Posts published in “Idaho column”

When a year ago the realization came that the year 2020 was done, over, celebration swept all over: We were, we said, finally past that rotten patch.

We were making an assumption that things would be a lot better in 2021.

They are, some of them, to a point. But our biggest problem remains unchanged. Here’s a piece of what I wrote a year ago:

“When former legislator Luke Malek (who said he plans to run for lieutenant governor in 2022), said he wants to ‘work together to solve problems rather than divide people.’ Such a quote only a few years ago would have seemed so anodyne as not even meriting mention; wouldn’t everyone think that? But in 2020, that Malek quote, coming in a time when anger, suspicion and division have become overt political strategy in some places, almost seems like a daring reach.

“As we arrive at 2021, we have had a year in which division - physical division, social distancing - has become a common fact of life, and something nearly all of us want to change and at least greatly reduce in the year ahead. As we do that, as we see each other face to face a little more once again, might that mean we reconsider some of our divisions? Might we be a little more willing to listen, a little less determined to find dark motives, conspiracies and even evil in people who are simply different from us?”

A year later, too many of us still are not. (Malek, by the way, has ended his race.) Socially, many of us are stuck on an anger- and ignorance-driven hamster wheel, mindlessly building up energy to be used for nothing good.

The dominant social story of our lives has been Covid-19, as prominent on front pages and in newscasts as it was the last time we hit this point in our solar orbit.

A year ago we were taking deep breaths after a bitter campaign season. The new year brought riot and insurrection at the national capitol, with ongoing defenses (as well as prosecution) of that and of the debunked idea that the presidential election was somehow stolen.

In Idaho, the case for a better 2022 runs thin. Idaho’s key quote this year was “When do we get to use the guns?” - meaning specifically, against fellow citizens. And that was just a leading indicator. 2021 was the year factions of legislators decided, well, that’s a long story and a sad one. It was the year I wrote this: “How do you progress in Idaho politics today? Trash everyone and everything around you, claim you’re being conspired against at every turn, act with supreme arrogance and contempt for the law and even common courtesy, and cash the checks and welcome the supporters.”

After 2020 and 2021, is there reason to hope we will become a more responsible citizenry, and our elected officials as a whole more concerned with our well being than with the outrage of the day?
Not much. But it doesn't have to be that way.

A few months ago I ran across a half-century old flyer promoting a “Code of Fair Campaign Practices.” The page asked candidates to pledge they would talk about issues and candidate records “with sincerity and frankness,” to “condemn the use of personal vilification, character defamation” and tactics to spread them, appeals “to prejudice based on race, sex, creed or national origin” and false information; and repudiate support from anyone who does those things.

Not that campaigns and candidates back in those days were beacons of innocence. But candidates and backers who did act this way often paid a price, sometimes the price of defeat. The price was imposed by us, the voters and citizens who expected a decent standard of their representatives.
That could happen again, if we crank down our anger and cynicism.

It’s not out of our control. It’s up to us. That’s the message for 2022.
 

Don’t let anyone tell you Idaho politics is forever unchangeable. One of the biggest changes in its politics in the last generation is happening as we speak, and not very many people have even noticed.

It is a change within the state’s dominant Republican Party, and its implications will become unavoidably clear in the coming year.

A quarter-century ago, you’d get a consistent answer about who ran Idaho politics: “IACI.”

That was simplistic. The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry did not run everything. But between it and its members - most of Idaho’s biggest businesses then as now were members - their coordinated influence was unmistakable and vast. Part of it was that the state’s Republican Party was thoroughly aligned with that community, its leaders tight with the state’s business executives; jointly, they formed the core of the state’s establishment. The last two governors, C.L. “Butch” Otter and Brad Little, have been exemplars, just slightly clearer than their recent predecessors. The state GOP broadly was there too, top to bottom. This was so clear it seldom needed to be spelled out.

Today the situation is far more complex and conflicted, a transition which has been in motion for more than a decade, now coming to a head, the fissures inescapable. The energy and activism in today’s Idaho Republican Party is in the insurgent wing of the party, the volatile, explosive sector for which angry Trumpism is only barely satisfying. They aren’t an establishment, and don’t want to be an establishment - because they don’t seek to build or manage anything (a key difference from Idaho Democrats) - but would rather raze whatever they encounter, especially the establishment, corporate or otherwise. Including the Republican establishment.

Consider the just-announced group called Take Back Idaho, “aiming to restore reason and responsibility to the Idaho Legislature.” Members include former Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Jones (disclosure: his blog posts appear on my website), former House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, former Senate President pro tem Robert Geddes, and former Secretary of State Ben Ysursa. The chair of the group, Jennifer Ellis, is a former president of the Idaho Cattle Association. They’re all state Republican organization veterans.

Their analysis of where the Idaho Republican Party is now: “Three factors seem to account for the sad state of affairs of that once-admired party. First, the party adopted a closed primary election in 2011, which ensures that the most extreme and disruptive candidates end up on the general election ballot in this essentially one-party state. Second, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which draws substantial support and direction from out-of-state interests, has managed to gain a stronghold over a sizable minority of Republican legislators. Third, the national political environment in the United States has taken a drastic turn for the worse in the last five years.”

The insurgents have not taken over Idaho politics yet, but they’re close. They’re approaching parity in the Idaho House (and could gain effective control there when a new speaker is chosen), have a significant base in the Senate, and the office of lieutenant governor. In 2022, they’re mounting a strong challenger to take over offices from governor on down. Their progress has been impressive.

Years ago, statements from the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry reflected a smooth support for the GOP-led government. This last year, they have been full of warnings and criticism. IACI has released polls showing that proposed insurgent legislative efforts were unpopular. It pressed legislators not to do what many insurgent Republicans wanted to do about vaccine policy (to ban businesses from imposing mandates). In line with top state businesses, it has supported education efforts many insurgents deeply oppose.

Last month, state Representative Chad Christensen (very much an insurgent) sent a social media message to IACI’s president, Alex LeBeau, that “Alex, I don’t want to see your face at the Capitol Building. You should stay away. At least stay in the Governor’s office.” (This was later pulled, for whatever that’s worth.)

That message would have been inconceivable at the turn of the century.

In Idaho, business interests have become disconnected from the activist wing of the Republican Party.

The world is changing before our eyes.
 

So a group of extremists got themselves elected to a local governing board.

Is it really a big deal? What’s the worst that could happen?

Welcome to North Idaho College, where since its founding in 1933 many thousands have gotten a useful education. Here, three culture war zealots have become the majority on the elected governing board, and NIC is in chaos, its leadership all but wiped out and the institution on the brink of losing its accreditation.

Tony Stewart, a prominent professor there for almost 40 years, was quoted, “The college is going through, really, a crisis state. What lies ahead is it's a very, very difficult time at North Idaho College.”

This didn’t come out of nowhere. Kootenai County has become an almost off-the-charts extremist place politically, and an accusation that someone or something is “politically correct” or “woke” is enough to launch an explosive response. Some level of controversy at NIC is not new.

One of the now-majority,Todd Banducci, has been on the board for a while, but until recently mostly limited to arguing (as he once did to a student) that he was contending with the “NIC ‘deep state’ on an ‘almost daily basis’.” In November 2020, however, as Banducci was running for re-election unopposed, another (moderate) incumbent was beaten by Banducci ally Gregory McKenzie (anti-masking was key in his campaign), and an open seat was won in a contest by Michael Barnes. (Both newcomers defeated long-time educators for the board seats.) All three winners for the legally non-partisan seats had been endorsed by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.

Once the new majority was in, things changed. The Chronicle of Higher Education said the college president, Rick MacLennan, early this year wrote an email to the board about “a pattern of ‘aggressive and intimidating’ behavior by Banducci, including, he wrote, disparaging MacLennan’s wife for supposedly being a Hillary Clinton supporter, and telling the president that they’d be meeting more frequently so that Banducci could give him his ‘marching orders.’ That, plus Banducci’s latest messages, indicated to MacLennan that the trustee intended to ‘inappropriately direct me without full board involvement and knowledge.’ The board, MacLennan wrote, needed to do something.”

The board did. In September, it (which is to say, three of the five members) fired MacLennan, a five year president at NIC, without cause. (He has since filed a lawsuit over the firing. Since then, the board majority, displeased with advice from the college’s attorney, has moved to hire its own. Sound familiar?) Most of the top-level executives at the college, including all three vice presidents, followed MacLennan out the door. The overall chaos, not only on personnel but on other matters as well, has led talk in Coeur d’Alene about the “destruction” of the college.

That isn’t just a political reaction. There is also an inquiry by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, which accredits NIC, into what’s going on at the college.

This is serious, as the Idaho State Board of Education affirms. The state board president, Kurt Liebich, on December 3 sent a letter to the NIC board “to express deep concern about the current trajectory of North Idaho College … As duly elected fiduciaries and stewards of the College, it is imperative that you recognize the consequences of being sanctioned by NWCCU, many of which are numerous and severe.”

Not least: “If accreditation is lost, the value of a degree from NIC will be significantly reduced, or even negated entirely, for all students.”

Advocates for the board’s majority have taken to calling them “reform” candidates, but this is one of those cases where “reform” is redefined to mean “raze to the ground.”

Reviewing the situation, the Coeur d’Alene Press editorialized, “For anyone wondering what happens when unqualified, politically motivated candidates take over the governing board of a public entity, see the rapid and far-reaching destruction being wrought at North Idaho College.”

There is one piece of hopefulness: It doesn’t have to be this way. All that has to happen to avoid this kind of chaos is for enough voters to exercise enough wisdom to not elect human wrecking balls to their local governments.
 

Last Wednesday’s oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court on, in effect, the future of Roe v. Wade left little doubt the long-standing court decision (mostly) legalizing abortion nationwide will be eliminated either formally or as a matter of practice.

That will of course have many impacts around the country, and people in Idaho may start to consider the effects in the Gem State. Because there will be some.

It’s true that what we have now are only the spoken arguments from the parties and questions and comments from justices, in the case concerning the constitutionality of a Mississippi state law banning abortions after 15 weeks, a point at which many pregnant women aren’t yet aware they’re pregnant. Roe bars states from banning abortion, generally, in the first trimester. The new state law clearly runs afoul of Roe and the standards for interpreting it that the Supreme Court has earlier upheld. The law can be declared constitutional only if Roe either is re-interpreted to the point of becoming an empty shell, or if it is tossed entirely. A majority of the court seems determined to do one or the other.

We may not know for some months exactly what the court will do. But when the Idaho Legislature returns in another month, it will be eager to jump in. Few legislatures in the country have been more consistently or eagerly anti-abortion than Idaho’s. The presence of Roe on the books hasn’t stopped Idaho legislators from tackling the subject repeatedly over the decades.

Pre-Roe, Idaho had on its books a law criminalizing both abortion and even attempting to obtain one. Roe essentially quashed that law, but within a few years the pro-life movement developed a whole long string of proposed pieces of legislation aimed at undermining Row bit by bit. These measures came in small pieces, some killed by legal challenges but others surviving or going unchallenged.

The effect over time was to make abortion highly difficult to obtain in Idaho.

As of the start of 2021, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Idaho imposes among other things these regulations: “Health plans offered in the state’s health exchange under the Affordable Care Act can only cover abortion in cases of life endangerment, or in cases of rape or incest…. A patient must receive state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage the patient from having an abortion, and then wait 24 hours before the procedure is provided…. Private insurance policies cover abortion only in cases of life endangerment, unless individuals purchase an optional rider at an additional cost. … The parent of a minor must consent before an abortion is provided. … Public funding is available for abortion only in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest. … An abortion may be performed after viability only if the patient's life is endangered.”

As recently as April, the legislature passed (in echo of legislation elsewhere) a “heartbeat ban,” prohibiting abortions as soon as a heartbeat can be detected.

And, of course, there’s a state law banning abortion outright if Roe is reversed.

The specifics of what that would mean aren’t all settled. In recent years there’s been a proposal to require that abortions be treated in the law - and must be prosecuted as - criminal homicides, typically as murder. That one hasn’t gotten through the legislature, but will 2022 be the year?

Almost certainly someone at the Idaho Statehouse will be proposing Texas-style bounty hunter legislation, so get ready for that.

These may be only the beginning.

There’s one other abortion precedent that shouldn’t be forgotten, however.

In 1990, at a point when legislative activism against abortion was far quieter than in the last couple of decades, the Idaho legislature passed a bill widely described (at the time) as the strictest anti-abortion measure anywhere in the country.

It was a sweeping bill, seeking to change the abortion picture not in droplets here or there but at a big, fell swoop. After clearing the legislature, it was vetoed by Governor Cecil Andrus.

No one knew for sure what the political impact would be. Andrus was up for election that year. And abortion was a centerprice issue that election, all right.

Andrus won in a landslide. Democrats had their best election since 1968, or in the years since, and several key advocates of the bill were defeated.

Times have changed. How much, we may soon learn.
 

I’ve seen enough, as the political catch phrase goes, to call the quote of the year in Idaho, and maybe nationally.

It didn’t come from a politician, or even a public figure; we don’t even know the guy’s name. We do know it was real, captured on video and heard clearly.

The occasion was October 26 at a Nampa gathering for the national conservative student group Turning Point USA; the event was moderated by the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk.

Kirk was taking questions, and one of them came from someone identified only as an audience member. After he offered a short introduction, he said:

“At this point, we're living under corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns? No, and I'm not — that's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”

Quote of the year: “When do we get to use the guns?”

Followed by the clarification that he wasn’t joking. (In the past, people often would follow statements like this with, “but it was only a joke …” No longer.)

That statement reverberated not just around the state but around the nation and even around the world. For good reason.

Here’s the man’s statement rephrased only slightly: “When can we start using these precious high-powered firearms we’ve been stockpiling (as our preferred media outlets have been steadily counseling), load them and hit the streets to mow down anyone we suspect doesn’t think the way we do?”

Kirk seemed a little taken aback, but there were two layers to his response. His first words appropriately seemed to catch the lunacy, the madness: “Now, I'm going to denounce that and I'm going to tell you why.”

Okay. Then, seemingly, as he had a few seconds to digest what he might say that on one hand wouldn’t encourage people to hit the streets with their AK-47s and starting mass murders, but also that wouldn’t turn off his otherwise enthusiastic audience, he explained his why: “Because you're playing into all their plans and they're trying to make you do this. ... They are trying to provoke you and everyone here. They are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen.”

In other words: yeah, you’re right, it’s all a conspiracy against you, you’re right to hate them as much as you do, just be careful about it so our side isn’t damaged politically. Your paranoia is right on.

He did reference things audience members could do that are peaceful and legitimate parts of how our society works, such as winning elections. (Some oddball and impractical but nonviolent stuff was mixed in.) But all of that seemed anti-climactic and beside the point.

The quote from the anonymous audience member would have seemed just a spooky outlier a few years ago. The times are making it something else, notably in places like Idaho.

A series of surveys are making the point. A report from the University of Chicago settled on the figure of 21 million Americans who think the “use of force is justified” to re-install Donald Trump in the White House. And polling by the conservative American Enterprise Institute said that 39 percent of Republicans agree that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”

It’s a safe bet the percentage of people who think that way is higher in Idaho than nationally.

So it’s not that one guy said something outrageous. It’s that a lot of people - a lot of Idahoans - likely agree with him.

The frame for his question seems grimly appropriate: Not if, but when.

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Classify this among the expected dogs that didn’t bark in the night-time: You can’t fairly call Idaho’s new legislative and congressional redistricting plans a gerrymander.

A gerrymander is “a practice intended to establish an arguably unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts.” It’s been happening in a bunch of states around the country, but it has to be said that Idaho isn’t one of them. Credit the Idaho redistricting commission system, and its current round of commissioners, at least in part for that.

You can complain about the new districts, as some people have and will. But they were not designed for specific, overt political gain by much of anybody.

The complaints come from the people swept up into legislative districts that are different or connect them to people with whom they feel little connection. You can feel some sympathy for people in Idaho’s far southeast, where the small-population counties of Bear Lake, Franklin and Oneida, all bumped up against each other, each now will be linked to (respectively) Driggs, American Falls and Burley, among other places, in each case far removed socially and over many real and metaphorical mountains. And there’s a district meandering through Idaho’s panhandle and north-central areas that is thinly at best connected by roads or communities of interest.

And yet there isn’t much way around it. Rural Idaho’s population is dropping in some places and not gaining in others, and the larger metros are booming, giving them more and geographically smaller districts.

And much as Idaho is Republican-dominated, Democrats actually have little to complain about here.

No set of maps would magically transform the Democratic Party into Idaho’s majority, but these new maps did them little damage.

The new congressional map resembles the old one in splitting Ada County between the two congressional districts, but the new one moves the line west far enough that just about all of Boise will be in the second district. That gives Democrats a better base to operate from in District 2, albeit still in a clear minority position, should that district ever move toward a more purple hue. (No, I’m not holding my breath, but you never know.)

Democrats also did about as well as they could reasonably have expected in the legislative districts.

The overall structure of the Boise districts, the largest base they have in the Idaho Legislature, isn’t enormously changed, and should result in a local delegation not too different from the last decade’s. It could have been otherwise; a really aggressive Republican gerrymander could have wiped out all but a couple of those now-blue districts.

Central-city districts remain in Coeur d’Alene and Idaho Falls, which haven’t produced many Democratic winners in recent elections, but have the potential. And it’s a close call, but I’d say the Moscow-centered district, swapping Benewah County for Lewis and part of Nez Perce counties, could benefit Democrats there slightly.

The new map will likely make life harder for the Wood River Valley Democrats, who have relied on Blaine County’s population being large enough to swing district elections in a region otherwise strongly Republican. But the basic growth patterns in the area were catching up with the area anyway; Democratic win percentages have been dropping there in recent elections.

A number of individual legislators will be complaining because of the way their districts were stretched or reconfigured, or because they were thrown in with other incumbents and someone will have to lose their seat as a result. (Happens every ten years.)

Taken as a whole, though, this imperfect map (as they all are) works. It’s roughly realistic and fair. Good enough.

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Donald Trump last week threw a bomb into the middle of Idaho politics, and it is likely to explode in stages that begin this coming week.

This next week, of course, marks the return of the Idaho Legislature, at a time of year when the legislature does not meet. At least not ordinarily. The truth is there’s no reason at all they need to convene now since the regular session is set to begin inside two months, nor is there any legal certainty that whatever they do will hold up in court, but all that seems to be beside the point.

This session won’t be about governing the state or setting policy as much as about the venting of emotion.

And one of the emotional levers to how that plays out was put in place by none other than the nation’s foremost bomb-thrower, Donald Trump.

The former president made Gem State news by endorsing the primary election challenge of Janice McGeachin (“a true supporter of MAGA”) to incumbent Republican Governor Brad Little. That has significance in a state Trump won easily last year and where he appears still to be highly popular.

Little has been no centrist critic of Trump; he has gone out of the way and contorted himself imaginatively to praise him, joined in a visible photo event (concerning state regulation) at the Trump White House, and in recent days flew to Mar-a-Lago (on the taxpayer’s dime) to participate in events there. His office maintained that he was on state business, but come on: Can anyone seriously buy that? This was an attempt to pick up campaign support, or maybe deny it to the other side; that’s what Idaho taxpayers underwrote. (Little would be smart to have his flush campaign reimburse the state.)

The whole thing, with the capper of Trump endorsing McGeachin instead, may stand as the most embarrassing political moment of Little’s life. It must have given unbridled joy - and maybe a jolt of energy - to those in Idaho Republican politics who aren’t Little fans. McGeachin is better off than she would have been if Little had just stayed home. A side question: Was her trip paid for by her campaign, which would be OK, or the taxpayers? Inquiring Idahoans should want to know that too.

But this is not only about McGeachin, who likely will be presiding over the state Senate this week. This session is coming about as it did partly because Little has declined to call one, and partly with the idea of blasting away at him and his allies, including the top-line business community at the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (which is critical of calling the session). Or, on the coin’s other side, you can call this a MAGA session.

The session’s major topic (there could be minor ones, including possible disciplining of a legislator) concerns the state blocking local organizations, including businesses and hospitals, from enacting safety measures during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yes, that’s why they want to meet.

How strong would the emotional pitch be when the legislature hits town?

Considerable, with McGeachin pushing (as she has) for the session and its proposed agenda, alongside implicit backing from the MAGA commander in chief. Even better (antipathy to the opposition being more important than support for a person or idea): They’ll be hitting town with the specific idea of passing bills Governor Little is going to want to veto. Whether he’ll dare to, or whether his vetoes would be sustained, remain serious questions.

The juice for the session is surely higher now than it was a week ago. By one report, more than 30 pieces of anti-anti-pandemic legislation have already been submitted to the Idaho House for consideration.

A three-day session? The chamber leaders doubtless want it quick and done, but they’ll have to be very lucky to see it wrapped that fast.

Reverberating explosions are likely to follow in the upcoming regular session and in the primary campaign season immediately following that.

This period was going to be a rugged one for Idaho in any event. The former president just made it a lot more explosive. It’s what he does.
&mnsp;

The biggest single headline out of Tuesday’s elections in Idaho cities and school districts probably was a structural one: Lewiston will now have a strong mayor system, shifting from its long-time council-manager form, and it also elected a strong mayor to the post.

Lewiston has had a council-manager system for decades, long one of the few adherent to that system in the state, and voters in 2001 rejected a proposal to change it; that proposal was led in part by John Bradbury, now a member of the city council. The complaint was that the unelected manager was effectively setting the agenda for the city, and voters could have a stronger voice with an elected mayor. The argument seems to have gained force, finally winning decisively on Tuesday.

If you look for a through line in Idaho’s elections on Tuesday, you might seize on the idea of voters wanting to ensure they’re being heard and in control. That idea fits the facts, up to a point. There aren’t many other through lines, and even that one is a little shaky.

The second-biggest news from Idaho elections this week may have come from Pocatello, where long-time mayor Brian Blad took the plurality vote but not an outright majority, meaning that he will be thrown into a runoff election - always dangerous for an incumbent. (Ask David Bieter of Boise, a four-term mayor who lost his job in a runoff election last cycle.)

Blad seems to have been the exception, however. Across the municipal line in Chubbuck, Mayor Kevin England easily rebuffed a serious challenge from a city council member. A little to the north, Idaho Falls Mayor Rebecca Casper sailed to a third term, and three council members were re-elected. The mayor in Idaho’s third-largest city of Nampa, Debbie Kling, was easily re-elected too.

The Boise city election was shaken up structurally this year by outside reasons: a change in state law, requiring districting of council members. But the election didn’t much shake up the council itself, since the two council members seeking re-election were easily re-elected. And while another major-city runoff for mayor did appear - in Caldwell - that will feature two non-incumbents, since long-time mayor Garrett Nancolas is retiring. But even there the probable winner, Jarom Wagoner, has deep background in Caldwell city government.

Coeur d’Alene, which often has seen rough and tumble city elections, saw mostly stability this time. The new mayor - the incumbent was retiring - will be the former mayor of Post Falls, and not likely to mark a major change of direction.

School districts were a little different; a wave of very conservative (anti-masking and culture warrior) candidates were contesting many board seats around Idaho, and they won some of them, but the record was spotty.

Two candidates heavily backed by area Republicans (and featured on a talk show hosted by the state Republican chair) did win the two seats open in the West Ada School District, not a surprise in a heavily Republican area. A group of three culture warriors will take over the Nampa School Board majority.

But the partisans fell short in Caldwell and Kuna. More significantly, a contest in Post Falls that pulled national attention saw the Republican-backed candidate (who, IdahoEdNews reports, “came under scrutiny for his far-right ties and a string of anti-Semitic tweets”) losing by a big margin. Maybe even more significantly than that, in two eastern Idaho races, board members who had joined Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin’s indoctrination task force, in Blackfoot and Sugar-Salem, were buried under landslides.

In many other districts (Coeur d’Alene is a good example), neither side won all the races.

Like I said: Be cautious in drawing too many sweeping conclusions.