Posts published in “Idaho”

As is often the case in presidential years, the critical parts of Idaho’s general election ballots - ballot issues like initiatives excepted - are the races for the state legislature.

Given that the partisan control of the legislature is not much in question - Republicans are extremely unlikely to be bumped from control next session - that may not seem obvious. But the choice is still in the hands of the voters, and they do have more choices this year than in many legislative contests for decades. Idaho Democrats have nominated an unusually large number of contenders this time, and the recent national Democratic wave of enthusiasm could make more races competitive.

So where should Idahoans be looking for competitive legislative action this time? Let’s run through some of the places where attention may be focused on election night.

District 6 (Moscow-Lewiston). Republican Dan Foreman, in his second tenure as a senator (he was defeated for re-election in between), is as ferocious a hard-right culture warrior as there is in the Idaho Legislature, which is quite a commentary, and he has verbally trashed his own local communities (Moscow and the University of Idaho). His opponent, Democrat Julia Parker, is a Moscow city council member and a complete contrast.

This long has been a politically competitive area, though in recent years Republicans have dominated it. This could go either way, though Parker starts with a good base in Moscow and solid fundraising. At least one of the House races has a competitive look to it too.

District 15 (west Boise area). The state’s premier legislative battleground for years, this district and 26 are the closest Idaho has today to truly purple districts. Long Republican, it is more competitive now due in heavy part to the dogged ice-breaking of Democrat Steve Berch, now running for his fourth term. Last election he was joined here by a Democratic senator, Rick Just. Both work the district intensively, focusing on door to door campaigning.

But this is a hotly competitive place, and especially in a presidential year neither seat can be considered secure. Berch is opposed this time by Annette Tipton and Just by a former representative, Codi Galloway, who he narrowly defeated for the Senate in 2022. Two years ago a third party (Constitution) candidate soaked up a few votes which might have flipped the race the other way; this year, there’s no third party candidate.

The direction of 15, and the potential over time for a purpling of Boise’s suburbs, is very much up for grabs.

District 26 (Jerome, Blaine). Redistricting two years ago reshaped legislative districts in central Idaho, making Democratic Blaine a smaller factor than it had been. It was still big enough, barely, to keep two of the three seats in this northern Magic Valley district Democratic.

Democrat Ron Taylor narrowly beat Republican legislator Laurie Lickley for the Senate seat two years ago, and now they face each other again. Same story with Democratic Representative Ned Burns, who also won narrowly two years ago over Republican Mike Prohanka, and now faces him again. And the House Republican, Jack Nelson, two years ago prevailed by similarly tight margins. The numbers are very close in the Jerome/Wood River district, and either side could end up sweeping it, or splitting it.

District 33 (Idaho Falls). This one is a longer shot, and just one of the three legislative seats in this urban Idaho Falls district is contested. It’s worth a view anyway. This district, or its near equivalents, has been among the few outside the Boise, Moscow, Pocatello or Wood River areas to feature a competitive general election contest in recent decades, and some subtle in-party (Republican) dynamics this year offer a hint of more flexibility than usual. It is one of the more urban districts outside the Boise area.

The incumbent Republican is Representative Barbara Erhardt, one of the most uncompromising of legislative social warriors. Democrat Miranda Marquit, chair of the county Democratic organization, has run against Erhardt twice before, losing decisively both times. Will history simply repeat? Maybe, even probably, but if this is an unusual year the numbers might change enough to offer hope to more Democratic candidates here in the future.

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It’s easy as we look out on this national political season to feel sidelined if you’re not a resident of one of the six or seven or so battleground states, none of which are in the northwest.

But that doesn’t mean you have to be sidelined as a matter of practice.

Let’s put that to an acid test: Suppose you’re a Democratic woman in Idaho. How much impact can you have?

A surprising amount, if you pay attention and maybe participate in the activities of one of Idaho’s largest and least-heralded political organizations, the Idaho Women for Harris/Walz (formerly, up until a few weeks ago, Biden/Harris).

The group was founded several years ago by a gathering of active Democratic women in Idaho. The most visible of them include Betty Richardson, a former U.S. attorney who for decades has been one of the best political organizers the state has seen. Working as a Democrat in Idaho long has presented big challenges, but the IWHW has demonstrated, and may demonstrate in this year’s election, how to get things done in spite of those challenges.

Outside of its membership, the organization has mostly flown under the radar up to now, but that may be changing. Based largely on a Facebook group, but also using an e-mail list, it has brought together a large number of like-minded women, many of whom are oriented toward activism. (Not all of the members are Idahoans, but most are, and the minority of outsiders generally have a strong connection to Idaho.)

During the Democratic National Convention, they distributed a press release saying the organization now has more than 12,000 members, most of whom are widely scattered around the state, in large communities and small, many in places where actual Democratic presence often is rendered invisible.

The release said “IW4HW is one of the largest all-volunteer groups of Idahoans ever organized around a presidential campaign, and is one of the biggest such groups per capita in the nation.  The grassroots group formed in July of 2020 and was previously titled "Idaho Women for Biden/Harris."  After President Biden announced his decision to end his bid for re-election and endorsed Vice President Harris, the group changed its name.”

Don’t expect, though, that involvement in the presidential contest is the limit of its interest or activities.

The release added: “The group has members from all 44 Idaho counties, from north and south, from big cities and small towns, from political newbies to seasoned hands. Its members are Democrats, Republicans and Independents, and include several past and present elected officials.”

Richardson said during the Democratic convention that the group had grown by more than 1,000 members just in the previous month.

Okay, it’s a lot of people, but what can it do?

Quite a lot, both in-state and out.

Within the state, there are this year an unusually large number of Democratic candidates running for the state legislature, and those who are active candidates desperately need local people to help. A group of this size and spread could provide critical help (not just money, but labor as well) to many of them.

All of that applies when it comes to ballot issues, too.

Nationally, they can matter too. The political game this year is voter turnout, and communication with erratic or uncertain voters will be critical to winning the presidency and in states where key congressional races are taking place. People living in Idaho can’t easily be on the scene in those places, but they can communicate by phone, by electronic communications and by print mail to inform and urge them to get their ballots cast (which starts happening in only a couple of weeks). A group of 12,000 can provide an enormous amount of critical leverage.

Numbers are power in politics, and this Idaho group’s numbers are enough to matter.

 

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Pardon the reminiscing, but this week marks a significant personal anniversary: Exactly a half century ago, I came to live in Idaho.

I had packed up my belongings in Virginia and my dad and I drove cross country to Moscow, Idaho, where I would start school at the University of Idaho. The late summer weather was warm but temperate. Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff” and Rufus’ “Tell Me Something Good” were on the radio. The Watergate era was just over; we had a brand new president in Gerald Ford.

The University of Idaho campus bore a general resemblance to today’s. Some of the buildings have changed, and new developments have appeared here and there. But it had the attractive leafy, collegiate feel you can still see.

The college newspaper where I went to work and first got to experience journalism, the Idaho Argonaut, still is publishing online at least, which puts it ahead of any number of big-league newspapers out in the “real world.”

After a few weeks, I began putting in some time as well on the campus radio station, KUOI-FM, as an announcer. The paper and the radio station were the two forms of mass media in the area, other than the small educational television station on campus (it wasn’t much like public television as we know it now). Mass media in the area otherwise included the newspapers at Moscow (now no longer daily and no longer printed there) and Lewiston; occasionally we might see one from Spokane. Signals from radio or television stations beyond Moscow were patchy at best. And that was it.

Idaho’s population then was about 750,000, today smaller than one congressional district though then the state had two (which it still does). Ada County's population was about 150,000. Idaho’s population was relatively much less urban, and there were new regional and sub-regional centers. There was much more commerce in the smaller communities, and more of it was locally owned.

News was happening, as it always does. A week or two after my arrival at Moscow, attention statewide was focused four hundred road miles away at Twin Falls, where the daredevil Evel Knievel was trying to jump across the Snake River canyon. (He didn’t make it, as you may have heard.)

I was arriving in Idaho at a time of national political transition, and Idaho, like the rest of the country, was paying close attention to the political landscape.

The governor then was Cecil Andrus, a Democrat, still in his first term but just about to be re-elected to a second in one of the largest landslides in state history.

The lieutenant governor, Jack Murphy, an experienced and successful Republican, was the candidate who lost to him. The lieutenant governor’s job was taken over by Democrat John Evans, who a few years later would become governor himself.

At the top of the ballot was the race for U.S. Senate. The winner in that contest, by a strong margin, was Democrat Frank Church, who won his fourth term. The margin might have been larger except that, as some of his backers acknowledged afterward, they underestimated the opposition. The junior senator was Republican James McClure.

As now, the state Senate in 1974 had 35 members. Five decades ago, its members consisted of 23 Republicans and 12 Democrats. (The margin is 28 Republicans and seven Democrats today.) None of those dozen Democrats came from either Ada County or the Wood River Valley. Here are the communities where they did live: Pocatello, St. Maries, Tetonia, Malad, Lewiston, Mullan, Burley, Moscow, Sandpoint, Cottonwood and Orofino. The situation was similar in the Idaho House. It’s a stunning contrast to today.

The 1974 election did not greatly change any of that, though Democrats did pick up two Senate seats and in the House went from 19 seats to 27 out of 70. (The number of House Democrats today is 11.)

I do have a point to make in reciting all this:

At the time, the overall condition of Idaho seemed, simply, the way it was and probably long would be.

It wasn’t. Not everything changed, but a whole lot has, vastly.

Don’t ever say that nothing changes. Because it does.

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Some people in politics remake the political reality around them. Others jump into the whitewater and run with it, sometimes rapidly, and sometimes successfully.

Steve Symms, one of the central figures in the premier Idaho political contest of the last century, who served in Congress from Idaho for two decades and who died in Virginia on August 8, falls clearly into the second category.

It might not obviously seem that way at first, to look at the effect his rise had.

His political ascent in Idaho was quick, stunning and impactful.

Symm’s first candidacy was for the U.S. House - he didn’t work his way up the steps like fellow Republican Jim McClure, who started as a small-county prosecutor and state senator - and the effect of his races and time in the House was to secure the Idaho first district as solidly Republican. On the front end of his time in the House, the district was plausibly competitive and had a somewhat centrist-right feel. Afterward and since (and despite three Democratic wins there in the last half-century), it has become not just Republican but fiercely so. His successor in the House, Larry Craig, had sounded like a centrist during his time as an Idaho legislator; from his 1980 race to follow Symms he read almost identically from the same script.

In Idaho politics Symms today may be best known as the Republican who finally defeated four-term Democratic Senator Frank Church, a major figure in the state and in the nation too: A candidate for president just four years earlier. Since that election, no Democrat has won a Senate seat from Idaho. The election was a political watershed.

For all that, and for all that individualism was an important part of his ideology, Symms was very much part of the tide and part of his group.

When he first won in 1972, he was part of an emerging collection of Canyon County libertarians (former Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter was in the circle), and seemed at first to enter the race more with the idea of spreading his faction’s free-market and ideological message than with any realistic idea of winning. But Symms turned out to be an excellent retail campaigner, among the best Idaho has seen, and in the primary his Republican opponent had a flawed campaign: The cheerful fresh face won. In the general election he benefited from the strong organizational work McClure, who was also on the ballot for senator, had led over the previous six years. Symms always campaigned energetically, and people liked him, but he broke no real new ground in his eight years. During his time in the House, he even seemed to edge back a bit on some of his earliest stances (on abortion, for example), getting more in line with the Republican caucus.

In 1980, running against Church, Symms had the benefit of an extremely well-run campaign (campaign manager Phil Reberger long has been regarded as one of the best Idaho has seen). But that wasn’t all: National conservative groups weighed in too, scorching the earth against Church long before Symms formally even announced as a candidate.

And not only that: This was the year of the Reagan Revolution, led by the soon to be president whose popularity approached godhood in Idaho. Symms was very much swimming with the tide. This is clearer in hindsight than it was at the time, because Church was widely popular in Idaho; had won decisive re-elections in 1974 against one of Symms’ closest political allies (Bob Smith) and in 1968 against another sitting U.S. representative, George Hansen, who like Symms was a terrific retail campaigner.

A less talented candidate couldn’t have beaten Church, but Symms’ political strength was limited. Six years later, as an incumbent, Symms nearly lost his re-election to Democratic Governor John Evans. And, after personal issues emerged into public view, he opted not to run again in 1992.

Right time, right place.

 

This weekend, on the afternoon of August 10, a group of Idaho authors organized as Authors Against Book Bans is scheduled to hold a reading. But not the usual kind.

Authors often are asked to read a passage from their works, typically at an event like a book signing. What’s happening here is different. The public invitation reads: “Bring your favorite book, banned book, current read, or whatever kind of book you'd like - we're celebrating our right to read freely on the front steps of the Idaho State Capitol building.”

Rather than a literary activity, this is part of a political voter-registration event, in effect a protest against the new library materials measure (House Bill 710) passed this year by the Idaho Legislature. The American Civil Liberties Union argues about the new law that, “Rather than ‘protect’ children from ‘obscene’ materials, HB 710 offers vague and overbroad language that threatens to censor library books and materials. It also allows ordinary people to file lawsuits and even receive monetary awards for these legal claims.” The law in practice is an attack on Idaho’s libraries, both public and private.

All true, but I’d add another dimension to the case against the bill: That it can’t possibly accomplish its stated purpose, because of a misunderstanding about the nature of most human beings.

At the Saturday event there might reasonably be some emphasis on the “banned book” element, with readings from the challenged materials serving as a pushback against the new law.

The readings also could serve as a metaphor for the way the law is likely to collapse in on itself. The measure is purported to try to keep “harmful materials” out of the hands of children. One immediate difficulty is that hardly any two people will find perfect agreement on what might or might not be harmful to children; my list of bad materials may be very different from someone else’s, which means trying to legislate to an arbitrary, ever-shifting and ever-variable standard.

But the problem goes further than that. In practice, to the degree the law actually has an impact, it likely will drive those materials of most concern directly into the hands of children.

For people said to be so deeply interested in the family, these legislators seem not to understand who drives a lot of children.

Let me explain through my earliest memories of visiting my city’s public library, well before I started elementary school.

I would wander around (this was a place I could freely explore on my own, which by itself was great), but at that age I mostly was on the lookout for anything good about dinosaurs. The children’s section was hopeless (back then), and I spent almost no time there. Instead, I was all over the science sections in the adult stacks. If I had to pile up chairs to reach the upper shelves, so be it. I wanted whatever I was interested in; other subjects had little purchase on me. How could they? They were just undifferentiated rows of books.

And so, I suspect, it is with a lot of children, whatever their interest may be. You’re not going to keep them away from reading about something they’re curious about by moving it from one section of a library to another, or trying to block them away using bureaucratic rules. They’ll probably find it, wherever it is. If they’re told no, they’ll get more determined.

Except that today, compared to a generation or two ago, the point of access is broader. As much as I continue to appreciate (and use) libraries, I know they’re just one place among many I can pick up on whatever I want to read. Every child with a smartphone (not to mention a computer) can easily find anything they may be looking for, including some things that really could do them some damage.

Nothing grabs a child’s attention like being told they can’t have - or see - something.

The present-day censors could succeed in damaging libraries, cutting public literacy, and driving away librarians.

But keep kids from reading whatever attracts their interest? Good luck with that.

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