The extremist branch of the Idaho Republican Party is in an absolute panic about the Open Primaries Initiative (OPI), which will give every Idaho voter the right to choose our elected officials. Mike Moyle, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has come out with a laundry list of supposed horribles that will result if the OPI depletes his legislative cadre of culture warriors who have turned Idaho into a national laughingstock. Dorothy Moon, who wants absolute control over who gets elected to public office in Idaho, is forging ahead with her own misinformation campaign. The GOP extremist have even been so brazen as to try to steal Idaho’s Great Seal.
Moon’s effort includes a disgusting billboard that combines the Great Seal of the State of Idaho with a naughty wordplay on fornication– “Don’t Californicate Idaho’s Elections.” Idaho’s Great Seal is right next to that deceptive and sexualized wording — a great insult to the Gem State and its people. Being a self-proclaimed protector of the moral fiber of Idaho children, I wonder how Moon thinks parents will explain the meaning of the sex-act word to their children? The sanctimonious GOP hardliners would be outraged to see “fornicate” in library books. Public billboards are apparently fair game.
Moon’s misuse of the Great Seal is not only tasteless, but it is counter to Idaho’s public policy against using the Great Seal for personal gain. Section 18-3603 of the Idaho Code makes it a criminal offense to forge or counterfeit the Great Seal to defraud another person. I’m not suggesting that anyone could or should be subject to prosecution, but that nobody should sully the dignity of the Great Seal. Using the Great Seal to imply state approval of campaign propaganda, particularly billboards that use an always-inappropriate version of the “F” word, is dead wrong.
Both Moon and Moyle falsely claim that the OPI will turn Idaho into a liberal bastion, just like California. Apparently, they have not bothered to check out the current voter registration figures at the Secretary of State’s office – 606,822 Republicans, 129,043 Democrats and 268,795 unaffiliated. Their claim defies common sense. What the OPI will do is give reasonable, traditional Republicans a chance to compete for office, instead of being beaten by party-favored extremists in the low-turnout GOP closed primary. That’s why so many traditional Republicans strongly support the OPI.
Mr. Moyle has parroted Moon’s false claim that the OPI was perpetrated by some malevolent “liberal group, fueled by out-of-state money.” He knows better. Former Speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives, Bruce Newcomb, a reasonable, conservative public servant, is the person who got the OPI going in Idaho. He is Moyle’s former boss in the Legislature and Moyle knows very well that he is not some faceless liberal. Newcomb urged Reclaim Idaho, a home-grown, all-volunteer group that has done such great work on Idaho initiatives, to take on this project, following its success on the Medicaid expansion initiative in 2018 and the education funding initiative in 2022.
Newcomb was frustrated by the Legislature’s increasing extremism, which resulted from the closing of the GOP primary election in 2012. That allowed traditional Republicans to be picked off in subsequent low-turnout primaries by extremist culture warriors who are more interested in stoking fear and outrage to retain their grasp on power, rather than attending to the state’s real problems. For instance, the state has an extremely serious water problem on the Snake River–a problem that cries out for legislative attention. The culture warriors know little about water policy and apparently care less about this controversy, which will have a major impact on the state’s future. Newcomb dealt seriously with water and other important issues when he was Speaker. That simply does not happen under current leadership. He sees the OPI as a way to get rid of governmental troublemakers and replace them with dedicated public servants.
The OPI has strong support from other traditional Republicans, including Butch Otter, Denton Darrington, Maxine Bell, Jack Riggs, Sandy Patano, Greg Casey and over 100 others. They are neither Californians nor liberals. They are people who support conservative values and are hoping to restore reason, civility and common sense to governing in Idaho.
