Once upon a time the state of Idaho was just a boondock best known for its “famous” potatoes. These days, the residents are less proud of its reputation for potatoes and more of being a “homeland” for far-right politics, Trumpism and neo-Nazis. How it got there is less a matter of changing times but of degree. Idaho was like other right-wing states that came crawling on their hands and knees asking Democrats for a bailout when disaster struck, such as during the Great Depression, or today, when because of its anti-vax and mask attitudes, it expects “blue” Washington to take in its excess of COVID patients in need of ICU beds. But after 1948, Idaho has voted for a Republican for president every four years save for 1964, when LBJ won the election by a landslide over Barry Goldwater.
While Democrats remained at least “competitive” for awhile, support for civil rights and other “liberal” social and environmental positions hurt party support in Idaho, particularly with the large Mormon population, which of course had some rather ugly and bizarre beliefs in regard to race. Democrats were for a time aided by the personal popularity of Gov. Cecil Andrus, who was elected to four terms until 1994, and the fact that that Republicans were confusing voters battling among themselves for what ideological direction they wanted to go. After Andrus decided not to run for a fifth term, a “reorganized” Republican Party has dominated politics in the state.
The issue of race cannot be ignored in Idaho. Last year on Boise’s public broadcasting station, Dr. Jill Gill of Boise State University spoke of the long history of racism that went fist-in-glove with anti-government sentiment in Idaho. She noted that Idaho’s location had always made it a favorite destination for racists. After the Civil War, southerners upset by the presence of free blacks who technically had the same rights as they did left for far-off lands where they could establish a “white homeland”; the Pacific Northwest was regarded as prime real estate for them. In 1870, 28 percent of Idaho’s population was Chinese, there for railroad and mining labor; because of the exclusion laws and the fact that Native Americans were not counted as “people,” by 1920 the population was “officially” 99 percent white.
In the 1920s, the KKK had a dozen chapters in Idaho for men, and three chapters for women, who wanted the same right as men to burn crosses. “Feminist” racist suffragettes in Idaho not just supported Sen. William Borah’s move that gave women in Idaho the right to vote, but they also opposed a national amendment in order to prevent black women from voting. Borah, a Republican, along with other Western lawmakers, blocked the party’s promise of passing an anti-lynching law in 1920. During World War II, black airmen arrived, and some stayed, only to face “James Crow.” Racist northerners also moved to Idaho, and even as late as the 1970s there were unsubtle “hints” that blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans were not “welcome” in many establishments.
It was this Idaho that welcomed those who brought swastikas flags and established a compound in Hayden Lake, calling themselves the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, headed by Richard Butler:
Uh, wait; that is current Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin; this is Butler:
Besides bringing in a new level of hate, Butler and his gang were accused of engaging in murders, bombings and robberies, as was a splinter group called The Order, which was accused of the murder of Denver radio host Alan Berg, who was Jewish; in 1984 its leader, Robert Mathews, was eventually cornered in Whidbey Island in Washington, when after a shootout with FBI agents he was consumed in his burning hideaway. Butler and his organization was eventually brought down in 2001 after a civil lawsuit was brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center in support of two local white people who reportedly were shot at and assaulted by Aryan Nations goons.
In places like Coeur d’Alene where the Aryan Nations once conducted their torchlight parades, most residents claim things are “different” now, but behind closed doors there are those who believe that things are not so very different, especially with emotions raised with the advent of Trumpism. The county the city is located in voted for Donald Trump by a 43 percent margin in 2020.
Idaho isn’t entirely white anymore; the state’s farm industry is dependent on Hispanic immigrant labor, which makes up 75 percent of the total. Hispanics currently are 13 percent of the state’s population. But they have no political influence save for fueling anti-Hispanic immigrant hate rhetoric; more important is the continuing influx of far-right “immigration” from “blue” states, where people who were even further to the right than most “native” Idaho Republicans decided it was a “safe” place for them. Today there are far-right organizations that actually provide assistance for those seeking to leave their “socialist” states and move to climes more hospitable to their white nationalist desires, and Idaho and Texas are the top landing spots.
An NPR story back in 2014 suggested that Democrats might make a comeback in Idaho if the “natives” decided that the new immigrants were bringing views too crazed for their liking, but this proved to be a chimera with the emergence of the crazed white nationalist populism of Trump and his disciples. If nothing else, Idaho Republicans have become even more crazed as a group, which we have seen recently in the dustup between the governor and lieutenant governor, both Trump supporters but differing in degree.
The current governor of the state, Brad Little, is relatively “moderate” as far as Republicans go, which is to say, not very. It says a great deal about the far-right that it was so upset by his allowing local governments and schools to set their own COVID-19 mandates that Little faced a recall effort, which failed to garner enough signatures. On the other hand, there is McGeachin, a bible-and-gun-thumping virus-denying “freedom” fanatic. When Little left the state for a governor’s conference, McGeachin took the opportunity to claim that the governor’s seat was “vacated” and signed executive orders banning COVID mandates and to send National Guard troops to the border.
Little rescinded the McGeachin order on mandates before he even returned to the state, and the National Guard commandant refused to comply with her order. What this shows us is that Trump’s contempt for the rule of law has influenced others to do the same. Trump has clearly grown even more unstable (if that’s possible), and as we have seen in more tomes and as former press secretary Stephanie Grisham suggests, that there is something truly evil about Trump, and that if he is somehow reelected in 2024, it will be his “revenge” tour. This is the man that McGeachin idolizes as her Fuhrer and will follow anywhere.
The far-right in Idaho dreams of creating a “nation-state” free from all federal regulation, in which jihad-like Christianity, white supremacy, total ignorance of man-made destruction—and just plain ignorance—is the law of the land. ABC News recently reported that far-right lawmakers have already killed federal funding for COVID testing in schools, and $6 million for early childhood learning. They also cut $2.5 million in funding for higher education, as “punishment” for allegedly teaching “critical race theory.”
McGeachin plans on running for governor next year, and among other things is threatening to cut the two-thirds of funding for Medicaid that is covered by the federal government (McGeachin likens it as a “bribe”). Taking a page out of Kyrsten Sinema's playbook, during an interview on CNN McGeachin accused Dan Simon of being an “activist” for asking perfectly reasonable questions about her actions and just walked off. Little plans to run for reelection, and if nothing else we will see just where exactly Idaho is these days, just as we will in other states.
Former state attorney general and chief justice of the state supreme court, Jim Jones, told ABC that the far-right is picking a fight “on practically any issue” in the culture wars, and this insanity will certainly continue in Idaho if it follows this path.
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