Posts published in “Idaho column”

On September 22, the two major party candidates for Idaho superintendent of public instruction, Republican incumbent Debbie Critchfield and Democrat Becky Sundin Mitchell, appeared at a lively debate hosted by the College of Idaho and Idaho Ed News.

Moderator Kevin Richert of the Idaho Ed News praised them for “working it into their busy schedules,.” and they were scheduled to meet again on October 12.

After the first debate, Critchfield backed out of the second appearance, saying a minor party candidate should not be excluded from the event (though that did happen, reasonably, in the first debate). Then the organizers of debate 2 agreed to include the third contender, and Critchfield said her participation was back on.

And that's good. But the tenuousness of it adds another layer to a comment by Richert that “debates have become kind of a lost art in Idaho politics.”

Indeed they have.

The diminished numbers of political debates in recent years has been a nationwide phenomenon, but it hasn’t hit equally everywhere. During this season approaching the general election I like to watch candidate debates around the country, and online and on cable I’ve watched hot battles like the Senate contests in Iowa, Michigan and Maine, and tough U.S. House races like one in Washington’s 3rd district. (They can be great entertainment, as well as being informative about the people and about a broad range of issues.) I’ve watched two debates between the major party candidates for governor in Oregon -- that’s just the first two of the four the candidates have agreed to. Debates remain alive and well in many places.

But in Idaho, not so much, especially at the top.

In the past, the blame for missed debates - and some have been - could be spread around. In 2016, for example, I wrote about how “all three Democratic congressional candidates missed the deadline for filing is unclear. The Idaho Debates organization, which includes people from Idaho Public Television, the League of Women Voters and the Idaho Press Club, for years have been the organizers of the state’s only statewide debate series; the filings they require are intended among other things to show that the candidates involved are running serious campaigns.”

But this year, it’s mostly entrenched incumbents for several top offices including governor (Republican Brad Little) and senator (Republican Jim Risch) who simply took a pass on participating. Both, in fact, seem to be running campaigns that focus on keeping their heads down and replying on their party label to glide back into office in November.

Challengers have tended to press for debates. Risch’s challenger, Todd Achilles, once approached him personally on the subject: “I tried to have a quick conversation with Risch before the event to ask him why he won’t debate me, and Sen. Risch refused to answer the question and just walked away.”

The League of Women Voters held a debate on October 6 for governor candidates, but Little declined to appear.

(Ironically, back in their state legislative days both Risch and Little were known as strong floor debaters.)

It may be a useful campaign strategy. But it doesn’t help the public make an intelligent, informed decision on the ballot.

The problem the rest of us have  is that there’s little incentive for the nominee of a majority party in a one-party state to expose themselves to the risk a debate always entails, as long as there’s no price to pay in opting out.

Voters haven’t been penalizing candidates, incumbents or not, for failing to make themselves available to questioning by their opponents in the general public.

They should. Failure of a candidate to showup and participate in debates and other open-public events ought to be harshly penalized by voters.

They’ll change their ways if it starts costing them a few elections. Until then, the incentives call for shutting themselves off from the public, which is no way to run our kind of government.

 

Spend a few decades tracking elections and nearly every contest in each new crop falls into a well-defined box. Occasionally, you come away surprised, but not often. So Idaho has been this way for many years.

Now comes a major race that fits no comfortable category. Enough about it is different from what came before to make it hard to evaluate or its results to predict.

This singular unicorn race is the contest for U.S. Senate, between (primarily; also including two minor candidates) three-term incumbent Republican Jim Risch and independent Todd Achilles.

Idaho of course has had plenty of contests for the U.S. Senate, but since popular voting for the office began in Idaho in 1914 the main contestants, and only plausible winners, were a Republican and a Democrat. Only nominees of those parties, and only some of those, have run serious campaigns - meaning substantial and with a realistic shot at winning - in all these years.

Through that period, while Democrats have won at times, Republicans most often had a major advantage. Since the New Deal years, no Republican has run for re-election or (as party nominee) for election in a year when Republicans are at a sweeping national disadvantage. (The closest might be 2008, when Risch was elected to his first Senate term; it was a rough year for Republicans nationally but not really in Idaho.)

And there’s a third point applying to the last three decades or so: The Democratic label has become thoroughly toxic, to the point that a statewide win for anyone but a Republican has seemed quixotic.

This year’s Senate race upends all of that.

Achilles is a presentable, energetic and skillful candidate who has gotten good reviews from many appearances around the state. He has been at work on this race for more than a year, as opposed to the many last-minute entrants. He has a decently funded and well organized campaign, even with a campaign office open to the public. He has generated support from both Democrats and Republicans (he has considered himself both of those at various points before his current independency) as well as others. This is much the most serious, by a long distance, non-major party candidacy in Idaho for a major office in the last century.

Is that enough to win in Idaho?

You won’t find a prediction here that the election result will be upended as well, though it could be. The point is that it’s hard to know.

National political analysts mostly have tagged this race as “likely” to stay Republican; but that’s a notch down from the “safe Republican” standing Idaho Senate races normally rate, and pays close heed to historical trends. The reason is mostly not necessarily an expectation that it’s close, but that it’s hard to tell.

The analyst Rachel Bitecofer put a finer point on this, when on September 8 she called the Idaho race, alongside other Republican-independent matchups in Nebraska and South Dakota, as toss-ups. She explained, “electorally, these races give us an extraordinary test of the Republican-defection thesis. If 2026 produces only the ordinary polarized midterm effect, these states remain extraordinarily difficult territory for a challenger. But if there really is a meaningful bloc of habitual Republican voters looking for somewhere else to go, removing the Democratic label gives them somewhere else to go without asking them to become Democrats. I don’t know what happens in these races.”

That gets to the real “theory of the case” for Achilles’ race, as well as those in Nebraska and South Dakota (both of which are just about as Republican as Idaho is): That there may be substantial numbers of voters who have supported Republicans before but this year either might switch sides or not vote. Might the fact that they aren’t voting for a Democrat be enough to get them to move? There are some indications that some voters may shift their votes for that reason, but the evidence isn’t conclusive.

So here we are. Polls have been conflicted in their assessments. I don’t much consider them dispositive, because the only really important measurement is one we can’t reliably see until the vote comes in: Whether, as Bitecofer said, “there really is a meaningful bloc of habitual Republican voters looking for somewhere else to go.”

Only then will we know whether this race really was a unicorn or not. But if it’s a real sighting, you can probably guess it won’t be the last.

 

Some elections are about deciding who decides. This year, Idaho voters are being asked to give away a piece of their own power, likely forever, to the Idaho Legislature. This vote will say a lot about the real nature of Idaho.

Welcome to Idaho Proposition 4 (aka House Joint Resolution 4), an under-reported but stunning grab of power that if passed likely would result in the legislature grabbing much more.

It is not deceptive. The formal title of the proposed amendment to the state constitution says, “Grant Legislature Exclusive Authority and Prohibit Citizen-Initiated Measures on Marijuana, Narcotics, and Psychoactive Substances Amendment.” In other words, law related to certain drugs would have to be made by legislators, and could not be changed directly by the voters. Once the legislature decides (even if, one day, to legalize everything), the voters would have no way to weigh in. After all, revisions to the constitution have to go through the legislature.

Proposition 4 would not in itself change Idaho drug law, either toughening or loosening it. It would end the ability of voters in future to make such a decision for themselves.

Today, Idaho voters can pass an initiative - a law - on just about any subject they choose that comes under the heading of a state government responsibility. That could change.

A website called the Idaho Liberty Project, noting the implications of the measure, said “HJR 4 is not just about substances.  It sets a precedent. Once voters accept that one subject is off-limits, the larger question becomes:  Who decides which topics voters are allowed to decide at all?”

That would seem to be the legislature.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation, so influential at the Statehouse, is in support of this amendment, which more than anything else tells you how twisted and perverse its concept of liberty has become. (Taking away power from the voters and giving it to a government agency in their view has become a +1 for liberty. The IFF’s founders likely would be nauseated.)

When I recently talked about Prop 4 with a veteran observer of national politics, his immediate reaction was that the voters likely would reject the proposal: Voters in many states, he noted, have refused to give up their own power. And he may be right; most Idahoans I’ve asked about this recently said they feel the same.

Still, this measure was passed and put on the ballot by a large majority of the Idaho Legislature, supported by every Republican in the chambers. (It also has Republican Party support.) To what extent do the constituents who elected them agree?

Seven other states do have subject restrictions on initiatives, but those concern the structure of state government, relating to state finances and the operation of courts, not policy decisions. This Idaho decision would be the first by voters to deliberately chop away at a part of their own freedom - and the first I can think of in Idaho history.

The implications are national too. A drug policy website noted, “If HJR 4 passes, it provides a template for legislatures in states like Wyoming, Kansas, and South Carolina to constitutionally insulate their prohibition laws against citizen action.”

But the big issue here isn’t the details of drug policy but citizen control of the laws that govern them. Just pick a hot button topic some well-funded interest would like to see decided only by legislators - who often are vulnerable to campaign spending and lobbyist pressure - rather than by the voters, and you can easily see interest group-imposed law in many areas.

Even this year it’s part of a broader theme. Idaho Proposition 1, which concerns state abortion law, is an attempt to reset legislative action over the last half-decade or so on that subject - to weigh in on whether the legislature did the right thing. Already legislators have been pledging to repeal the initiative if it passes, telling the voters in essence that their choices don’t matter, only those of the legislature. A vote against Prop 1 therefore has become a statement by voters that this would be just fine with them. (If Prop 4 passes, you can bet on legislative efforts to ban public votes on abortion policy.)

This is an attempt to grab permanent power from the people.

Prop 4 already has revealed the character of the legislature. The vote in November will be a test of the character of the voters of Idaho.

(image/Wikimedia commons)

Way back a half-century ago when I arrived at the University of Idaho, the cost of a higher education was not a big concern.

Being an out of state student, I did pay tuition, as in-staters then did not. That still wasn’t any serious obstacle; tuition and fees amounted to a few hundred dollars. There were residence and meal fees too, of course, but they were not especially onerous either.

I had saved some money from work during the prior year and to that added some help from my parents, some part-time work at Moscow, and a small loan, which post-college I easily paid off in a couple of years. No problem, really, and most students (at least at public colleges and universities, and many private institutions too)  of the time probably could say something similar.

That was then. This year, the state Board of Education “approved an increase of $425 for resident undergraduate students at Boise State, University of Idaho, and Idaho State University and $350 for students attending Lewis-Clark State College. The decision reflects a deliberate effort to balance student affordability with the long-term sustainability and competitiveness of Idaho’s higher education system.”

That increase for just this year was close to the semester tuition I paid back in the day.

For the academic year just starting, the University of Idaho website reports, cost (tuition and the rest) for attendance is estimated overall at $50,267 for non-residents and $30,791 for in-state students. And,of course, the UI still is a lot less expensive than many institutions.

That’s a whole different world than I experienced back when: Far more oppressive and life-bending. What was not a difficult proposition for many students a few decades ago has become one.

None of this is really news, of course, but there’s cause for mentioning it now: An upcoming change of the guard at UI. Scott Green, who has served a respectable seven years as president, said he will retire next summer, and the heavy machinery for hiring a replacement is kicking into gear.

A suggestion: Throughout the process, ask applicants for the position what they will do to help make the UI a more affordable education option, filling the needs of the many who need the help rather than just a few who can afford it, the way it once was.

It’s not that a university president can simply make such things happen on campus with the issuance of a proclamation. But a university president can be an influencer, can advance an agenda, can put ideas on the table, can reach the public.

No institutional strategist would advise a new UI president to launch and lead a visible campaign for decently funding higher education in Idaho (which isn’t now), one of the big causes of high costs for students. But that’s exactly what a university president should do.

Nor would the successful applicant get much advice to find ways to save money without weakening value to students, meaning pressuring both external accrediting organizations and internal administrative and support functions that have grown so much in the last couple of generations. But they should.

Add to that taking a more critical look at spending that doesn’t enhance education at the institution. (Yes, UI also conducts valuable research work, but much of that is underwritten by grants and other income.) In his recent book Crisis of the Common Good, Senator Chris Murphy - an advocate for the benefits of higher education - warned about “not more accessible education but visible monuments to institutional prestige - cathedrals built to a credential that grows more expensive and more exclusive with every groundbreaking.”

He also wrote about finding more flexible ways of awarding degrees and certifications, in some cases scaling back the standard four-year schedule for an undergraduate degree in cases where a more efficient selection of courses and instruction could be done in less time.

This should be a solvable problem, one that some states have begun to address more seriously.

Idaho did it once. Idaho can do it again. Here's an opportunity to make the mission of the next president moving toward getting us there.

 

State supreme court decisions about acceptable language used to define ballot initiatives - an issue not just in Idaho but elsewhere too - may seem like deep inside baseball stuff.

But because it directly influences how people vote, at the moment of voting, these descriptions should catch our attention. The abortion initiative on the ballot this fall will pass or fail in large part based on what Idahoans think they’re voting on. Last weekend, the Idaho Supreme Court decided that question. Sort of.

The initiative from Idahoans United for Women and Families (the concise text is online) has been approved to appear on the November ballot. A key question is, how will people perceive what they’re voting on? Will it open the doors to completely unconstrained and unregulated abortions, or will it scale back cruel and draconian extreme restrictions on human rights? Both concepts are being pushed.

When an initiative appears on an Idaho ballot, it comes with a short description provided by the state. Here is what the state first proposed as the impact of a yes vote:

“A YES vote would create reproductive rights, including a right to abortion before a fetus’s ability to survive and after a fetus’s ability to survive in cases of a medical emergency, and provide liability protections for healthcare providers.”

Idahoans United asked the Supreme Court to throw out that description. It did, but shortly after a majority of the justices approved this one:

“A YES vote would support creating a right to abortion before fetal viability—defined as a fetus’ ability to survive without extraordinary medical measures—and after fetal viability in cases of medical emergency; providing protections against professional discipline and civil and criminal liability for healthcare providers; and codifying a statutory reproductive right to freedom and privacy.”

This is a little more detailed, but not drastically different. Here’s the same exercise with the effect of a “no” vote.

First, the initial state submission:”A NO vote would make no change to Idaho’s current law, which protects the life of the unborn while allowing abortion in reported cases of rape or incest, or when necessary to protect the life of the mother.”

Then the court-approved version: “A NO vote would support making no change to Idaho’s current law, which preserves the life of preborn children by prohibiting abortion, except when necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman, and during the first trimester in documented cases of rape or incest reported to law enforcement.”

Those subtle differences were apparently enough for the majority to conclude, “ the revised statements are consistent with the views expressed in our prior opinion dated September 4, 2026, and that they also substantially comply with the requirements of Idaho Code section 34-1810(1)(b). Accordingly, Idahoans United’s objection is overruled.”

There was a dissent from Justice Colleen Zahn. She said the majority was correct on the “yes” portion but not on the “no” description “because it introduces new terminology not found in the Idaho statutes at issue or in the ballot materials for the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act and because the revised No Statement only restates one aspect of current Idaho law, thus failing to substantially comply with the statutory requirement that the statement clearly convey the effect of a ‘no’ vote.”

She also pointed out that “the revised No Statement fails to clearly convey the effect of a ‘no’ vote because it uses different language than current Idaho law regulating abortion” and “the revised No Statement fails to substantially comply because it does not clearly advise the voter of current Idaho law concerning licensing, civil, and criminal liability for healthcare providers.”

Like abortion law itself, this kind of descriptive language is hell on precision when it comes to actual practical effects, what can and may or must not be done in actual medical offices, by people facing imminent and critical decisions. Statute books tend not to translate well to those environments.

What’s a voter to do? The best option is to read the initiative text for yourself. It’s in plain English and won’t take long.

Beyond that, try this:

If you like what the Idaho legislature has done about abortion in the last five years or so, or think they haven’t gone far enough, vote no.

If you dislike what the legislature has done, or think it’s gone too far, vote yes.

Easy. But that probably wouldn’t clear the Supreme Court.

(image)

 

Darrell Manning, who died last month at 94, was smack in the middle of Idaho’s hot and pivotal politics of the 60s. He served four terms as a Democratic state representative from Bannock County, and rose to Democratic House caucus leader, which you do only if you take party loyalty seriously. He was also the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House in 1968, losing to Republican Orval Hansen.

By any reasonable definition, Manning was a partisan politician, albeit lacking the hard edge. Hansen, who defeated him in 1968, described the campaign in his memoir: “On occasion we made joint appearances in the campaign. They were always polite and friendly, to the disappointment of some who wanted to see more of a fight.” Hansen and Manning had been and remained friends..

In the nearly half-century since he became known as something different: A man trusted by people from all over, a leader whose ability to work in government at times was the difference that sometimes kept pieces of Idaho government from flying apart. For decades, he was, as people have often described him, Idaho’s Mr. Fixit.

His days as a partisan have been all but forgotten. It turned out his major work in government was just beginning.

One big part of it started back in 1955, when he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. Combining that and his service in the Idaho National Guard, where for a decade he was adjutant general, he never entirely left. He piloted scores of different types of aircraft, but his impact on the development and structure of Idaho’s in-state military operations over a period of decades was profound.

But that was only part of it.

When Cecil Andrus was elected governor in 1970, he looked around for people to populate his new administration, and quickly seized on the Pocatello Democrat he had worked with in the legislature, Darrell Manning. Well aware of his air force background, the new governor named him director of the Idaho Department of Aeronautics - and later, when that agency was merged into a new Idaho Transportation Department, he made him director there too.

In these roles Manning became known for an unusual capacity for getting along with people -- hardly anyone seemed to have anything negative to say about him -- but also as an unusually adept solver of problems, handled in ways that tended to ruffle remarkably few feathers, filling the roles of manager and leader equally well.

Little wonder that he served in state offices in all of Andrus’ terms, or those of fellow Democrat John Evans (like Manning a southeast Idahoan). But Republican Governors Phil Batt, Dirk Kempthorne and C.L. “Butch” Otter made heavy use of his services too, often bringing in him to manage agencies -- a lot of them over the years -- which had problems, reasonably confident he could solve them. Which he generally did.

In today’s overheated politics, people and careers like that seem almost hard to imagine, and to the cynics among us sound like fantasy. But Manning was real, and so was the example he set.

I interviewed him from time to time during his state executive years, but in the last couple of decades saw him mainly at a Boise morning coffee group of political, legal, journalistic and other such folk. (Manning would opt for a diet Coke.) He was sociable but not especially talkative, and rarely spoke much about himself. You wouldn’t listen to him for the cutting jab or the witty rejoinder, because he didn’t go in for much of that.

But when he spoke, everyone at the table listened. He spoke the truth, and he spoke with respect for other people.

If you want to know the secret of Manning’s management style, what kept him in favor with so many different kinds of political people over so many years, that might have been it.

 

We know what Idaho voters - in the aggregate - thought of Donald Trump in the last three presidential elections: They backed him 66.9% in 2024, and 63.8% in 2020 and 59.2% in 2016.

But how does that compare to now, as the midterm elections approach? And - less discussed - does his level of approval vary around the state?

Some clues emerge in an absorbing report in the polling analysis site Strength in Numbers, led by G. Elliot Morris (whose Substack is well worth a review), and drawing on an unusually large and detailed data set.

It gives Trump a national support average of 38.2%, which if anything is a bit higher than some others do. Like several other recent studies, it shows Idaho at 50.6%, ranked third nationally in Trump support, behind only West Virginia (54.3%) and Oklahoma (53%). It is immediately ahead of South Dakota (also 50.6%) and Wyoming (50.5%).

But how about within Idaho? Which parts of Idaho support Trump more or less?

The Strength in Numbers data isn’t extensive or precise enough for county breakdowns, but it does split the state into a dozen PUMAS - Census Public Use Microdata Areas, each with around 100,000 adults. They split up Idaho in ways most Idahoans won’t immediately recognize, but generally cohere.

Here are those areas, from strongest Trump support to weakest.

Central Idaho, Lewiston area south to Boise County and east to Lemi and Clark counties - 59.2%. This is geographically the largest area, the most rural, with people spread farthest apart.

The Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Hayden area - 57.5. Far smaller in square mileage, but dominated by the new and fast-growing suburbs in western Kootenai County.

Outlying southwest, from Washington, Payette and Gem to northern Canyon County- 56.1%. Most of the people here would be living in fast-growing Canyon, but parts of the other counties have a bedroom community feel.

Twin Falls and Cassia counties - 54.8%. A mix of growing industrial areas and quieter farm communities.

Southern Canyon and Owyhee counties - 54.1%. Most of the area is deeply rural, but most of the people live in new-growth Nampa and Caldwell: Again, lots of newcomers here.

Panhandle south through Latah County, except the Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Hayden area - 53.7%. Were you expecting a higher Trump percentage here? I was. But much of this is stable rural country with far less influx than the Kootenai suburbs. (Also, it includes the University of Idaho.)

Bingham (except Fort Hall), Madison, Fremont, Jefferson and Teton counties - 53.2%. This is very conservative, Republican territory, but it seems less Trump-enthusiastic than some other areas.

Bonneville County- 52.2%. The urban center of Idaho Falls may be driving down the numbers here.

Eastern Canyon County (Nampa) and western Meridian - 51.6%. Another high-growth area like western Kootenai or southern Canyon, but seemingly less Trump-centric. Could the closeness to Boise city be a factor?

Southeast Idaho including Pocatello, Power and Bear Lake counties and Fort Hall area - 50.9%. Pocatello, which even now is politically marginal, may dampen the Trump numbers a little, but the very rural areas around it aren’t pushing back as much as expected with higher figures.

Northern Magic Valley, from Elmore to Blaine to Jerome to Minidoka counties - 49%. True, the Wood River Valley is here, but that offers only a slice of Democratic countering to the other counties, which all are strongly Republican. Support this low is notable.

Eastern Meridian and western Boise - 46.1%. Boise is blue and Meridian has been red; the boundaries of this area may be just enough for Boise to outweigh in the balance.

Most of Boise, southern Ada through Kuna - 34.7%. Trump is about as popular in central Boise as you might expect.

North and west Boise and Garden City - 33.1%. Here too.

A few thoughts.

The dividing lines in Trump support aren’t entirely where you’d expect. Sure, Boise’s opposition is no surprise, since it has been a blue city for a couple of decades and more. There are some indications here too, maybe, of a little softening of support in the Meridian area - and in the northern Magic Valley.

On the other side, the most rural areas in Idaho generally stick with Trump the most. The massive central Idaho area from Lewiston to Cascade and east across to the Montana line is the Trumpiest part of Idaho. But it’s also true that the newest and fastest-growing suburbs are right behind. Heavy Trump support shows up in the most rural areas and in the fastest-growing suburbs.

Could be that the fault lines in Idaho politics are changing a little.