The odds are always long for a write-in candidate for any office. Former Eagle Mayor Nancy Merrill is hoping to beat the odds and beat one of the most powerful Republicans in Idaho House Majority Leader Mike Moyle.

She’s banking on Moyle’s foot dragging on road funding and allowing Ada and Canyon County residents to vote in a local option tax election to raise money for roads and transit projects to ease the traffic congestion most pronounced in his district. So what is the record of write in candidates? Not good.

However, there are success stories. I covered an election in a town of 2,500 in Wisconsin in the 1970s where two candidates on the ballot were beaten in a landslide when the current mayor agreed under pressure to accept a second term if supporters got enough people to write her in. Needless to say Edith Merila, the winner, was a popular mayor in Washburn Wisconsin.

Democrat Charlie Wilson won the sixth congressional district nomination in Ohio in 2006 over two candidates on the ballot. He went on to defeat Chuck Blasdel, the GOP candidate in the general election. He had the strong support of the party's organization.

In the city where I was born, Galesburg, Ill., Write-in candidate Carl Hawkinson won the Republican primary for State Senator in 1986 as a write-in candidate. But he defeated another write-in candidate in a race where the incumbent died.

These rare victories may give Merrill hope along with the support of several key business people, the strong anti-growth sentiment of people in the district and the potential that Democrats can cross over. But she faces the realities of an Idaho Republican primary usually dominated by the most conservative voters.