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The local Republican Party central committee’s quibble with the “fiesta” theme of the Bonner County Fair this year is raising eyebrows in Sandpoint, where the party’s planning to decorate its fair booth with Arizona license plates and use “celebrate” as its theme instead.

“The Republicans at BCRCC want to make it very clear that English is our primary language, and call our booths ‘Celebrate!’ and display some Arizona license plates if you have some to spare,” committee Chairman Cornel Rasor, a Bonner County commissioner, wrote in a letter to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

Rasor said, “Having a fiesta theme at the fair was OK with me, I didn’t even think about it ‘til somebody brought it up. But their concerns are very real to them, so I don’t want to downplay it.”

He added, “If I understand it correctly, the word ‘fiesta’ and the word ‘celebrate’ are actually synonyms, and that’s what the people who were concerned about it were talking about, so technically speaking we didn’t have a different theme than the fair – it’s just a different spelling.”

At its monthly meeting in June, the committee voted to “affirm” Arizona’s tough immigration law – a position also taken last month by the Idaho Republican Party at its annual convention – and to send the letter seeking the license plates for the fair booth to Arizona’s governor.

Rasor said an email went around a week before the meeting from members who “didn’t like the idea that it was a Spanish theme, with the border problems. A couple others emailed and said, ‘Chill out, fiesta just means celebration, forget it.’”

Longtime Bonner County Fair Board Chairman Tim Cary of Priest River said, “This has got nothing to do with English or anything else. … We just come up with something that’s fun to decorate with, that’s all we do.”

Last year’s fair theme was “A Black Tie and Blue Jeans Affair,” and in 2008, it was, “Ewe Bee There – It’s Our 80th Fair!” Groups sponsoring booths at the fair or submitting items in fair competitions decorate to the theme to win prizes.

Gail Curless, a Fair Board member, said, “We try to get it chosen by the first of the year, because there’s people who quilt and who do handicrafts and that sort of thing, and they want to know early on.”

She said she supported this year’s “Fiesta at the Fair” theme, which she said will offer lots of colorful options for decorating. “I think it’s a reach to be upset by the word ‘fiesta’ – that’s a big reach,” Curless said. “It’s sort of like making it ‘freedom fries’ instead of french fries.”

Cary noted that one of the fair’s longstanding food attractions is the Mexican food offered at the Search and Rescue booth. “Are we supposed to change the name of a burrito to something in English?” he asked. “I’m thinking there’s some narrow-mindedness here, but that’s just my opinion.”

Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, said she missed last month’s GOP central committee meeting due to high school graduation festivities, and wasn’t sure what message the committee was trying to send.

“The Bonner County fair staff and the Bonner County fair board are terrific people, and I’m sure that their choosing ‘fiesta’ as the theme for the fair had nothing to do with immigration laws,” she said. “They were looking for something that was upbeat and positive.”

Rasor said there were only “two or three that objected to it” on the central committee, and the overall direction from the committee was “to support Arizona, something a lot of committees are doing these days.”

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