate and take ownership, uh, in that park. And so when I hired nancy merrill to run the state parks, that was the story that she took, like to orfino said you want dwarshack to shine and look good old nancy's a great.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard her name in a long time. She's a great great leader.
Speaker 4:She was wonderful, wonderful. She was great as the mayor of eagle. Yeah, what a wonderful. And you know she went around and she said you know, get your Rotarians, get your Lions Club, your Boy Scouts, your Girl Scouts, your 4-H FFA and get out there and paint those fences. Yeah, that's part of your economic. Those people are going to come in and want to stay in the park, want to shop for groceries and potato chips and pickles and want to buy gas. So make it attractive to them. It'll help your economy. We never, ever, shut down a park. Isn't that amazing? That's amazing. That's the rest of the story.
Speaker 1:Oh, hey, gosh, this is how long have we been going. Wow, what We've been doing this. An hour and ten minutes, oh my, I told you it would go by fast. I do want to ask you a couple things, okay, since you've been done. You're one of those guys that just you're bulletproof in my mind. Every time I've ever seen you, you're just, you're larger than life. You're one of my heroes, you're larger than life and I just, every time I see you, it's the most warm interaction. The last time I saw you, you just had some open heart surgery, right, and I saw you a few weeks after that. We matched scars. The first thing you did, you grabbed me, I get this big bear hug and then you're like let's see your scar.
Speaker 4:How's it?
Speaker 1:What up. But as you get a little older and you look at this story life and all that you've done, what do you? Want people to remember about Butch Otter. What's your legacy?
Speaker 4:You know, and I've thought about those kind of things, because people say, butch, you ought to write a book. All my chief staff got together one day and we were sitting around and they said we need to help you write a book. And that seems to me. I mean, I know, phil Batt wrote a book, wrote several books, and he did a great job about his life. Cecil Landris wrote a book, and it was a great book and it was about his life. Cecil andrews wrote a book and it was a great book and it was about his life. And, uh, I don't know it, just though, in my case, I I think, god, how can I write a book without all the bragging that, uh, I'm going to want to do because of all the things that I've done? Yeah, so I don't uh you should write.
Speaker 1:I side with them. You should write a book. It would be incredible, but what do you? Back to my question what's the legacy?
Speaker 4:The legacy, I think, if I had to pinpoint a couple of things, is number one.
Speaker 4:I wanted him to know that I care and I care about him as individuals. I care about their family, I care about their businesses and I think that's what that the first thing that I thought about with the recession was that I've got to make these tough decisions, but I need those folks to know that I care, and I think that's what's important, even when a constituent person asks you and it's something you can't do. I've got four tests for answering making a decision. Number one can I live with this decision in my conscience? And my conscience is made up of 82 years of gathering information from my family, from my church, from the community. So if I can live with it in my conscience, then the second thing is does it pass constitutional muster? Is this something the Constitution allows me to do? And people would say you put your conscience before the Constitution. I say, yes, I do. And they say, well, you put your conscience before the Constitution. I say yes, I do. And they said, well, you know why would you do that? And I said because there's certain things that the Constitution allows me to do that my conscience won't. If I ever had to vote for a draft for military, I couldn't do it. The Constitution allows me to do it, but in my conscience, having served under a draft program, I couldn't do it. The third thing is is it right for the constituency? Because sometimes the constituency will come and ask you to do something that your conscience says no, or the constitution says this is not a proper role of government.
Speaker 4:And then the third thing and this kind of came about, evolved when I was, when people would say how do you make a decision? I said I call it the three C's. Well, I added a fourth C because of a conversation I had with a state legislator and she told me she said you ought to add compassion. And so when a constituent comes to you and says I want to do this, understand where they're coming from, be sympathetic toward their problem, be sympathetic toward their problem. You can't solve it constitutionally because it would be a violation of your constitutional pledge, but that doesn't mean you can't sympathize with them and say let's see if we can work out a different way to do this than violating the constitutions. So those are the four C's and I love adding that compassion. Yeah, because for a long time I just had three C's.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know. I've been around a lot of leaders in my life, like health care, business, politics, church. I've never, ever seen a guy like you.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you.
Speaker 1:Never. I hope that's good. Oh, it's very good. You're the most authentic, compassionate, connecting leader I've ever been around. It's been fun being your friend. I love you, I appreciate you so much. I love you, I appreciate you so much.
Speaker 4:I love you too.
Speaker 1:And I so wanted you to come on to share a little bit of your story and I really appreciate you being on today Anytime, my friend.
Speaker 4:Oh, I love it. You know Ronald Reagan used to say that time spent a horseback is not time, that God takes off your time on earth, and I like to think that the time that I spend with great friends like Tommy Alquist is time that doesn't go against my time on earth.
Speaker 1:I like that and I agree with the horseback thing too.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so do I.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks for coming on, butch, love you, appreciate you.
Speaker 4:I love you too. Thanks everybody, thank you.