Boise's Basque American Mayor Dave Bieter wins third term

Boise Mayor Dave Bieter, a second-generation Basque American, won on Tuesday a third term in office to become only the second mayor in Boise's history to do so.

According to election unofficial final results published on the Idaho Statesman on Tuesday night, David Bieter won 74.28 percent of the vote with 12,640 votes. Candidate David B. Hall won 25.72 percent of the vote with 4,377 votes.

Bieter hosted a re-election party for friends and family at Boise's Basque Center on Tuesday night.

A second generation Basque-American, Bieter is the only mayor in the US who speaks Basque. He is one of the people responsible for strengthening relations between Boise and the Basque Country, and Basque culture in Boise has gone from strength to strength during the last decade.

Although in direct contact with the Basque language and culture since he was a child, Bieter did not learn Basque until he was fourteen. In 1974, he and his family took part in a year-long exchange program set up by his father in Oñati. According to the Boise Mayor, this program and the direct contact he had with the Basque Country was essential to him: "Without that reconnection, I probably would have not learned Basque," he says. Bieter hit the headlines in the Basque Country in 2008 when he led a crowd in a resounding cheer of "Gora Obama" during a Democratic meeting in Boise.