It is instructive to consider this legislator’s view of the initiative process because it tells us much about what has happened in our Legislature since the closed GOP primary came into being in 2012. Following the defeat of the three Luna education laws by citizen referendums that year, the Legislature enacted a law in its 2013 session, making it much more difficult to get an initiative or referendum on the ballot. It was Clow’s first legislative session and he, who has often been considered a moderate, stood up for the people’s initiative rights, being one of very few Republicans who voted against the law.

Just eight years later, after Idaho voters resoundingly approved Reclaim Idaho’s initiative to expand our Medicaid program, Clow joined most of his GOP colleagues in approving a law making it virtually impossible to pass another initiative or referendum. The Idaho Supreme Court struck the law down for depriving Idahoans of their constitutional right to make laws with the initiative and use the referendum to veto legislative enactments.

In 2022, Clow opposed an initiative to increase K-12 funding by about $330 million per year. But, when the Governor called a special session to nip the initiative in the bud and raise funding slightly more than the initiative, Clow voted for that legislation. He now opposes the Open Primaries Initiative. What happened between 2013 and the present?

I would submit that the closed GOP primary, aided and abetted by the malign influence of the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) and its dark money allies, has created a toxic atmosphere in the Legislature, making it difficult for well-meaning legislators like Clow to do their jobs. Republicans who exercise independent judgment and fail to heed IFF’s “guidance” on culture war issues end up with low ratings on IFF’s various rating indexes. They are vilified by IFF’s gigantic propaganda media machine. They are labled as “moderates” or RINOs–Republicans in Name Only. They are primaried in the low-turnout GOP primary by IFF-approved, extreme-right candidates.

And if there is anything the Freedom Foundation hates, it is the right of Idahoans to get around an IFF-dominated Legislature by running initiatives and referendums. The IFF has made every effort to nullify that sacred right. They wield considerable influence over the laws produced by the Legislature, which they largely control, but they have much less ability to control the outcome of initiative and referendum elections.

Clow is not a puppet of the IFF, as many legislators are, but with the increasingly extreme Legislatures that have resulted since the closing of the GOP primary in 2012, he could be excused for casting a few votes in favor of IFF’s priorities. The way to free up legislators to vote reasonably and pragmatically on substantive issues–those that will improve the lives of Idahoans–is to eliminate the closed GOP primary and allow all Idaho voters to take part in selecting those who will hold important elective offices.

Clow ends his opinion implying that voters, unlike legislators, do not have the ability to carefully and responsibly make laws. In truth and fact, Idaho voters have always sparingly and responsibly exercised their initiative rights. They don’t blindly sign initiative petitions. If they have concerns about what a measure may do, they have the brains to ask questions before signing. When compared with Idaho’s recent legislative sessions, which have been so utterly dysfunctional and non-productive, Idaho’s initiative sponsors and voters have a remarkable track record.

Idahoans are enthusiastically embracing the Open Primaries Initiative and it is virtually certain to be on the 2024 general election ballot. Its approval next year will restore reasonable, responsible and responsive governing in the Gem State.

It is certainly fitting that Americans join together on Veterans Day to honor and thank those who stepped forward to serve the country. But there is so much more that individuals can do throughout the year to show their appreciation and support for our veteran population. Idaho currently has about 160,000 veterans.

Although the veteran suicide rate appears to have declined in the last several years, it is still a major tragedy. About 17 veterans die by suicide every day in the U.S., according to the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA). The veteran suicide rate is 57.3% higher than non-veterans. DVA data shows that Idaho’s suicide rate is significantly higher than the national average.

These figures are likely a floor because a recent study suggests that veteran suicides may have been significantly undercounted. That is, deaths attributed to other causes, mainly drug overdoses, may actually have been veterans taking their own lives. The study indicates the real daily figure might be closer to 44 suicides per day.

Whatever the death rate, we can and must do better to save the lives of veterans. Individual Idahoans can help. We can all reach out to veterans we know who appear to be troubled. They should be informed of resources available to help veterans with suicide, substance abuse and mental health issues. DVA operates a Veterans Crisis Line that can assist on a confidential, 24/7 basis. Idaho has its own highly-regarded crisis line, the Idaho Crisis & Suicide Hotline.

The Idaho crisis line can always use additional financial support and people can find a donate button on its website. We should all make it known to our federal and state legislators that adequate funding is necessary for these and other veterans programs in order to keep faith with those who have served us well. Specific mention should be made to our Congressional delegation of the need for DVA to provide better opioid addiction treatment for newly transitioned veterans. A recent Inspector General report indicates that such treatment is currently inadequate.

Another area where individual Idahoans can lend a hand to veterans is with regard to foreigners who served alongside our military personnel. Foreign nationals who served in the U.S. military and individuals who worked for American forces in our recent wars have not received the path to citizenship they were promised. Those of us who served with foreigners regard this as a serious and regrettable breach of trust.

The Veterans Service Recognition Act (HR 4569) provides for the naturalization of foreign nationals who have served or are serving in the U.S. military. The Bill passed the House last year, but not the Senate. It is supported by many organizations, including the American Legion, and should be enacted into law. Idahoans should call upon our Congressional delegation for action on the bill. During several months with the Army in Okinawa in 1968, I served under Captain Dietmar W.L. Zurell, a German national serving to acquire citizenship. He was a great addition to our American family.

Idahoans can also urge our delegation and the President to speed up processing of visas for Iraqis and Afghans who put their lives at risk by helping Americans in those two wars. We have recently heard of the problems that Afghans have encountered in getting visas, but there are up to 100,000 Iraqis who are still waiting for our promises to be kept.

I spent most of my service in Vietnam living and working with South Vietnamese soldiers. We were friends. We trusted one another with our lives. They believed in America and one of my greatest regrets is that we did not lift a finger to keep them from a dreaded fate when the Communists took over their country in 1975. We should never turn our back again on those foreign friends who risked their lives for American troops.

The majority’s worst decision came in June when it voted to appoint Branden Durst as superintendent of schools. Durst was not only unqualified for the position but his main claim to fame was working for the IFF, which is dead set against public education. That fueled a recall election which resulted in the repudiation of the majority. What made this so remarkable is that WBCSD is in a very conservative area. Although he lost statewide in the 2022 GOP primary election for Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction, Durst came out way ahead in Bonner County–6,648 votes, which was 50% more than the combined total of his two opponents. Just one year later, after WBCSD voters had gotten an up-close view of Durst, they wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

Voters across the state should take heed as we approach election day on November 7. There will be school board and city elections in many localities. Candidates with an ideological ax to grind will be running in many of those elections and may win if voters do not inform themselves and turn out to support reasonable, pragmatic candidates.

Voters should find out the elections that will be held in their area and become informed about the candidates in the running. If candidates are endorsed by a political party, be wary of those candidates. School and city elections are nonpartisan. Political parties should butt out. The two recalled WBCSD school board members were endorsed by the local GOP. Since most county GOP committees have been taken over by extremists, the candidates they endorse will be ideologically driven. I find the Ada County GOP voter guide to be helpful in identifying those who should not get elected.

Some letter writers in the October 15 issue of the Idaho Press made noteworthy observations. Invoking the WBCSD debacle, Jim Runsvold urged the re-election of Manuel Godina, Travis Manning and Andrew Butler to the Caldwell School Board. He pointed out that one of the challengers, Nichole Trakel, is endorsed by Moms for America, a Florida dark money outfit that is dedicated to fanning the culture wars.

We probably don’t need help from Florida extremists to educate our kids.

Another writer, Tom Newton, observed that the incumbent “non-partisan” Caldwell School Board members “bring a wealth of knowledge, experience, and a positive attitude to the present board.” He questions the wisdom of voting for three partisan challengers who “collectively” push to bring a political agenda to the board. Sounds like the situation confronting WBCSD voters just prior to their low-turnout election in 2022.

Voters should be wary of school district candidates who want to bring religion into the schools, who wish to divert public money to private and parochial schools and who push culture war issues. Keeping them off of the boards in the first place is one heck of a lot cheaper and much less disruptive of school operations than trying to recall them later.

Equally important are the city elections that will soon be upon us. Again, it is critical that voters look into who is running in their locality and check out where they stand on the issues. Letter writer Sandra Haltom says that Meridian mayoral candidate Mike Hon is “not a viable choice,” pointing out that he led the failed charge to “dissolve our library district” and ended up pitting “neighbor against neighbor.” She urges the re-election of Mayor Robert Simison, who has done a fine job of governing that city.

Summing up, people need to get out to vote in these low-turnout, off-year elections. It really matters for these important governmental units that are closest to the people. Even though voters may not think they can make a difference, just look at what happened in WBCSD. The folks in that very conservative part of the state demonstrated that you can be conservative without being into crazy culture war issues. If they can throw the extremists out of WBCSD, it can be done anywhere in the Gem State. Idahoans should “West Bonner” extremist candidates across the state on November 7.

And, boy did the voters of West Bonner County School District (WBCSD) rise up and repudiate the IFF-supported trustees who took over the board in a low-turnout election in 2021. Keith Rutledge and Susan Brown, together with a third IFF-supported trustee, have had WBCSD in turmoil ever since that election. Most notably, they hired Branden Durst, an unqualified IFF henchman, as superintendent of schools. It all came to a head on August 29, when a massive voter turnout recalled those two trustees in a landslide vote exceeding 60%.

After the election, Mr. Durst hatched a desperate scheme to tie the hands of the incoming trustees and keep his job. He was taken to court for trying to overturn the will of the voters. The judge correctly saw the maneuver as an effort to subvert the law and brought it to an abrupt halt.

The alarm bells at IFF should be ringing because Idahoans have awakened to the fact that it and its followers have nothing to offer in the way of sound public policy. They thrive on creating conflict and division with non-issues. Idaho teachers are not teaching critical race theory or grooming kids or teaching a “woke” agenda, whatever that is. They are doing their level best to educate our kids, often without adequate resources. That’s just what the teachers were doing at WBCSD before Durst came on the scene.

I’ve spoken with a wide array of traditional Idaho Republicans in the last couple of years about the political trajectory of our state and they are sick at heart with the conflict and turmoil stoked by IFF and its minions. WBCSD patrons took care of addressing that very issue in their school district recall election. I am convinced by what I hear from my Republican friends that we will see much of the same reaction across the state in the 2024 elections. A number of disruptive Republicans will be defeated in the primary election by responsible Republicans. And, the people will adopt the Open Primaries Initiative (OPI) in the general election as a permanent means for ridding Idaho of IFF’s hard-edged, non-productive style of politics.

There will be a furious fight over the initiative in the coming month because IFF’s big guns, Brent Regan of Coeur d’Alene and Bryan Smith of Idaho Falls, know it will destroy the iron grip they have on the extremist branch of the Idaho Republican Party. As Mr. Smith said in Idaho Falls on August 23, “If Idaho gets ranked-choice voting, we’re finished. It’s that simple.”  The OPI will hit the IFF and its minions much like the WBCSD voters hit the IFF trustees in the recent election.

One of the reasons the extremists have not been dealt with already is that many Idahoans have had an inflated view of their numbers. They are much louder and more in your face than the majority of Idahoans. Plus, they seem to have an element of menace about them that causes sensible, conflict-averse folks to hunker down. The WBCSD election revealed that even in a conservative community, the reasonable folks greatly outnumber the conflict minded.

People across the state should take heart that they can stand up, speak out and vote the disrupters out of office, replacing them with officials who will deal with the real problems facing the state and its communities. We all owe the good folks of West Bonner a heap of thanks for showing us the way.

Several Republicans have pushed back from reprimands issued against them by party functionaries for not strictly adhering to the narrow, extremist agenda imposed by the so-called Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF). GOP Representatives, including Lori McCann, Mark Sauter, Julie Yamamoto and Matt Bundy, have been targeted for representing constituent concerns rather than IFF priorities. According to Bundy, “It’s a dangerous trend where legislators are not allowed free thought or independent thinking, where we can vote based on our own constituencies and on our own conscience.”

At the recent GOP convention in Challis, Governor Brad Little and 14 House Republicans received a “no confidence” vote for opposing legislation that would clog the courts with nuisance suits against local libraries. That overreach was accompanied by the purging of some party officials that Moon apparently thought was necessary to fulfill her view of the Republican Party as a “private club” for just her and her cohorts.

The unrest and pushback by responsible Republicans and their voters will play a large part in a groundswell of support for the OPI, particularly through the course of what promises to be a dysfunctional 2024 legislative session. The Moon branch of the GOP will provide compelling reasons for doing away with the closed primary. They won’t be able to hold back from being their own worst enemy in this fight.

And just as the Moonies are trying to portray the OPI as some sort of liberal plot, word came out of Montana that reasonable Montana Republicans were fed up with party primary elections and planning to run an initiative to open them all the way up, just like the OPI would do. Their initiative calls for an open top-four primary, which is the main feature of the OPI. With our sister state Republicans also pursuing a top-four, it will be much more difficult for Moon and the IFF to peddle the false claim that the OPI is some sort of liberal plot.

The real reason the extremists hate OPI is because, as spelled out by IFF honcho Bryan Smith, “If Idaho gets ranked-choice voting, we’re finished. It’s that simple.” It will destroy their iron grip on the GOP. It will be a big win for traditional Republicans.

On another front, Idaho’s newly-elected Attorney General has suffered a string of defeats in federal and state courts. On August 25, he and several staff members were disqualified from suing his client, the State Board of Education, for alleged violation of Idaho’s Open Meeting Law. Even rookie lawyers know it is unethical to sue your own client. He was previously disqualified from taking legal action against several top officials of the Department of Health and Welfare, also on conflict of interest grounds.

On July 31, Labrador was prohibited from suing doctors who refer patients out of state for abortion pills and services. Two weeks earlier a federal circuit court blocked the state from enforcing a ban on transgender athletes. A week earlier a federal judge prevented the state from enforcing a trans student bathroom bill. It is likely that an Idaho law criminalizing doctors for rendering gender-affirming care to minors will also be blocked.

Getting back to the OPI, Labrador clearly lost the lawsuit challenging the misleading ballot titles he conjured up to undermine the initiative. Despite his best efforts to spin the decision as a win, that spin cannot get around one simple fact–Idaho courts only award attorney fees to the winning side. Reclaim Idaho was awarded its attorney fees and a hefty fee award will soon be made against Labrador.

So, there has been an abundance of bad news for the GOP’s extremist branch. Might be a good time for some soul searching. Casting off the IFF shackles would be a healthy start.

Keith Rutledge and Susan Brown were elected to the school board in 2021 with IFF’s support. Along with a third IFF-supported trustee, they have had WBCSD in turmoil ever since. They refused to support a school levy in May that was intended to cover about a third of the district’s operating budget. That put the district in a real financial bind.

The trio then voted in June to hire an unqualified individual, IFF employee Branden Durst, as school superintendent. For inexplicable reasons, they have failed to pursue an emergency certification that might allow Durst to legally act as superintendent until he can become qualified for the position. On August 16, the State Board of Education notified Rutledge that the “board’s decision to allow an uncertified individual to serve as superintendent violates Idaho law.” The notice outlined four other board deficiencies.

WBCSD has reportedly lost 33 employees in recent months because of the board’s actions. Not to worry, though, because Durst is hiring right-wing zealots to replace some of them. They include Melissa Reilly, who appears to share the bigoted view of her white nationalist husband Dave Reilly, and Brandy Pardee, a leader with “Stop Idaho RINOs.” As far as the failed levy goes, Durst is glad it failed. The board majority seems to be fine with all of the upheaval Durst has visited upon WBCSD, which may account for the fact that school patrons were able to get a recall vote scheduled for Rutledge and Brown for August 29. It would obviously have been better if more school patrons had gotten out to vote in 2021 to keep the IFF candidates from seizing control.

School board elections are coming up soon in many school districts across the state and it is almost a certainty that the IFF or some like-minded folks will try to get disruptive candidates like Rutledge and Brown elected. How better to accomplish the goal of deconstructing public education in Idaho?

More than ever, Idahoans will need to check out the credentials of those running to control their local school board, so as to ensure that only candidates who are dedicated to making schools and kids successful are entrusted with these important positions. Some of those Idahoans can help their local schools by becoming candidates themselves.

The best way for citizens of good faith to protect our schools is to step forward to serve or urge others to do so. A candidate needs to be an elector of his or her school district and a resident of the trustee zone in question. Candidates may file, starting August 28, but must file no later than 5:00 pm on September 8. Additional information on how to file can be obtained from the clerk of their local school district board.

School elections are not the only important elections to be held on November 7. Cities and some independent districts will be holding elections and, given the desire of organizations like IFF to stack such positions with extreme-right candidates, it is important that reasonable, pragmatic candidates step forward for those positions. Also, conscientious voters must inform themselves to ensure that disruptive individuals like those who seized control of WBCSD do not obtain the reins of power.

IFF helped to get far-right candidates Keith Rutledge and Susan Brown elected to the school board in November of 2021, making a three-trustee majority that has been creating havoc ever since. The majority refused to support a $4.7 million two-year levy that was intended to cover about a third of WBCSD’s annual operating budget. Thanks to a good deal of misinformation leading up to the May 15 vote, the levy failed by just over 100 votes, putting the district in an extreme financial bind. The blame for the failure falls upon the IFF-supported majority.

Now, the board majority has voted to install an unqualified IFF employee as superintendent of WBCSD. After a three-ring circus of missteps, the majority voted on June 28 to hire Branden Durst, a problematic person to say the least, as the person in charge of running the district. Judging from his track record, he certainly is capable of running the school district into the ground. That would be in keeping with the IFF’s avowed goal of getting the government out of the business of educating our children.

The tragedy is that the interim superintendent, Susan Luckey, a 2018 Distinguished National Principal who has spent nearly four decades in the district as a teacher and principal, was readily available for the position. Many long-time residents of Priest River were greatly distressed about the hiring debacle, pointing to the IFF’s track record of fighting against adequate funding for public schools. WBCSD patron Nicole Gunning-Butler expressed fears of IFF’s, “relentless attempts to dismantle rural school districts and advance their extreme political and religious agenda.” She and her husband, who graduated from Priest River High School and served in the U.S. Navy, have two children attending schools in the district.

School district patrons are concerned about the appearance of backroom dealing by the board majority in arriving at the hiring decision. The Idaho Education News has highlighted what appear to be violations of Idaho’s Open Meeting Law by the IFF-supported board, as well as the board’s refusal to respond to public record requests.

WBCSD patrons are not taking these shenanigans lying down, however. Rather, they are showing that concerned citizens around the state can fight back against those who would subvert our public school system. Local folks got busy organizing petition drives to recall Rutledge and Brown. They turned in their petitions at the end of June with more than enough signatures to recall both of the troublesome trustees. They gathered 337 signatures to recall Rutledge, although only 243 were necessary to schedule an election. Brown received 243 recall signatures, while only 180 were needed. If the two do not voluntarily step down, an election will be held on August 29.

Durst does not have the credentials to serve as superintendent and must receive provisional certification from the Idaho Board of Education in order to act in that role.

That is where the rest of us can lend a hand in order to protect WBCSD from further disaster. Idahoans concerned about persons hostile to public schools being given important education positions should make their concerns known to members of the Idaho Board of Education, as well as Governor Brad Little. If the board majority tries to keep Durst without the certification, a patron lawsuit could send him packing.

The IFF is trying to commandeer other rural school district boards across the state. The WBCSD experience shows that IFF can fail, but it depends upon concerned citizens rising up to protect their schools.

They ignore the fact that many traditional Idaho Republicans, like former House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, strongly support the initiative. Newcomb calls it “a simple, common-sense reform that will give us better elections and better leadership.” Hyrum Erickson, an elected Republican precinct committeeman for Madison County, backs the initiative because “our current primary system incentivizes candidates to demonize people who disagree with them rather than focus on solving problems.”

In fact, a broad coalition of home-grown Idaho Republicans, Independents and Democrats believe the plan will allow all Idahoans to participate in selecting our political leaders. They want to break the monopoly that the Dorothy Moon extremist branch of the GOP has had over Idaho elections since the Republican primary was closed in 2012, keeping a majority of Idahoans from having a say in choosing elected leaders.

The Attorney General has a legal duty to review initiatives before they are circulated for signature. Idaho law requires the Attorney General to “recommend to the petitioner such revision or alteration of the measure as may be deemed necessary and appropriate.”

Labrador violated this statutory duty by stating his political views about the initiative, rather than performing an impartial legal analysis. But, this is in keeping with his promise to run a political office, rather than a law office providing sound legal advice.

Labrador’s review asserts the initiative is constitutionally infirm, based upon a 2017 advisory opinion of the Maine Supreme Court. However, the initiative is fashioned after the “Alaska Better Elections Initiative” that was found to be constitutional by the Alaska Supreme Court in 2022.

Labrador takes the absurd position that the right of political parties to control who can vote in primary elections takes priority over the right of voters to vote for the candidates of their choice in those elections. The Idaho Constitution does not grant political parties the right to control who votes in our elections, but our Supreme Court has held the right of citizens to elect their leaders is an inviolable constitutional right.

The AG’s review is a collection of contrived arguments designed to sabotage the initiative. Labrador fears the initiative because it would allow all Idaho voters to have a voice in our elections, rather than the small clique that has driven Idaho politics toward the outer bounds of extremism in recent years.

The “Open Primaries” initiative would establish a primary election where all candidates run on a single ticket, allowing every voter to select from the entire field. The four top vote-getters will be placed on the general election ballot, where all voters can vote for the candidates in their order of preference.

A candidate who receives an outright majority of the vote in the initial vote count wins the office. If there is no majority winner, the candidate receiving the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated and the votes of those who made that candidate their first choice then go to their second-choice candidate in a second count. If a candidate gets a majority in the second count, they win. If not, the process repeats until a candidate gets a majority. The beauty of this system is that every voter has a better chance of influencing the election–if their first choice does not win, their second choice might. The system is often called ranked choice voting.

Alaska’s new election system received plaudits from voters in the 2022 election. Voters surveyed said it was easy to use. It gave them more choices in the election and more influence in selecting their leaders. It has reportedly had the effect of making elected leaders more pragmatic and more responsive to the will of the majority. Idaho desperately needs this type of election reform.

Regan chairs the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), which deplores public education. IFF’s president has said: “I don’t think government should be in the education business. It is the most virulent form of socialism (and indoctrination thereto) in America today.” This attitude would explain why Regan’s trustees have driven the college to the brink of disaster. Unless things take a dramatic turn very soon, NIC will lose its accreditation and just be a fond memory of the thousands who were educated in its hallowed halls.

Regan’s trustees fired one NIC president after taking control, prompting a lawsuit and settlement. The trustees attempted to fire a second president, Nick Swayne, who was reinstated by the judge. Swayne remains on the job despite repeated efforts to dislodge him. Luckily for Swayne, the trustees hired a lawyer last December who is better at cranking out hefty billings than providing good legal assistance. It is a clear demonstration that when you hire an attorney who will tell you what you want to hear, instead of what you need to hear, you are headed into legal trouble.

When the lawyer claimed that Swayne was hired in violation of Idaho’s open meeting law, the no-nonsense judge correctly shot down that specious argument on a number of grounds. Judge Cynthia Meyer ruled that the contention was about 4 months too late and “not done in good faith.” She also indicated that the intended conclusion of the lawyer’s investigation of the matter was evident from the beginning. The combination of a competent, courageous judge and bumbling lawyer have thus far frustrated the effort of Regan’s trustees to dump Swayne.

In what might be a hopeful sign at an April 26 meeting, one of the three trustees supported by Regan joined with the two reasonable, capable trustees, Brad Corkill and Tarie Zimmerman, to hire a qualified attorney to replace the bumbler (although the same trustee reversed his decision on the replacement attorney two days later). Some actual business–conferring tenure upon a number of faculty members–was also accomplished during the meeting.

And a recent evaluation indicates some progress in addressing accreditation problems. The efforts of the concerned citizens group, Save NIC, to push back against the destructive antics of the Regan trustees may be bearing fruit. They have awakened the community as to the danger posed by the Regan bunch. With the help of other good folk in the community, they might be able to save this treasured community college from destruction at the hands of Regan and his Freedom Foundation acolytes.

The rest of the state can’t rest easy, thinking it won’t happen elsewhere. Just last November, there was an unsuccessful effort by right-wing extremists to take over the board of trustees of the College of Western Idaho. In 2016, an anti-refugee candidate ran for the board of trustees of the College of Southern Idaho and came close to a win.

Regan’s plan is to turn Idaho colleges into indoctrination mills, forcing them to preach his hateful and divisive dogma. Our colleges have done a fine job over the decades of educating our children and preparing them to meet the challenges of the future. We don’t need interlopers coming in to wreck them with scare tactics and vague promises of reform. Idahoans must rise up to support public education like the pro-education folks in Save NIC.

The country’s more recent conflicts, starting with Vietnam, have seen a blurring of the battle lines, where American service personnel have teamed up with local forces to fight a common enemy. For those who have worked hand-in-hand with local forces–South Vietnamese, Iraqis or Afghans–it is hard to forget those local troops who died in the common cause. Although our Memorial Day is for commemoration of our war dead, I think it would also be appropriate to honor those foreign partners on this special day.

For most of my tour in Vietnam, I lived and worked beside South Vietnamese soldiers (ARVNs), mostly Roman Catholics or members of the Cao Dai Church. As human beings, they had the same hopes and aspirations as most Americans. I trusted them with my life and I believe most of them felt the same. I can’t think of America’s fallen without thinking of them. Almost 300,000 ARVNs died in the war and we left many more of them to a horrible fate. They deserve remembrance and respect. I know that many Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan feel the same about their foreign partners. When you form trusting bonds in wartime, it is hard to break them.

Although our bonds with the people of Ukraine are at a different level, where we are mostly non-combat partners providing moral support and weaponry from the sidelines, I have that same feeling about those valiant humans. The Ukrainians are fighting and dying in a war that serves the vital national interests of the United States and NATO, as well as our allies on the other side of the planet. Ukraine is the proverbial point of the spear that protects freedom and democracy from the despotic regimes in Russia, China and Iran.

If we allow Russia to prevail, it will give great encouragement to the autocrats, quite possibly leading to a spread of hostilities to Taiwan and any number of Asian, African and South American nations currently in the sights of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Although I rarely find issues upon which I totally agree with Senator Jim Risch, Ukraine is one such issue–an exceedingly important one. The Senator realizes that it is essential to America’s strategic interests that Ukraine prevail in Putin’s genocidal war. I agree with his view that the U.S. needs to increase and expedite the supply of war materiel to Ukraine. Senator Risch has observed that “the Ukrainians are fighting today for what our founding fathers fought for in 1776.”

Incidentally, that observation was made when the Senator recently recalled his meeting in Ukraine with a former Green Beret from Boise, Nick Maimer, who had been volunteering to train Ukrainian civilians in how to defend their country. Maimer was reported to have been killed by Russian artillery fire earlier this month. God rest his soul. He joins thousands of Ukrainians who have died in the fight.

Ukraine has reportedly suffered 124,500-131,000 total casualties, including 15,500-17,500 killed in action and 109,000-113,500 wounded. Because their fight is largely our fight, it would be most appropriate to remember and mourn them, along with our war dead and our foreign partners who died in supporting American troops. On Memorial Day, I’ll be remembering my 58,220 brothers and sisters who died serving their country in Vietnam. I’ll also be thinking of Lieutenants Dinh and Tanh, Captain Thanh and interpreter Tom, who were with us all the way until we abandoned them to their ugly fate in 1975.

A candidate who receives an outright majority of the vote in the initial vote count wins the office. If there is no majority winner, the candidate receiving the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated and the votes of those who made that candidate their first choice then go to their second-choice candidate in a second count. If a candidate gets a majority in the second count, they win. If not, the process repeats until a candidate gets a majority. The beauty of this system is that every voter has a better chance of influencing the election–if their first choice does not win, their second choice might. The system is often called ranked choice voting.

This is similar to the system in Alaska, which gained wide approval from voters in the 2022 election. Voters surveyed said it was easy to use. It gave them more choices in the primary and more influence in selecting leaders. It has reportedly had a moderating effect on Alaskan politics–something that Idaho desperately needs.

The initiative is supported by a coalition of groups and individuals, including former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Bruce Newcomb and long-time Idaho Falls news anchor Karole Honas, an independent. Newcomb said the system “will give us better elections and better leadership.” Honas says “opening up the primary will force candidates to consider the perspectives of a broader group of voters in order to win.” The Alaska experience shows that both of them are absolutely correct.

The support coalition includes a national veteran’s group, Veterans for Political Innovation (VPI), and its Idaho affiliate, of which I am a member. The group supports open primaries across the country, based on the belief that veterans put themselves at risk to make participation in government open to all Americans, regardless of party.

VPI co-founder Todd Connor welcomed the Idaho initiative, saying, “Idaho has an exciting opportunity, and arguably a moral obligation, to open up their election systems to allow more people to vote and have a voice, have more options at the ballot box, and do something different to combat the toxic polarization that Americans are tired of and that is destroying our country in real time.  Military veterans, 50% of whom identify as independent, expect better politics and Idaho has an opportunity to get this right.  We’re honored to support this effort.”

Reclaim Idaho, which ran two previous initiatives with broad voter support–Medicaid expansion, which passed with 60%, and an education measure that forced the Legislature to increase public education spending by well over $300 million–will shoulder the burden of getting the voter initiative on the ballot.

The disruptive wing of the GOP, which brought us Dorothy Moon, Janice McGeachin and Priscilla Giddings, will fight the initiative tooth and nail. They understand it will loosen their stranglehold on the Republican Party and allow more reasonable and pragmatic people to defeat the troublemaking extremists.

In a recent article appropriately titled, “Why conservatives should not fear ranked choice voting,” the reliably conservative Cato Institute has debunked the claims of Moon and other extremists that the system would harm conservative candidates.  The article concludes that ranked choice voting “tends to help the sorts of candidates who appeal to many kinds of voters, not just a narrow, super‐​committed base.” That is exactly the objective of the “Open Primaries” initiative. Conservative need not fear the initiative, but disruptive extremists probably should.

Denise Neujahr, a librarian at the Community Library Network based in Post Falls and Hayden, will receive the American Library Association’s “Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity” in June. The award is for the Rainbow Squad Program she initiated in 2019 to bring LGBTQ kids and their allies together on a monthly basis to interact in a non-threatening atmosphere. Neujahr said the program lets the kids “be themselves without any judgment or bullying, which they experience daily at school, church or home.”

Neujahr’s work is important because of the hysteria raised about transgender youth by some legislative troublemakers this year. Transgender-bashing has become the foremost national culture war issue this year, designed primarily to stoke fear and score political points. In spite of the fact that nobody has been able to point to evidence of a transgender problem in Idaho, legislative miscreants targeted this bullied minority, causing untold grief and dread for them and their families. And it is not as if these kids did not already have more than enough derision, severe depression and suicidal ideation to deal with before the legislators piled on.

Legislators who have claimed to be dead set against the government meddling in family medical decisions, could not wait to prohibit families with trans kids from getting the gender affirming medical care prescribed by their doctors. In fact, the Legislature provided in House Bill 71 (HB 71) that those doctors could spend up to 10 years in prison for providing that care. That will certainly give more doctors a good reason to move out of state, making it more difficult for even the extremists to find a doctor.

Dorothy Moon, the head of the extremist branch of the Idaho GOP, appears to believe that people choose to be in the LGBTQ community, speaking of the “LGBTQ+ ideology.” It is not a choice and it is not an ideology. Rather, according to medical experts, it is biology with an element of genetics. As one expert put it, “The idea that a person’s sex is determined by their anatomy at birth is not true, and we’ve known that it’s not true for decades.” Gender identity “comes from the brain, not the body.”

Moon claims that doctors must be prevented from providing gender affirming care because it is harmful to children. Mainstream doctors in Idaho and across the country say that is flat wrong and attest that gender affirming treatment is essential to the well-being of transgender kids. Indeed, one recent study showed 60% less depression and 73% less suicidality in kids who received such care.

HB 71 will be challenged in court and likely be declared unconstitutional. The state will be stuck with paying substantial attorney fees for both sides. The proponents of the legislation probably knew this would be the result but decided that point scoring with their base was more important, even if it caused immense fear and heartache for transgender kids and their families.

In this combative atmosphere, where facts have played little part in the war against transgender kids, it is encouraging to see people like Denise Neujahr standing up for an oppressed minority group and extending a hand of compassion and inclusion. Despite the ugliness emanating from the Legislature, decency is still alive and well in the Gem State.

A bright spot is the $378.6 million increase in funding for public schools, with $145 million earmarked for increased teacher salaries. That allows for a pay increase of $6,359 per teacher and a minimum statewide starting salary of $47,477. The additional compensation will stem the flow of teachers to other states.

The substantial increase is due in large part to the hard work of Reclaim Idaho, which had qualified an initiative for last November’s general election ballot that would have raised school funding by $323.5 million. In order to nip the initiative in the bud, the Governor called a special legislative session before the election to provide a somewhat larger school funding increase. The session produced a bill raising school funds by $330 million. It provided for repeal of Reclaim’s initiative, which was expected to receive voter approval. The Governor certainly gets a great deal of credit for following up on Reclaim’s groundwork and getting the Legislature to appropriate the $378.6 million.

Going into the legislative session, it was almost a foregone conclusion that legislators would force taxpayers to start paying parents to send their kids to private and religious schools. Outside interests had targeted good legislators who thought taxpayers should only fund public schools, which are run by, and accountable to, the people. The Idaho Freedom Foundation and a fellow traveler called the Mountain States Policy Center worked hard on a variety of so-called “school choice” bills. Surprisingly, they failed in their effort to divert public money away from public education.

After examining how these schemes have played out elsewhere, rural legislators figured that school choice would devastate rural school districts while subsidizing people who already send their kids to private or religious schools in our cities. Also, there would be virtually no accountability for how the hand-outs of taxpayer money were spent. Make no mistake though, the school choice people will be back in force next session.

The Legislature passed a bill that took a tiny step toward meeting its court-ordered mandate to pay the lion’s share of the cost of constructing and maintaining public school buildings. In 2005, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the Idaho Constitution placed this responsibility directly on the Legislature, not property owners. House Bill 292 will provide $100 million to school districts to pay off bonds and levies. When you consider that the cost of repairing existing school buildings is about $1 billion and that over $1 billion in bonds and levies were on the ballot this March (most bonds failed), it is clear the Legislature has just scratched the surface of fulfilling its constitutional duty.

HB 292 also eliminated the March bond election date, which has been the most important time for seeking voter approval of bonding measures. Let’s not forget that these measures are only required because the Legislature has refused to honor its constitutional mandate to pay for construction and maintenance of school buildings. The bill provides a dab of property tax relief, but not enough for anyone to really notice. But still, the bill provides a puny start for state funding for school building construction and maintenance, which would provide significant property tax relief. Idahoans must demand more meaningful action next session.

Reclaim Idaho volunteers laid the groundwork for public education successes this year. The Governor stood up for the State’s education system, with effective support from the chairs of the Legislature’s education committees — Dave Lent in the Senate and Julie Yamamoto in the House. Idahoans should thank them all for standing up for our kids.

Idaho’s public and school libraries are overseen by locally elected boards that are charged with applying local community standards. They have safeguards in place to prevent inappropriate materials from getting into the hands of minors. If people believe the boards are not performing property, they should produce real evidence and petition for change. Failing that, they can exercise their right to make a change at the ballot box.

People in some Idaho communities have taken the fabricated claims of the national culture warriors at face value and launched protests against their local libraries. Some protesters have produced lists of books they want removed from the shelves, but often have not read them or can’t show they’ve been checked out to minors.

Despite failing to show that specific libraries or librarians are dispensing smut to kids, the legislative extremists are back with another bill to address this imaginary problem.

House Bill 139 allows people to sue libraries for permitting their kids to “obtain” material “harmful to minors” and collect $10,000, plus “actual damages” and attorney fees for each instance. Interestingly, the bill would also apply to private school libraries.

So, if your kid goes to the library to “obtain” a naughty book, you could really clean up at ten thousand a pop. That is, if the kid could find a book with a “depiction of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state” or something similar. The statute book itself, with that kind of naughty wording, might qualify for the $10,000 reward.

I’m guessing the bill is designed, primarily, to intimidate libraries and librarians. One supporter of the bill suggested it was intended to drive up the insurance premiums of libraries, causing them to self censor.

What might make the legislation less obnoxious would be to make the remedy reciprocal. That is, if a person brought suit against a library and lost, the library would get its attorney fees for defending the suit. That would discourage meritless lawsuits.

The folks unhappy with pornography are attacking the wrong target. Libraries don’t traffic in pornography. That is the job of the internet. Studies show that from three-quarters to 90% of teenagers have seen pornography online. A person can find explicit sex on streaming services any time of day, any day of the year.

There is too little parental responsibility in protecting kids from smut. Why should parents not place controls on what their kids are exposed to online? If they are concerned about what they are checking out in the library, go with them. Meridian City Council member Liz Strader was right on when she said, “adults need to take control, and they need to help [kids] select their books. It is about personal responsibility.”

My daughter and her two kids, a teen and pre-teen, love to go to their Boise branch library to explore together. They bond by getting books, games, movies and videos from friendly, helpful and dedicated librarians. It is a wholesome atmosphere and I’m proud of my daughter for opening up the world to the kids in that little library.

I must say that I respect and admire the valiant librarians around the state who continue to give great service to the public despite the undeserved scorn heaped upon them by folks who have little knowledge of what is going on in these institutions of learning. The librarians at the Meridian Library District deserve particular praise for their dedicated public service.  By standing up for the rights of their patrons, young and old, they are heroes to me. Please join me in thanking them for their commitment to enlightening the next generation and telling the extremists in the Legislature to leave our libraries alone.

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served 8 years as Idaho Attorney General (1983-1991) and 12 years as a Justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He is a regular contributor to The Hill online news. He blogs at JJCommonTater.co

Popular amongst culture warriors across the country:

https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/panel-book-banning-push-is-coordinated-national-effort/article_cb6606aa-3b89-11ed-be6c-67820ea458a1.html

House Bill 139:
https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2023/legislation/H0139.pdf

Three-quarters:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/technology/porn-teens-online-report.html

90%:
https://thocc.org/about/news-press/news-detail?articleId=29384&publicid=469

Liz Strader was right on when she said:
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/education/article264417266.html

Librarians at the Meridian Library District deserve particular praise:
https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/meridian-library-pushes-back-on-activists-book-banning-efforts/article_11881d46-66d0-11ed-8cdd-fbe8c94961d0.html

Idaho has long been at the bottom of the national per-student spending ladder. Every state bordering Idaho provides more funding per student, giving their kids a competitive advantage over Idaho students. The most recent NEA report (2020-21) ranked Idaho 51st in the country with $8,376 per-student spending, while Montana ranked 31st with per-student spending of $12,597 and Wyoming was 11th with $18,385. Even at that level, the Wyoming Education Association (WEA) is suing the state for underfunding Wyoming’s public school system. The state recently lost a motion claiming WEA did not have the ability to seek a spending increase.

As a result of Idaho’s inadequate funding of schools, we have a teacher shortage. Teachers can get better compensation and more appreciation in surrounding states. Several school districts have had to hire underqualified staffers.  And, because of a chronically inequitable funding formula, rural school districts have been particularly disadvantaged. Idaho is ripe for a school funding suit, especially if the Legislature turns down Governor Little’s request for a substantial increase in funding.

Another serious funding deficiency is the Legislature’s flagrant disregard of its obligation to pay for construction and maintenance of school buildings, forcing those costs onto local property taxpayers. In 2005, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature was primarily responsible for financing public school facilities, saying the “valuation of local property has no connection whatsoever to the actual education needs of the locality.” Nevertheless, the Legislature has made little effort to shoulder this obligation.

To his credit, Senator Dave Lent, Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, has stressed the importance of the school facilities issue. If he is unable to get decisive action on this important issue, it would be a strong element of an Idaho school funding lawsuit. From a strictly political standpoint, relieving local property taxpayers of the burden of paying for the construction and maintenance of school facilities should be a winning issue for lawmakers. They should go for it and avoid the necessity of a lawsuit.

The third issue that will more than likely provoke a school funding lawsuit is the current effort, being strongly supported by out-of-state money, to force Idaho taxpayers to fund private and religious education. There is ample evidence that the use of state funds to subsidize private education hurts public schools, particularly those in rural areas.

Equally important is that the drive to require Idaho taxpayers to shoulder the additional burden of financing private schooling will require the State to finance religious instruction. The Idaho Constitution strongly prohibits the use of public money for religious teaching.

Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court has opened a back door to the Idaho treasury – if states provide taxpayer money for private schooling, they must also provide it for religious schooling. The so-called school choice advocates completely ignore the words of Chief Justice Roberts, who stated: “A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.” Idaho need not take on the added burden of subsidizing private education but, if the Legislature tries to do so, it can expect a lawsuit.

Speaking of failed plot lines, Senator Doug Okuniewicz wants to resurrect the 2021 Legislature’s scheme to deprive the people of their constitutional right to make laws through the initiative process. The Idaho Supreme Court struck the scheme down as unconstitutional, ruling that it “violated the people’s fundamental right to legislate directly.” Okuniewicz has introduced SJR 101, which would write the scheme into the Constitution, effectively killing the initiative and referendum. If SJR 101 is approved by the Legislature for the 2024 general election ballot, my prediction is that it will be resoundingly defeated by the voters. Idahoans love their initiative rights.

Then we have Idaho’s fledgling Attorney General Raul Labrador, going beyond his scripted duties under Idaho law and inserting himself into a controversy that is none of his business. Labrador took to Twitter on January 23 to proclaim that a proposed LGBTQ policy under consideration by the Caldwell School District “appears to violate Idaho law.”  Labrador followed up with a letter to the Idaho School Boards Association (ISBA), claiming he had the right to stick his nose into this local matter, saying he had “serious concerns” that the proposed policy “conflicts with state law” and demanding answers to a series of intrusive and menacing questions.

Labrador claimed his letter was issued under Idaho Code section 67-1401, which sets out the AG’s duties, but nothing in that statute confers authority to intermeddle in the development of school policies by locally-elected boards or to second-guess the policy recommendations made by non-profit corporations like ISBA. Neither the tweet nor the letter specified any action by the school board or ISBA that conflicted with state law. Although Labrador mentioned the First Amendment, it appeared that he was the heavy-handed government official seemingly trying to squelch speech rights. In all, it looked as if Labrador’s unprofessional actions were designed for the sole purpose of garnering accolades from the extremists in his political audience.

Another extreme-right performance artist in the Legislature, Senator Scott Herndon, made a rather dramatic debut in the Legislature with a passel of right-wing proposals and a bad attitude about not getting his way in a political fight. In riffing about the Second Amendment, Herndon reportedly implied that when you lose a political fight, then you “have the real fight.” He was likely spouting off to gain kudos from his extremist base, but this kind of performance is not fitting for a player elected to the Idaho Senate.

Another bit player in the legislative drama, Senator Brian Lenney, opened his performance with a proposal to repeal Idaho’s constitutional prohibition against using taxpayer money to fund religious schooling. AG Labrador and some others claim the prohibition, sometimes called the Blaine Amendment, is a “dead letter.” The fact is that the Blaine Amendment is alive and well, unless the Legislature starts spending taxpayer money on private schooling. Lenney seems to think Idaho’s taxpayers want to take on the additional burden of supporting private and religious schooling. He does have an interest in molding young minds, as evidenced by his two kiddie books–”Why Everyone Needs an AR-15: A Guide for Kids” and “Why is Feminism So Silly: A Guide for Kids.”

Presiding over these performances from his comfy home in the State of Washington is the chief of the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), Wayne Hoffman. In a remarkable display of theatrical prowess, Hoffman has been issuing directorial guidance to his minions in the Legislature from that woke state while pretending his instructions emanate from the Gem State. Hoffman’s IFF must get credit for much of the storm and stress that will be produced during the session, although the closing of Idaho’s GOP primary election in 2012 set the stage for ever-more-extreme and disruptive sessions.

If Idaho voters are dismayed by the legislative spectacle this year, they may have a real chance for a change of scenery — a new attraction that would appeal to a wide audience — traditional Idaho Republicans, Independents, Democrats and whatever. Please stay tuned.

The most unsettling similarity between MSPC and IFF is that both are affiliated with the State Policy Network (SPN) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). SPN supports right-wing “think tanks” in every state and has been appropriately described as “the tip of the spear of a far-right, nationally-funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party.” ALEC furnishes cookie-cutter legislative measures to extremist legislators for enactment of that agenda into state law. Both SPN and ALEC are affiliated with a web of other national far-right groups.

The President and CEO of MSPC is Chris Cargill, who previously served as the Eastern Washington Office Director of the Washington Policy Center (WPC). If you guessed that WPC is another affiliate of SPN and ALEC, you are absolutely correct. It is not clear what the appropriate catchphrase is — “birds of a feather flock together” or “you’re known by the company you keep” — but when the parent groups and policy aims of WSPC and IFF are so closely aligned, you have to wonder what the difference is.

MSPC contends it is an enlightened think tank that will present its policy ideas in a non-combative, non-political manner. And, to its credit, the board of directors of MSPC is not quite as extremist as that of IFF. 

Education policy rates high on the agenda of both groups, but their differing approaches present a stark contrast. MSPC promotes “school choice,” but contends that it does not wish to harm the public school system. Compare that with the scorched earth tactics of the IFF, which is committed to getting rid of the public school system in Idaho. On December 31, IFF’s head honcho, Wayne Hoffman, said IFF was dedicated to “ending government schools to improve education in Idaho.” 

Any comfort one may get from MSPC’s more genteel approach quickly dissipates when you read the following language in its education policy recommendation: “Opponents of education freedom have claimed that state constitutions in Idaho and Washington, specifically, forbid public money from being used for religious schooling. Unfortunately, this belief is the result of an extreme anti-Catholic bigotry put into the language of state constitutions at the time of statehood. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down these discriminatory laws. As the Institute for Justice writes, ‘these obstacles to educational freedom are now largely a dead letter.’”

Idaho’s Constitution strongly prohibits use of taxpayer money for religious schooling. As any Idaho history student knows, the prohibition was prompted by anti-Mormon bias. The prohibition is not a dead letter. The Supreme Court ruled that states would have to fund religious schooling if, and only if, they used taxpayer money for other private schooling. And, it should be noted that the Institute for Justice is a right-wing organization linked to SPN, ALEC and other such groups. Based on just this one paragraph, it would be unwise to put a lot of store in what the MSPC has to say.

My working theory is that the IFF has sustained substantial damage to its credibility over the last year or so because of its vicious tactics and that MSPC was called in to present a kinder and gentler voice in advocating for the same basic goals — a good cop/bad cop approach to achieve the same basic results. The onus is on MSPC to demonstrate that such is not the case. See more on the MSPC education policy later in Part Two.

An Attorney General must shun personal considerations and provide sound, even-handed legal advice and representation to state officials and agencies. The law requires no less. There is no leeway for favoring your friends or party when the law stands in the way. Lawrence characterized his work as honestly “calling the balls and strikes” and he routinely put the interests of the people above his own.

Lawrence stood strong in demanding that the US Department of Energy honor its contractual commitments to clean up nuclear waste at the Idaho National Laboratory, even as he supported the mission of the INL. After all, the contract was the DOE’s word and bond. Lawrence understood that he would take a great deal of heat for doing the right thing and he most certainly did, but he prevailed.

When the Legislature tried to give favorable treatment to users of state endowment lands, Lawrence stood by the constitutional requirement to obtain the “maximum long term financial return” from those lands. He successfully sued to overturn a statute that violated the Constitution, infuriating many legislators and land users. He knew that his political fortunes would suffer, but he valued the rule of law over political expediency.

When the Texas attorney general sought to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election with an action filed in the US Supreme Court on December 7, 2020, Lawrence declined to join the other Idaho officials who swarmed like lemmings to support that unconstitutional action. He understood the action was unsupported by any facts or law and was dangerous to our democracy. He also understood that by doing the right thing, he was subjecting himself to serious jeopardy in the next Republican primary election. As a measure of the man, Lawrence chose the constitutional course.

These are just a few examples of the dedicated service Lawrence Wasden performed for the people of Idaho. I did not always agree with the positions that Lawrence took on legal issues, but he always presented a sound legal argument for his position. You can respect a person who comes to a different conclusion on a debatable legal issue if they demonstrate their position has sound legal footing. We see too little of that in today’s poisonous political atmosphere, where politics too often trumps the law.

Perhaps no tribute to Attorney General Wasden could surpass the accolades heaped on him by Idaho’s six previous Attorneys General in a resolution I presented to the Conference of Western Attorneys General at its Sun Valley meeting on June 13, 2022:

“With our collective 32 years of service in the position, we can recognize an Attorney General who excels. Lawrence Wasden has courageously represented the State of Idaho and its people and will be remembered as one of our very best Attorneys General. Our sincere thanks and congratulations to Lawrence and his wife and partner Tracey for their dedicated service to the Gem State and best wishes for the future.”

Hear, hear, Lawrence!

MSPC’s first proposal calls for the Legislature to establish and fund universal education savings accounts, which parents could use to pay for private schooling for their children. In other words, a form of voucher system, much like the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) has repeatedly called for over the years. Unlike the IFF, the think tank does not call for the outright destruction of the public school system, but its proposal would cause serious damage to public schools.

Public education in Idaho has been chronically underfunded for decades, both for instructional funding and for construction and maintenance of “facilities” (buildings and equipment). It has gotten worse since the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the Legislature was violating its constitutional mandate to “maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”

Idaho’s expenditure per pupil is the lowest of the 50 states. A recent legislative report disclosed that the State would have to spend over a billion dollars to bring school facilities up to “good” condition. In its 2005 ruling, the Court said this was the responsibility of the State, not of local school districts.

Idaho’s Constitution never contemplated that taxpayer money would be used to pay for private schooling. That has been left up to parents who may prefer to send their kids to private or parochial schools. The Constitution clearly commands that no public money ever be used for religious schooling. Thanks to a couple of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, states must provide public money for religious schooling, if and only if, they pay for other private schooling. The only way Idaho can keep from forcing taxpayers to support religious schools is to reject MSPC’s education savings account proposal.

Idaho’s public schools desperately need substantial additional funding, both to hire, support and pay for qualified teachers in the classroom and to maintain facilities and build new ones. The funding authorized in the special session will help, if it actually materializes, but much more is needed. To start diverting taxpayer dollars to private and parochial schools, when the State is violating its constitutional responsibilities to public schools, will undoubtedly give rise to a citizen lawsuit against the State.

As to the issue of transparency, MSPC has it backwards. It admits that the school budgeting information is currently available to the public, but just hard to find in existing reports. Perhaps school patrons could simply ask that the information be provided in summary form or take the time to peruse the reports. If we start dishing out taxpayer money to parents who wants their kids to have the luxury of private or religious schooling, how could the State possibly ensure that each family is properly using the taxpayer money? The savings account proposal would have virtually no accountability.

Numbers of informed individuals say that the voucher proposal would favor folks in the urban centers, leaving rural parents high and dry. Geoff Thomas, the former superintendent of Madison School District in Rexburg, points out that ”85% of all Idaho’s private and parochial schools are in urban centers.” This highly respected educator says voucher programs are “welfare for the rich.”

For legislators on the fence, a recent poll commissioned by the Idaho Statesman may be instructive. The poll disclosed that 58% of the respondents believed the State spends too little on education and that 63% said taxpayer money should not be used to help residents pay for private schools.

If we really want to improve our public schools, we should make a point of valuing our teachers, hushing those who falsely claim teachers are indoctrination or grooming children and increasing teacher compensation roughly equivalent to what teachers in surrounding states are paid. We could fix our old schools and build new ones with state monies, as the State’s founders contemplated, which would give property tax relief to local property owners. Perhaps MSPC could join in those efforts, which would go a long way toward restoring the effectiveness of our public school system.

LINKS:

Recently floated a thought piece: https://www.aol.com/news/restoring-faith-k-12-public-110000879.html
Idaho Supreme Court ruled in 2005: https://cite.case.law/idaho/142/450/
Geoff Thomas: https://www.idahoednews.org/voices/vouchers-welfare-for-the-rich/
Statesman poll:     https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/education/article267939842.html

Men and women who serve in the U.S. military forces are required to carry out their orders to the best of their ability. That is their role in this remarkable democracy and they have performed it well over the long haul, even when the going was dire and deadly. As a teenager in the mid-50s, I remember my heart swelling with pride when I read about our troops assaulting Omaha Beach at Normandy and engaging in bitter combat in the Pacific islands. It was heart-stopping to read about Americans facing human wave assaults in the bitter cold of the forgotten war in Korea.

I personally witnessed U.S. military personnel working together in harmony, draftees and volunteers alike, in fighting Communist forces in Vietnam. Network television showed us the dangers that U.S. troops faced from insurgents and IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through it all, our military personnel did what was asked of them, performing in an exemplary fashion. They did not put themselves at risk to get thanks and praise at some future Veterans Day. They were told their service was essential to protect American democracy, even at the cost of their very lives. Many paid that ultimate price, thinking that preservation of our self-governed union was well worth it.

The fact is that paying lip service to veterans once a year is the very least we owe these intrepid souls. If they could risk their lives for our democracy, everyone at home is under a heavy obligation to exert his or her best efforts to preserve it. Quite frankly, we have done a wretched job of meeting that responsibility. These last few years have seen too many of us put the country at serious risk by ignoring the rule of law that is the bedrock of our enlightened system of self-government.

We just have to look at the recent election to see the grievous harm done to the foundations of our country. Despite the fact that American elections have been the gold standard around the world for years, false claims of election fraud have run rampant across Idaho and the nation without an iota of supporting evidence. Nothing could be so hurtful to the country because those false claims attack the most important pillar of our democracy–the selection of our leaders by popular vote. Some have joined the fraud chorus–think Dorothy Moon and her extremist branch of the Republican Party–primarily for political gain.  Others have gone along by failing to do their democracy homework, believing without question the untrue claims spewing from biased propaganda outlets.

For instance, numerous false claims have been made by anti-democratic groups, like the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) and its affiliates, that our public schools, another important foundation of our system, are indoctrinating our children. Allegations of critical race theory, grooming, smut peddling and whatever else are just pure baloney. IFF is engaged in a cynical effort to subvert public education so it can be replaced by taxpayers-supported private schools that would truly indoctrinate kids in the fashion desired by IFF’s dark money contributors.

If we take seriously our obligation to honor those who have risked their lives to protect and preserve the American system, each and every one of us must stay better informed on the issues of critical importance to the state and nation. That means breaking free of spoon-fed “news” by propaganda outlets like Fox News, OAN and the like. It means keeping tabs on our federal and state officials and calling them out when they involve themselves in false claims or conspiracy theories. It means urging the public schools to double down on civics education so that we can have a better-informed public.

So, while we must continue to hold our veterans in high esteem and thank them for protecting our democracy, not just on Veterans Day but throughout the year, we are honor-bound to them to reciprocate on the home front–to devote ourselves to supporting and improving the system for which they put their lives at risk.

I recently spoke to a gathering in Twin Falls about CRT–what it is and what it is not. I told the group it is a graduate school study that explores how our country’s racial history is manifested in our current laws and social practices. Nobody has been able to show that it exists in our public schools but some of our legislators have done everything possible to gain political points by falsely claiming it does.

The day after my talk, an opinion piece by Ron James, a member of the Twin Falls group that sponsored the event, appeared in the Idaho Capital Sun. Ron pointed out how the CRT hysteria has chilled academic freedom in Idaho, even though it is not being taught. He referenced false claims made on the floor of our House of Representatives last year in favor of an anti-CRT bill. One legislator argued that the acclaimed novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was a prime example of CRT because “students were encouraged to believe that there was an endless era of black victimization.”

As we know, the novel portrays a courageous lawyer standing up for a wrongly accused Black man in a segregation-era southern town. Frankly, the defendant was lucky to get a trial, because in that era many falsely-accused Blacks often ended up simply getting lynched. We have since improved as a country, but vestiges of victimization still linger. Teaching or reading about those vestiges does not constitute CRT, it is plain historic and cultural fact.

Sometime in the late 1970s, a student at South Fremont High School in St. Anthony got his hands on a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which had apparently not been banned. The book inspired him to become a lawyer, just like Atticus Finch, the courageous lawyer in the novel. It changed the course of his life. That young reader, Greg Moeller, now sits on the Idaho Supreme Court.

It is important that the young people of this state and nation be exposed to a wide range of books, even though some may contain words or concepts that make some people uncomfortable. Restricting the historical or cultural view of our children limits their ambitions and horizons.  This nation has a proud history and our kids should be taught about it in an honest manner. On the other hand, the country has engaged in some reprehensible conduct–slavery, Jim Crow laws, rank discrimination against Asians, massacres of Native Americans. That history should also be honestly taught.

Our children need to be made aware of our faults as well as our virtues. Honesty in history is not for the purpose of making anyone feel personally guilty, but to recognize the wrongs that have been committed so as to prevent their repetition. Sugarcoating our past is self-deception that keeps us from taking corrective action.

Parents, not schools or libraries, have the primary role of teaching values to their children. Teachers and librarians can play a supportive role by making sure that materials exposed to children are age appropriate, but they should not be the gatekeepers, nor should they be made scapegoats for parental failure.

IFF initially achieved success in its crusade against our schools by compelling its legislative minions to fight against practically every effort to adequately fund educational programs (IFF’s current minions are legislators who scored over 70% on the group’s Freedom Index). When the meager funding resulted in less-than-stellar student performance, IFF claimed that our “government” schools were failing. 

In recent years, IFF has intensified its hostilities against public schools by employing fake culture war claims. The obvious intent is to discredit our school system and try to replace it with private, but publicly-funded, schools. Some of IFF’s dark money appears to come from interests that just happen to be invested in such private schooling opportunities.

In 2020, IFF made the false claim that Idaho schools were indoctrinating children with critical race theory (CRT). The legislators owned and operated by IFF parroted those claims throughout the State, even though most of them had no idea what CRT is. Two of IFF’s favorite cheerleaders, Janice McGeachin and Priscilla Giddings, conducted a witch hunt to ferret out the dreaded CRT and came up empty.

The problem was that, after the dust settled, local school patrons realized their locally-elected school boards would not put up with any sort of improper attempts to indoctrinate their kids. They knew their local teachers, many of whom grew up in the community, were doing their level best to educate the kids, not indoctrinate them.

IFF then tried selling the false claims that teachers were engaging in various supposed evils–social emotional learning and social justice. Jesus was a big advocate of social justice, so it could not be all that horrible. Those claims more or less fell flat. 

Most recently, IFF’s supposed education “experts” falsely claimed that  Idaho’s schools were giving “Porn Literacy” to K-12 students. The IFF report was discredited and fully debunked practically before the ink on it was dry. No wonder, one of the authors was Scott Yenor the disgraced professor who claimed college women were “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.” Ouch!

The primary elections produced another setback for IFF. In the southern part of the State, it lost three of its leading lights in the House–Ron Nate, Karey Hanks and Chad Christensen–and made few gains. About half of the IFF acolytes who made it through the primary election voted in favor of the Governor’s special session education plan to increase education spending by $410 million. That indicates a substantial lessening of IFF’s influence, even among its primary election survivors.

In another recent blow to IFF, the Heritage Foundation, which is generally a powerful IFF fellow traveler, has reported that Idaho public schools are much better than anyone would expect, based on their low level of funding. The Foundation’s September 9 report card ranks Idaho first in the nation for return on investment. According to Heritage, “Idaho taxpayers will be glad to know they’re getting bang for their buck.” What Heritage did not say, is that we would be getting even more bang if we put more state funds into teacher pay so that we did not have so many teacher vacancies across the state.

The Heritage Foundation report has some deficiencies, but it is a powerful rebuttal of the false claims that IFF has been tarring our public school system with over the years. Public schools are the heart and soul of every community across the State. Instead of trying to tear them down, like IFF loves to do, we should be doing our level best to build them up with proper funding and strong public support.

Hoffman claims our “school system is largely transforming into an indoctrination camp built not to teach students reading, writing, and arithmetic, but rather a center teaching them rioting, resistance, and race war.” It seems like Hoffman desperately needs a crash course on what dedicated teachers across Idaho are doing to educate our kids with the insufficient resources they receive from the Legislature.

Rather than seeking a constitutional amendment to do away with the public school system, Hoffman prefers to subvert the Constitution by hammering public schools at every turn. He urges his loyal minions in the Legislature to starve public schools of necessary funding. He promotes the use of State funds for private and religious schools, which would further impoverish public schools. He demeans teachers, falsely claiming they are indoctrinating children with “dangerous anti-white ideology.” No wonder so many teachers are leaving the profession they love.

Idaho’s public school system is overseen by elected school boards and operated by teachers and administrators who live in local communities. It is a contemptible lie to claim they are trying to subvert local values, instead of doing their level best to give our kids a decent education.

Hoffman claims our schools “will churn out a generation of idiots more easily controlled and manipulated by sleazy politicians, media pundits, and governmental bureaucrats.” It seems to me that he is describing what Idaho education would look like under IFF’s control. Idaho rose to greatness because of the public school system, which was one of the State’s highest priorities upon achieving statehood in 1890. It can maintain that greatness, if the Legislature will honor its constitutional duty to adequately fund it.

IFF’S latest anti-education ploy is to spread misinformation about the education funding initiative that will come up for a vote in the November election. The Quality Education Initiative will raise an additional $323.5 million for Idaho schools, giving the voters an opportunity to do what the Legislature has failed to do for many years–properly fund our schools. Those funds would come from raising the corporate tax rate back to 8%, where it was from 1987 to 2000. The initiative would also create a new top income bracket for individuals earning over $250,000 a year ($500,000 for a married couple filing jointly) with just the earnings over those levels being taxed at 10.925%. Other tax brackets would be unchanged.

IFF wrongly claims the initiative “would hike taxes on every single Idahoan, including the poor and middle-class families and small businesses.” Without bothering to do its own analysis, IFF latched onto misinformed claims of an out-of-state tax group to support its opposition to the initiative. Long-time reporter Betsy Russell performed an in-depth review of the IFF claims and found them to be unfounded. Her informed conclusions are nicely summed up by the title of her report—“CLAIMS UNFOUNDED: Why school funding initiative wouldn’t have higher-than-advertised price tag.”

Russell analyzes and evaluates IFF’s claims with the help of Idaho’s foremost legislative drafting expert, Mike Nugent, the Legislature’s chief bill drafter for 26 years before his 2018 retirement. I was in awe of Nugent’s capabilities during my tenure as Attorney General in the 1980s and during my 12 years on the Supreme Court. He knows what he is talking about, whereas the out-of-state tax group and IFF do not. The initiative will do what its proponent, Reclaim Idaho, says it will do, not what IFF claims.

It is a given that there will be a concerted effort in the Idaho Legislature next year to enact legislation, such as a school voucher program, that would allow state funds to be used for private schooling. If such legislation were to be approved, SCOTUS has just made it clear that Idaho taxpayer money will have to also go to support religious schooling. And, the fact is that the State will have little oversight on the use of those funds or what theology the taxpayers will be required to finance.

The Idaho Constitution strictly prohibits the use of public funds for any form of religious education. For the past 132 years, the separation of public money from religious instruction has been rigidly upheld in Idaho. SCOTUS has unfortunately provided a workaround. Those who want to pay taxpayer money to religious schools can simply pass a voucher program to evade the prohibition in our Constitution.

Idaho voters need to let legislators know that the diversion of taxpayer money to private schooling will further degrade public education for Idaho kids. Legislators are mandated by the Idaho Constitution to “establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.” The Legislature has chronically failed to honor that mandate.

The Idaho Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that Idaho’s funding of educational facilities was wholly inadequate to meet the constitutional requirement. The situation is growing worse each year. A recent study disclosed that it would take about $850 billion to bring public school facilities up to good condition. Supplemental school levies against taxpayers have increased from $140 million in the 2011-2012 school year to $218 million in 2021-2022. Idaho has ranked last in the nation for per-pupil spending during each of the last two school years. The State is obviously vulnerable to legal action for its constitutional failure to support its school system.

If legislators take money that should be used for public schools and divert it to private schooling, they will surely invite a lawsuit. The State has no business supporting private schools, while the public school system is suffering from insufficient funding.

The so-called Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) and its supporters in the Legislature are doing their level best to sabotage the public school system. They have worked hard to underfund the school system, endangering its effectiveness. They then point to the lack of student achievement as grounds for supporting school choice alternatives. A voucher program would be a disaster for public schools, particularly in rural areas where the local school is the heart and soul of the community. Local taxpayers would remain on the hook for all of the bonds they had to float because of the Legislature’s failure to meet its constitutional funding responsibility.

The IFF will claim that the recent SCOTUS decision makes Idaho’s prohibition against financing religious schools inoperable. That simply is not the case. So long as the Legislature does not approve some sort of scheme to subsidize private school education, the constitutional prohibition remains effective. We need to improve our public education system by ensuring it has sufficient funding to properly educate our kids, not to consign it to the trash heap.

In the days leading up to Memorial Day, Idaho Public Television aired a program titled, “Betrayed: Surviving an American Concentration Camp.” It told of the Japanese Americans who were rounded up along the West Coast in 1942 and incarcerated in the Minidoka “Relocation” Camp. I was born that same year and grew up just six miles from the Camp.

These people were loyal Americans who just happened to be of Japanese ancestry. Many young men in the Camp volunteered to serve their country, despite the fact that their families were in detention. William Nakamura was one of them. His family had been uprooted from their home in Seattle, arriving in the Camp in 1942. He joined the Army the next year.

On July 4, 1944, while serving in Italy with the 442 Regimental Combat Team, Nakamura died after single-handedly attacking and destroying one German machine gun emplacement and then attacking another. His unit, entirely composed of Japanese Americans, was the most highly decorated in the war. He initially received the Distinguished Service Cross, but 56 years later, upon a review of his heroic actions, he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I often think of the tremendous debt we owe to people like William Nakamura, who gave their all for the benefit of their fellow Americans. What would they think if they could return to see what a mess we are making of the legacy they left us? Instead of working together in common purpose to improve the lives of all Americans, we are at each other’s throats.

The just concluded primary elections saw many hundreds of thousands of dollars going into scurrilous political ads attacking candidates with lies and distortions. Very little was said of what anyone proposed to do to make our State better, to improve infrastructure, to combat the greatest threat to the future of our planet–the increasing temperature of our atmosphere–or anything else. I believe the William Nakamuras of the past would sincerely grieve for the state we are in and wonder whether their sacrifice was worth it.

We should not just mourn our fallen on Memorial Day. We should make sure that the time and opportunity they gave us to make a better country is not wasted. Instead of exploiting differences, we should be building bridges with other Americans. We might just find that we have more in common than we thought.

Instead of placing credence on weird conspiracy theories that show up in some corner of social media, we should build on facts that are in front of our faces in our communities. We should not be living our lives just to “own the libs” or put down the “deplorables.” We are all part of one country and should wake up and act like it. Imagine if our service personnel in wartime all wanted to have their own way all of the time. That would create chaos.

Our soldiers worked together to achieve their objectives. Many did not make it home. Let’s mourn and honor them on Memorial Day and pledge that we will not let their sacrifice be for naught – that we will live up to their expectations by working hard to improve the lot of our fellow Americans, regardless of race, creed, economic status or any other type of demographic difference.

The IFF has stoked and thrived upon divisive, confrontational politics in Idaho ever since the Republican Party closed its primary in 2012. Using a suspicious rating system, the organization has sought to establish a reputation as a kingmaker amongst Idaho legislative candidates–score high on IFF’s “Freedom Index” and win, score low and lose. The more extremist IFF legislation a candidate will support, the better the rating. Many legislators were afraid to vote on a bill until learning how IFF scored it.

This election had to be an eye opener for those legislators who believed that IFF’s disapproval was the kiss of death. Several other organizations worked hard during this election cycle to show that candidates could think for themselves and overcome IFF’s scorn at the polls. The one I’m affiliated with, Take Back Idaho (TBI), endorsed a slate of candidates, including most of the statewide offices and 40 legislative positions.

Only one IFF-supported candidate, Raul Labrador, won a statewide office. Its preferred candidates lost for Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction. IFF board member Bryan Smith lost his second bid for Congress. 

The candidates endorsed by TBI were just the opposite of those who would blindly follow IFF’s lead. They demonstrated a commitment to responsible, pragmatic representation, rather than inciting and profiting from hateful conflict. Of the 40 candidates TBI endorsed, 27 won and 13 lost. Some of the races were extremely close–Scott Syme, a stellar person, lost to IFF friend Judy Boyle by just 6 votes.

Some of our losses were quite painful. Sen. Jim Woodward, a Navy veteran and excellent legislator, lost in a hate-filled, truth-deprived onslaught from his opponent. 

The loss of Lawrence Wasden as attorney general will be felt by Idaho for years.

It is likely that IFF’s opposition to Wasden played a part in the outcome, but a number of other dark-money groups targeted him. The Club for Growth spent almost $300,000 on a scurrilous ad campaign against Wasden, falsely claiming he was a RINO (Republican in name only). Wasden’s problem was that he took his oath of office seriously–to support  the Idaho and U.S. Constitutions. When he was confronted with a situation where he could either serve his personal political interests by shading his legal opinions or honestly state the law as he was required by his oath to do, the rule of law always won. That takes true courage and dedication to his sacred duty. His detractors distorted his honest stands. In truth, Wasden was among the best AGs this State has had.

TBI intends to take an active part in each and every future primary election until the malevolent grip of extremist groups like IFF and Club for Growth is removed from our great State. Now that legislators and prospective candidates know that IFF’s bark is much worse than its bite, that time may be closer than some think.

Today, about 83% of eligible Idaho voters do not participate in our primary election. In a one-party state like Idaho, most elected public officials–Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, members of the Legislature and many others–are chosen in the Republican primary. The May 17 Republican primary is where people must vote, if they hope to influence the future of Idaho.

Why is it then that so few Idahoans vote in the GOP primary, leaving the selection of important public officials to a relatively small number of party loyalists, including a solid base of political extremists? Is it lack of knowledge of the fact that almost every Idaho citizen of voting age can register and vote in the Republican primary through the close of the polls on May 17?

Seriously! Every registered voter, except those now registered with another party and felons whose rights have not been restored, can lawfully take part in the Republican primary.  We think of those who have not selected a party as independents but the State calls them “unaffiliated” voters. Idaho Code section 34-411A says an unaffiliated voter may select a political party affiliation on election day “by declaring such political party affiliation to the poll worker.” That is, independents can choose to vote in the Republican primary on election day. Don’t let anyone, even an election worker, tell you otherwise.

Unregistered persons can register for the Republican primary when they arrive at their voting location, which they can find through their county clerk or by going online to voteidaho.gov. They do have to provide proof of residence, such as a driver’s license.

This primary election may well decide the future course of the Gem State for many years to come. There are essentially two slates of candidates–one composed of reasonable, pragmatic community members dedicated to problem-solving government and another consumed by conspiracy theories, manufactured issues and confrontational tactics.

The problem-solving slate includes Governor Little, Speaker Bedke, Attorney General Wasden, Phil McGrane, two reasonable School Superintendent candidates and a supportive cast of responsible legislative candidates.

The disruptive slate includes Janice McGeachin, Priscilla Giddings, Raul Labrador, Dorothy Moon, Branden Durst and a cast of extremist legislative candidates, who have tried their best to make it harder to vote, proposed sending librarians to jail, tried to do away with the initiative and referendum, underfunded and made false allegations against public education and taken every opportunity to turn Idahoans against one another.

It is a stark choice, calling for all eligible voters to weigh in. The Republican primary election is more important to the fate of this State than this year’s November election. We are truly at a Benjamin Franklin moment in Idaho. When that revered gentleman walked out of Independence Hall in 1787, after having completed work on the U.S. Constitution, he was asked whether we had a republic or monarchy. He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” We can only keep our reasonable, problem-solving government if everyone exercises their right to vote on May 17.

Phil McGrane demonstrated in the latest debate that he clearly understands the Secretary of State’s duties and is best qualified to serve in that office. That is why he has the full support of Ben Ysursa, who served with distinction in that office for 27 years as Chief Deputy to Pete Cenarrusa and then as Secretary of State for 12 years.

I’ve known Phil’s family for decades–his grandfather was highly respected as the financial officer at the Idaho Falls livestock auction and his dad is a friend. Phil comes from strong roots. He has earned the respect of election officials across the state for running clean, efficient elections in Idaho’s most populated county. His election expertise clearly came through during the debate.

Phil’s two opponents spent their debate time obsessing about election fraud, without producing an iota of evidence that it occurs in Idaho. The short answer is that it does not. County clerks told the Legislature as much during this year’s session. Stirring up concern about problems that don’t exist does not speak well for either of Phil’s opponents.

Sherri Ybarra, the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction, and challenger Debbie Critchfield both came off in the debate as serious candidates for that position. On the other hand, Branden Durst cemented his reputation as a hot-headed conspiracy theorist.

Even though substantial efforts have been made by Durst and his Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) backers to ferret out instances of critical race theory (CRT) in Idaho, they have come up empty. The claim that CRT exists in Idaho is merely an IFF ploy to discredit Idaho’s public schools. If elected to office, Durst would do his level best to sabotage Idaho’s public school system in hopes of replacing it with proprietary private schools, including online schooling. That is one of the IFF’s main agenda items.

When Raul Labrador began his debate pitch asserting that the Attorney General’s job is mainly political, it caught my attention. I had just signed onto an op-ed issued by Idaho’s six living Attorneys General, stating just the opposite. Former Attorneys Tony Park, Wayne Kidwell, Dave Leroy, me, Larry Echo Hawk and Al Lance, who collectively served as Idaho’s AG for 32 years, stated unequivocally in the op-ed that the AG is a legal official, bound by oath to be the State’s non-political legal adviser. The AG’s credibility depends on not acting like a political hack.

The wise individuals who drafted the Idaho Constitution in 1889 envisioned the office as the source of sound legal advice to state government. None of the drafters mentioned a political role for the AG. Politically skewed legal advice is not ethical in either private law practice or public practice. It is a good way to mislead a client into serious legal trouble.

The AG’s office argues many more cases to Idaho’s appellate courts than any other litigant in the State. Most are appeals by criminals but there are also heavy-duty civil cases–cases that involve important policy issues or large sums of taxpayers’ dollars. If Idaho courts regard the AG’s office as being infested with political operatives, the State’s interests will suffer. Lawrence Wasden has established a solid record of competence–a record of standing up for the rule of law rather than the rule of politics, as the debate clearly demonstrated.

Thanks to IPTV for performing a valuable public service by hosting the debates. Folks who were not able to watch the live debates can catch them on the IPTV website. Thank goodness that the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its supporters have been unable to deprive IPTV of state funding.

Take, for instance, Rep. Gayann DeMordaunt’s House Bill 613, which would protect doctors from state disciplinary action for any “recommendation to a patient regarding treatment for coronavirus.” That would open up a free field for marginal physicians to prescribe any kind of treatment, including the use of unapproved drugs for Covid-19, such as Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine and who knows what else. The bill appears to be designed to protect the medical license of Garden City’s Dr. Ryan Cole for prescribing horse dewormer, despite the fact that its use for Covid-19 is strongly condemned by state and national medical associations.

Extremist legislators have no problem with interjecting themselves into family medical matters, as evidence by Rep. Bruce Skaug’s House Bill 675, which places the Legislature directly between transgender kids and their medical providers. Legislators who have refused for years to require faith healing parents to provide basic life-saving medical care to their children, like the law requires all the rest of us to do, apparently have no hesitance in supporting Skaug’s unconstitutional bill.

House Bill 581, introduced by Rep. Charlie Shepherd, makes it a criminal offense for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual” for refusal to get vaccinated for coronavirus or to disclose their vaccination status. It is essentially a mandate against employers being able to hire or fire who they want. The bill has passed the House.

Rep. DeMordaunt’s ominously-labeled House Bill 666 would subject librarians to a fine of up to $1,000 and/or a year in jail for “making available to a minor” any “material harmful to minors.” That should cause librarians to shake in their boots and leave tons of their books on the shelves. Combined with the vague definitional terms in existing statutes, the bill could send a librarian to the hoosegow for checking out human anatomy books or Civil War histories.

Rep. Heather Scott’s House Bill 512 would prevent local taxing districts from running a bond election for 11 months after the failure of voters to approve a bond on the same subject. So much for local control of local needs. If legislators were to follow the Idaho Constitution’s mandate to provide adequate funding for schools, there would be no need for school bond elections.

The Constitution requires the Legislature, not local property tax payers, to provide the funding for both buildings and operations. On March 8, there were bond elections across the state for over $288.4 million in funding, including $176.9 million for facilities, $84.6 million for operations and $26.9 million for capital projects. A recent legislative report estimates it would cost $847 million “to get all buildings up to ‘good’ condition.” Rather than complying with its solemn legal responsibility, the Legislature handed out a massive income tax cut early in the session, primarily for the benefit of well-to-do Idahoans. Scott’s bill has received House approval.

These are just a few of the actions which demonstrate the necessity of cleansing the legislative halls of extremists who are more interested in stirring up discord than doing the people’s business. Folks should register to vote in the Republican primary and help with the cleaning.

In his Farewell Address, which was first published on September 19, 1796, Washington warned that political parties can “become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Extreme partisanship, he cautioned, “kindles the animosity of one part against the other, foments occasionally riot and insurrection” and can bring about  “disorders and miseries” that “gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual.”

It is uncanny that America’s Founding Father could have predicted how extreme partisanship would have brought us to these ugly times, where blind party loyalty trumps the public good, even to the point of insurrection. The American people are faced with a stark choice–continue down the road where political extremism rules our lives, or choose to put the good of the country and state above poisonous partisanship.

The next opportunity to choose between chronic governmental dysfunction and responsible, pragmatic governing is May 17, Idaho’s primary election day. Being a one-party state, where the selection of most officeholders will occur in the Republican primary, those not registered as Republican voters by March 11 will have no say as to the character and direction of our government.

Just two sample races demonstrate what is at stake. Senator Jim Woodward of Sagle, a former nuclear submarine officer, respected businessman and well-regarded Republican legislator, is being challenged by a political extremist who calls Idaho Child Protective Services “a well-funded federal racket”. CPS saves kids’ lives, period!

Rep. Laurie Lickley of Jerome, who is knowledgeable on agriculture and education issues and has shown herself to be a competent legislator, is running for a Senate seat. She is challenged by a person who claims to have founded the extremist “Real 3 percenters of Idaho” militia group and is known as the Bundy Ranch Sniper.

Idaho’s almost 310,000 independent voters, who comprised 35% of total Idaho voters two years ago, would have no say in the selection between these types of candidates if highly-partisan Republicans have their way. The House approved legislation on Presidents’ Day to prevent independent voters from registering in the Republican primary after March 11. They have always had until election day to make that choice.

From the time I first became eligible to vote in Idaho in the early 1960s, any voter could go into the polls on election day and vote the ballot of any party with candidates up for election. The open primary served us well, producing reasonable, responsible officials. A decade ago, GOP zealots closed the Republican primary to ensure the election of the most extreme candidates. It has worked beyond their wildest dreams, producing some of the most divisive, dysfunctional Legislatures in the State’s history.

George Washington would have been appalled by the tight grip that GOP extremists have on the selection of public officials in Idaho. All taxpayers pay for the Republican primary and they all should have the opportunity to participate in selecting our leaders. House Bill 439, which would prevent  independents from participating after March 11, should be defeated in the Senate or vetoed. That would be a giant step toward following Washington’s sound advice and depoliticizing the poisonous politics that have plagued our great State for the last decade.

Just to play it safe, though, each and every person who wants to have a vote in the future direction of our state should contact their county clerk’s office to register in the Republican primary before the March 11 date.

Take Back Idaho (TBI) is composed of Idahoans from across the political spectrum who know that we are capable of governing ourselves with dignity and common sense. Many are former Republican office-holders–House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, Senate leader Bob Geddes, Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, State Treasurer Lydia Justice-Edwards, School Superintendent Jerry Evans and myself. TBI’s President is Jennifer Ellis, a conservative Republican, Blackfoot rancher and former president of the Idaho Cattle Association. Distinguished educators, legislators and citizens have flocked to its ranks.

The main reason for the sorry state of Idaho politics is the corrosive influence of the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), a so-called think tank that draws substantial support from out-of-state interests. By coddling receptive legislators and punishing those who don’t heed its orders, IFF has established a firm grip over the votes of too many GOP legislators. Divisiveness and dysfunction have replaced pragmatism and civility.

One case in point is a $6 million federal grant for early childhood education that IFF’s legislative minions in the House tanked last year. The funds would have provided education for children up to the age of five and child care relief for working parents. Senators Risch and Crapo strongly supported the program, as did the business community. IFF bizarrely contended the program would indoctrinate preschoolers with critical race theory (CRT). Legislators blindly loyal to IFF followed its instructions, refusing to accept the readily available funds.

Within the last couple of days, Dustin Hurst serving as the vice president of the Idaho Freedom Action sent out 80,000 text messages to voters, targeting legislators who supported the program, ridiculously claiming it “pushes critical race theory” on Idaho toddlers. Hurst is also the vice president of the IFF. 

IFF and its captive legislators have flat failed to prove their false claims that CRT exists in Idaho’s public schools. It is simply hateful misinformation designed to discredit public education. The legislators who should be targeted for buying into this nonsense are those who voted against the funding, including Reps. Ron Nate, Judy Boyle, Karey Hanks, Rick Christensen, Heather Scott, Priscilla Giddings, Ron Mendive and Barbara Ehardt.

TBI hopes to persuade May primary voters to replace these IFF-controlled legislators with honest, sensible legislators who will answer solely to their constituents–to elect individuals dedicated to funding and improving our public schools, rather than trying to destroy them–to work together to solve our chronic problems, rather than inventing imaginary problems to score cheap political points.

TBI has set up a website–TakeBackIdaho.com–which provides information on legislative candidates and important issues. It has also established a Political Action Committee to fund voter education and candidate support. If TBI can help take the Legislature back from the firm grip of the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its legislative acolytes, Idaho may once again be blessed with a bright and harmonious future.

Voter support across the state is sufficient to do the job. There is great hunger throughout the state to get back to the business of responsible governing. It is absolutely critical for each and every voter in the state to make themselves heard in the Republican primary on or before May 17. Those wishing to vote must immediately check the registration requirements, either through their county clerk or the Office of the Secretary of State.

As a matter of fact, Idaho public schools have provided a free education to kids from every economic level, faith, race, creed, political outlook, whatever, since 1890. Public education is what has made the Gem State what it is. It will continue to do so into the future, if the Legislature follows its mandate under the Idaho Constitution to properly fund a “general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”

IFF doesn’t care much about that history. It has amassed a large cadre of Idaho legislators who jump to its every command to degrade the schools. Two of them, Priscilla Giddings and Chad Christensen, follow IFF’s wishes 100% of the time. Four of its legislative underlings, Ron Nate, Tammy Nichols, Karey Hanks and Heather Scott, follow orders an impressive 99% of the time. Thirty-four legislators have an IFF voting record of 80% or more.

Acting through the numerous politicians it controls, IFF has done everything possible in recent years to financially starve public education from pre-k through college. Idaho is dead last in education funding among the 50 states, which makes it difficult to maintain a high-quality education system. When education results fall short, IFF and its legislative minions claim the system is failing.

IFF says the solution is to divert taxpayer money to private schools, which would devastate rural communities. Public schools, particularly in rural Idaho, are the glue that holds communities together, not only for education, but for school sports and a myriad of other activities.

Most rural communities would not be within reasonable driving distance of a private school. IFF’s education “experts” point to a study saying “69% of families resided within 10 miles of a private school.” Seems those experts should study some Idaho geography to find that is not the case in our far-flung state.

Those experts go on to claim that rural students could take advantage of online learning opportunities, apparently overlooking IFF vice president Dustin Hurst’s October 20, 2020 rant about online learning. Hurst said, “kids need to be in school” and that “the impact of closed schools on communities is devastating.” IFF can’t have it both ways.

IFF also pretends to be in favor of schools being governed by local school boards, but one wonders who would control the content of online learning. Seems that would be controlled by the for-profit online vendor. It would be helpful if IFF would disclose its funding sources so that Idahoans could see whether they include for-profit private school businesses.

Idahoans cherish local control of their schools and local elected boards have been in charge forever. It is representative government at its grassroots best. IFF claims that online schools have to be certified, but that is nowhere near local control of schools.

Idaho parents clearly have a right to have their say with school officials and school boards. If boards are not responsive, a remedy is available at the ballot box. What recourse is there if out-of-state online private schools start indoctrinating students?

Voters can and should stand up against the concerted efforts of IFF and its legislative henchmen to wound and destroy our public system. If we treat the system right, it will continue to educate our kids to succeed in a world that gets more complicated each day. If IFF is able to carry out its plan to close down the public school system, it will rip the heart out of Idaho communities. That would also put taxpayers at the mercy of for-profit schools over which patrons would have no control.

The Idaho Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that these are not idle words. Rather, the Legislature must provide sufficient funding to properly operate our public school system. There can be no argument that the Legislature has failed to carry out this solemn obligation for many years. The issue was considered by the Supreme Court in a long-running case, titled Idaho Schools for Equal Educational Opportunity v. State, often referred to as the ISEEO case. The case was filed in 1990 and came before the Court on five occasions, producing five decisions.

In its second decision in 1996, the Court suspected that the State was not adequately funding the instructional side of the education system and sent the case back to the trial court for further consideration of that issue. The Legislature did increase school funding for a while but that did not last long.

In the third round of the litigation, the focus became the proper meaning of a “thorough system” of public schools. The Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that “a safe environment conducive to learning is inherently part of a thorough system of public, free common schools.” The Court said that further litigation was necessary to decide whether school facilities–buildings and fixtures–were being adequately financed by the State. The case was sent back to the trial court to find whether dilapidated school facilities were harming the work of educating our kids.

When the case came back in its fifth iteration in 2005, the Court ruled that the Legislature had not met its constitutional duty to provide a thorough system of education with regard to school facilities. The ruling specified, “it is the duty of the State, and not this Court or the local school districts, to meet this constitutional mandate.” It was made clear that the Legislature could not place the primary funding responsibility for school facilities upon local property tax payers. The Court approvingly quoted an Ohio Supreme Court decision for the proposition that property taxes are not the answer for satisfying the constitutional mandate: “The valuation of local property has no connection whatsoever to the actual education needs of the locality, with the result that a system over reliant on local property taxes is by its very nature an arbitrary system that can never be totally thorough.”

In a special session of the Legislature in 2006, legislation proposed by then-Governor Jim Risch was approved to reduce reliance on property taxes and shift the burden to sales and income taxes. In the last ten years, the burden on property tax payers has substantially increased because the Legislature has failed to carry out its responsibility to provide adequate funding for either school facilities or instructional operations. Supplemental property tax levies amounted to $218.2 million in 2021-2022. Plant facilities levies were about $53 million last year and may well be more this year. These are obligations that the Legislature should pay out of general tax revenues. Local property tax payers should not be saddled with these costs.

The Legislature is clearly shirking its constitutional duty to provide a thorough system of public schools. Ever since the deep recession of 2008, public leaders, including former Governor Otter and any number of legislators, have admitted this to be the case. Instead of falling all over themselves to figure out how many hundreds of millions of the present surplus should be dished out in tax cuts, legislators should finally take the opportunity to meet their constitutional duty of adequately funding public school operations and facilities. We clearly have the money so let’s require the legislators to carry out their responsibility under the Idaho Constitution. Our kids’ education depends on it.

For instance, Boise State University professor Scott Yenor, an IFF collaborator, has spoken out about the role of women in higher education. He said, “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering….Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade.” He appears to believe that if young women become over-educated and independent, they are “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be.” He said, “Young men should…inspire young women to be secure with feminine goals of homemaking and having children.” Seems that IFF’s higher education plan for women would be to keep them barefoot and pregnant.

Prof. Yenor served on the Indoctrination Task Farce with IFF favorites Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin and Rep. Priscilla Giddings. After four hearings, the Task Force folded its tent without producing credible evidence of student indoctrination. After getting a load of professor Yenor’s opinions, it appears that these three IFF-affiliated inquisitors may have been searching for indoctrination in all the wrong places. They should have included some personal mirrors in their tool kits.

The lack of findings was not surprising, because no evidence of indoctrination had been produced by IFF’s legislators during the 2020 session. A false indoctrination claim was made against Boise State, resulting in the University’s budget being slashed by $1.5 million. The claim was later debunked following an independent study. Nevertheless, IFF did a victory dance over the BSU punishment, while also savoring its work in rejecting a $6 million federal grant for pre-kindergarten.

While all of this was going on, IFF was having some luck in tearing apart a fine institution of higher learning in the Idaho Panhandle. North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene has been a jewel in Idaho’s community college crown since its founding in 1933. It has provided an excellent education to thousands of Idaho kids over the many years since. During the heyday of the Aryan Nations hate group in Hayden Lake in the 1980s, faculty and students of NIC played an instrumental role in opposing and eventually ejecting the white supremacists from the area.

Brent Regan, the chairman of IFF’s board as well as chair of the Kootenai County GOP, helped to engineer a hostile take-over of NIC’s board of directors in the 2020 election. Ever since, the three IFF-supported board members have created havoc with the school. The President was fired without cause and is now suing for wrongful termination. The faculty has been disrupted by the insurgents and the accreditation status of the college appears to be in jeopardy. IFF was certainly successful in making a mess of this great community college in short order.

So, now we have an idea of what the higher education system in Idaho would look like if the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its allies were able to achieve their goal of getting the State of Idaho out of the education business–chaos, dysfunction, chauvinism and extremist indoctrination. Thanks a lot, IFF, but no thanks. Our higher education system is not perfect, but it does not need your kind of fix.