A fracture in Idaho's GOP as far right seeks control
BONNERS FERRY, IDAHO >> At a school gymnasium in northern Idaho, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin regaled a crowd with stories of her feuds with the current governor, a fellow Republican, including the time when he briefly left the state and she issued a mutinous but short-lived ban on coronavirus mask mandates.
Gov. Brad Little had worked in recent years to slash taxes and ban abortion, but for McGeachin and the hundreds gathered at a candidates' forum sponsored by the John Birch Society in late March, the governor was at cross purposes with their view of just how conservative Idaho could and should be.
They clapped as one candidate advocated “machine guns for everyone” and another called for the state to take control of federal lands. A militia activist, who once was prosecuted for his role in an infamous 2014 standoff with federal agents in Nevada, promised to be a true representative of the people. A local pastor began the meeting with an invocation, asking for God to bless the American Redoubt — a movement to create a refuge anchored in northern Idaho for conservative Christians who are ready to abandon the rest of the country.
“We're losing our state,” said McGeachin, who is seeking to take over the governor's job. “We're losing our freedoms.”
The bitter intraparty contest between McGeachin and Little, set to be settled in the state's primary election Tuesday, reflects the intensifying split that is pitting Idaho's conventional pro-gun, anti-abortion, taxcut conservatives against a growing group of far-right radicals who are agitating to seize control of what is already one of the most conservative corners of the Republican Party in the U.S.
The state long has been a draw for ultraconservatives disillusioned with the liberal drift in other parts of the nation, many of them settling off the grid in the mountains of northern Idaho or among likeminded people in towns like Bonners Ferry. Over the years, the Idaho panhandle has been home to White supremacist groups and people ready to take up arms against the U.S. government. Such groups and their allies have been particularly wary of the changing nature of Idaho's cities, including the legions of other newcomers responding to a booming job market in Boise.
Fearing the growth of the party's extremist wing, some Republicans are waging a “Take Back Idaho” campaign. In northern Idaho's Kootenai County, the disputes have led to a formal rift, with two Republican Party factions separately battling to convince voters that they represent the true nature of the party.
Similar debates are playing out across the country as more moderate Republicans confront challenges from an increasingly powerful segment energized by the continuing influence of former President Donald Trump. In Idaho, where Trump won 64% of the vote in 2020, carrying 41 of the state's 44 counties, many longtime Republicans fear the party's name, identity and deep conservative values are being commandeered by the state's fringe elements.
“If traditional Republican principles in Idaho want to survive, then the traditional Republicans are going to have to work harder,” said Jack Riggs, a former lieutenant governor who recently joined with other former elected officials to form a separate association, the North Idaho
Republicans, to challenge what he sees as a dangerous shift within the existing party leadership in Kootenai County.
Riggs said the local party has been increasingly taken over by zealots motivated by a desire to limit the influence of government, sometimes at the expense of the traditional Republican goals of promoting business and growth. Many of the new activists, he said, express a willingness to fight the U.S. government, with arms if necessary.
One of the growing powers in the region is the John Birch Society, which dominated the far right in the 1960s and 1970s by opposing the civil rights movement and equal rights for women while embracing conspiratorial notions about communist infiltration of the federal government. The group was purged from the conservative movement decades ago but has found a new foothold in places like the Idaho panhandle.
McGeachin has angled to seize the support of that wing of the party. A few weeks before she traveled to the gymnasium event in northern Idaho, she made a video address to the America First Political Action Conference, an event organized by a prominent White nationalist, Nick Fuentes. In an interview, McGeachin said she had no regrets about doing so.
“It's my job to listen to a broad perspective,” she said.
With Trump's endorsement, McGeachin has tried to portray Little, a thirdgeneration sheep and cattle rancher who has worked to position Idaho as a lowregulation state friendly to businesses and smallgovernment conservatives alike, as unwilling to uphold Idaho's true values. She cites the governor's actions during the pandemic as an example.
Idaho endured some particularly challenging waves during the coronavirus pandemic that led hospitals to a state of crisis. Overwhelmed facilities in northern Idaho were forced to redirect some patients to neighboring Washington state.
Little angered many in the medical community by refusing to issue a statewide mask mandate and by fighting President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates in court. But he allowed cities and school districts to issue mask mandates of their own, and that became a point of contention between him and the lieutenant governor.
When Little left the state to participate in a meeting of Republican governors in Tennessee last year, McGeachin issued an executive order banning mask mandates from government entities in the state, including school districts. Little reversed the order upon his return.
Little signed some of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws, including a provision that prohibits abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and allows people, including the family members of rapists, to sue the abortion provider. McGeachin has pushed to go further, calling for a special session to remove exemptions offered in a state law limiting abortions and saying Idaho's law should be the strictest in the country. The only exemptions in the law are for rape, incest and the life of the woman.
And though Little has won an endorsement from the National Rifle Association, McGeachin said she wants to offer incentives to increase production of firearms and ammunition in the state.
Republicans hold supermajorities in the state House and state Senate, and no Democrat has won a statewide race since 2002. For many of the races on the ballot, the winner of Tuesday's primary will coast to victory in November.
Around northern Idaho, it is not hard to find people who worry about the future of the country and are prepared for the possibility of civil conflict.
Earl Borer, 72, who attended the Birch Society event, said he saw this year's election as a make-orbreak moment and added that people would need to pick up arms if the right conservatives did not get elected.
In the governor's race, he said he preferred McGeachin or Bundy and was leaning toward the latter.
The most important thing, as Borer saw it, was that Republican voters needed to oust Little.
“If we don't get rid of him, then Idaho is no longer a paradise,” he said.
“If traditional Republican principles in Idaho want to survive, then the traditional Republicans are going to have to work harder.” — Jack Riggs, former Idaho lieutenant governor