For some years, I've helped out in a peripheral way with the editing of Idaho and Oregon sections the Almanac of American Politics, the top single-volume reference book on that subject. A few months before publication, they send some of the text from the upcoming edition, and I post it here. Here's one of four sections from the book. Enjoy. - rs
For more than five decades, the Almanac of American Politics has set the standard for political reference books. In September, the Almanac will be publishing its 2026 edition, with more than 2,000 pages offering fully updated chapters on all 435 House members and their districts, all 100 senators, all 50 states and governors, and much more.
Below are excerpts from the new chapters in the 2026 Almanac on the state of Idaho / Oregon and Gov. Brad Little / Tina Kotek, written by Louis Jacobson. Jacobson — a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, a senior columnist for Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and a contributor of political coverage for U.S. News & World Report — has written for eight editions of the Almanac since 2000. For the 2026 edition, he served as chief author.
Readers can receive a 15% discount if they purchase the new Almanac at its website and use the code Ridenbaugh2026 at checkout.
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After winning a hotly contested primary in 2022 as a pragmatic Republican, Brad Little signed a raft of conservative legislation during his second term.
Little is a third-generation Idahoan whose grandfather emigrated from Scotland in 1894 and became "Idaho's Sheep King," establishing an operation that spanned much of southwest Idaho. His son carried on the business, and his grandson worked on the ranch while growing up and after graduating from the University of Idaho in 1977. Little served as president of the Idaho Wool Growers Association, chaired two committees of the American Sheep Industry Association, and chaired the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry. But the family sold the sheep operation and entered the cattle business. They also opened some of their land as an off-road vehicle park.
The family's second business was politics. Little's father served in the state Legislature and was a Republican National Committee member; as a youngster, Little helped his father campaign for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Four years later, he sat next to Ronald Reagan at the Republican National Convention. In 1972, Little became a delegate. In 2001, GOP Gov. Dirk Kempthorne appointed Little to a vacant state Senate seat, and he proceeded to win election four times. Then, in 2009, Little was appointed to the vacant lieutenant governorship and won the seat on his own in 2010 and 2014. When three-term Republican Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter said he wouldn't run again, Little jumped in and received Otter's endorsement.
Little was the establishment favorite, focusing on traditional Republican priorities such as low taxes and limited spending, but he faced two other major candidates in the free-spending, attack-ad-saturated 2018 primary: Rep. Raúl Labrador, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, and Tommy Ahlquist, a developer running as an outsider. Little got 38 percent, followed by Labrador with 33 percent and Ahlquist with 27 percent. In the Democratic primary, Paulette Jordan, a progressive former state House member and former Coeur d'Alene Tribal Council official, upset establishment favorite A.J. Balukoff. Little, running a largely orthodox Republican campaign, siphoned some moderate Democratic voters away from Jordan and won, 60%-38%.
In his first year in office, Little expressed discomfort with some of the provisions of legislation to implement Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, including a work requirement, but he ultimately signed them into law. Little signed a bill expanding concealed carry to 18- to 20-year-olds in cities. Liberals liked Little's renewal of the state's commitment to accept refugees, acknowledgement that climate change needed addressing, and enactment of higher starting pay for teachers. But Little ignored opposition from major Idaho employers—including Chobani, Clif Bar, Hewlett-Packard and Micron—when he signed one bill that would ban transgender girls and women from the state's female sports teams, and another that would effectively prevent residents from changing their gender on birth certificates. Within months, a federal court voided the birth certificate bill.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Little restricted public gatherings, which put him on a collision course with the most conservative Idahoans, including Ammon Bundy, who had once taken over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon for 41 days, and Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. In May 2021, McGeachin claimed her own authority to reshape policy when Little was out of state, issuing an executive order that banned mask mandates. Little rescinded the order on his return, but McGeachin tried again in October with orders barring mandatory vaccination and coronavirus testing. He rescinded these, too. Such efforts fed a primary challenge by McGeachin that received Donald Trump's support in November 2021.
As Little looked ahead to his reelection, his agenda was plenty conservative. He signed the state's largest-ever tax cut, plus an abortion ban and a "trigger" law, in the event that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade; it took effect when the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision in the summer of 2022. Little also signed a bill allocating hundreds of millions of dollars for roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, and he vetoed a measure that would have banned businesses from requiring coronavirus vaccines, citing "government overreach into the private sector." The Legislature failed to override his veto.
The primary drew national attention. McGeachin mingled with members of the Three Percenter militia, but Little easily topped her in fundraising, and not even the Idaho GOP primary electorate was prepared to choose her vision over Little's pragmatic conservatism. He won almost 53 percent, well ahead of McGeachin's 32 percent and smaller totals from a few other candidates. In the three-way general election, Little took almost 61 percent to 20 percent for Democrat Stephen Heidt and 17 percent for Bundy, who was running as an independent. After losing four counties in his 2018 run, Little lost only one in 2022—Blaine County (Sun Valley), which accounted for less than 2 percent of the statewide vote.
After his reelection, Little faced a stream of conservative bills and mostly protected his right flank by signing them. He signed one bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors and one that required transgender students to use bathrooms of their sex assigned at birth; a measure that banned minors from traveling out of state for abortions without parental consent. Little also signed legislation permitting the execution of death row inmates by firing squad; and, in a shift, an end to workplace coronavirus vaccination requirements. Little signed bills to ban ranked-choice voting in the state and to remove school identification from the list of verifications allowed for voting. He signed legislation limiting schools' use of restraint and seclusion for discipline, responding to an investigation by the Idaho Statesman newspaper. The Legislature overrode Little's veto of a bipartisan property tax bill.
In 2024, Little delivered on a promise by signing a bill to invest $1.5 billion in new funding and $500 million in redirected funding to upgrade aging school facilities. More contentiously, he signed a bill similar to one he had previously vetoed that allowed parental lawsuits against libraries over material deemed harmful to minors, and he signed legislation prohibiting minors from undergoing rape kit exams without parental consent, which critics said would shield perpetrators of incest. Little signed a bill Democrats had long sought to require insurance companies to provide six months' worth of contraceptives at a time. Idaho also dealt with two notable U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2024. One lifted a lower-court ban on the state's law ending gender-affirming care for minors; the other required that Idaho hospitals provide abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, at least for now.
In February 2025, Little signed a measure to enact a $50 million program to spend state funds on private school tuition, and the following month he signed a bill that banned school and government mask mandates to fight infectious diseases. He also signed first-in-the-nation legislation to make firing squads the primary method of carrying out the death penalty. In March 2025, he signed a bill calling for work requirements for Medicaid while allowing Medicaid recipients to access certain tax credits; he also signed legislation to deregulate child care centers amid a shortage of child care options. In April 2025, he signed legislation barring immigrants without legal status from receiving public assistance.
Little could run again in 2026, though Labrador, now attorney general, could pose a strong Republican challenge if he also runs.