The wave of Idaho Republican Party purity tests, and the push for control by a faction of the party statewide, has been expanding to stunning levels in the last couple of years.
There seems to be no limit to the grasping for control by leaders of the state party, including Chair Dorothy Moon, and such allied groups as the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Republican legislators, even from the farthest right wing of the party, have been called into local star chambers to explain themselves and - presumably - beg for forgiveness for using their best judgment at the Statehouse.
You have to wonder what it will take finally to generate some meaningful pushback.
Maybe that’s beginning to happen.
There’s been, for a while now, some organized effort on the part of long-time Idaho Republicans who are pushing for a return to a Republican Party more like the one they knew a generation or two ago, and quietly among some local Republican leaders.
Backlash may be starting to grow among a tipping point of Idaho legislators, maybe enough to change the political atmosphere.
Directing your attention now to Idaho Falls, where all six of the legislators in Districts 32 and 33 have been called to answer charges of deviation from the state party platform. All six have declined to appear, though five did hold a recent town hall meeting (which spoke to a range of legislative issues, and surely was a better use of their time). What’s most remarkable about the six is how different they are. One of them, Barbara Ehardt, is a fierce culture warrior solidly on the right flank of the legislature; she still wasn’t pure enough to evade the inquisition, and quite reasonably expressed astonishment that she’d been targeted. (Apparently, her chief sin had to do with funding public schools.)
Maybe that claim of Ehardt infidelity was the last straw, the clear evidence that no Republican legislator is safe. In any event, you can sense something a little different in the air.
Consider the comments from one of the six, Representative Marco Erickson, in an interview with the columnist Chuck Malloy. The new party disciplinary actions, he said, “wakes up people to the idea of why they need to run as precinct officers. We need to have rational people in there and civil discourse again. We’re going to have to take those small neighborhood positions and take back the party.â€
Spot on.
If his talk of precinct officers strikes you as small stuff, be advised: It isn’t.
If you’re wondering how the extremists and power grabbers took over the Idaho Republican Party, remember: They did it the honest and old-fashioned and structurally sound way.
They ran their candidates for precinct committee spots in the primary elections. (Battles over precinct committee positions are age-old, and tend simply to be won by whoever outworks the other side.) Upon winning majorities of these offices at the county level, they take control of the local party levers, which can strongly affect who runs for county and legislative offices, and in some places provides assistance and encouragement for like-minded people to run for non-partisan city and school offices.
Then, when enough counties are of like mind, they can take over the state party central committee, which can control the direction and select the leadership of the party statewide.
How did the current leadership of the Idaho Republican Party get there? That’s how.
How do you beat them? The same way.
The good news for people like Erickson is that both sides can play, and the odds are that his will be able to generate more public support - most likely - than those now in power.
Erickson said he now plans to run for a precinct office himself. That would make perfect sense, and he would be well advised to get his fellow legislators, and others of like mind, to do the same.
It’s unglamorous, hard work. But it's how actual change happens.