OPINION: It’s time to render a verdict on Dorothy Moon

Marty Trillhaase, Lewiston Morning Tribune, Oct. 27, 2024

It’s not Proposition 1 — the Open Primaries Initiative — that’s up for a decision on the Nov. 5 Idaho election ballot.

Instead, it’s Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon and the motley crew of extremists who make up her wing of the Republican Party who will face the verdict of the voters.

That’s because it wasn’t the people of Idaho who asked to dispense with their traditional open primary election. They didn’t use the initiative process to change the system. Nor did they invite their elected representatives in the Legislature to take that step.

Instead, party activists went to the federal courts about a dozen years ago and won the authority to restrict access to the all-important Idaho GOP primary to registered Republicans. Not only did that violate voters’ privacy, it disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of them — empowering as few as a fifth of the most ideological GOP partisans.

The way out of that trap is the OPI’s plan to launch a top four primary in the spring, where anyone regardless of party affiliation can cast a ballot, and ranked choice voting in November, which would enable a majority of voters — and in Idaho, that means mainstream Republicans — to make the final choice about who governs over them.

It’s the current closed primary system that has extended undue influence to Moon, former Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, Attorney General Raul Labrador and fringe lawmakers such as Sens. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, and Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton.

If you agree with Moon, McGeachin and Labrador, vote no on Prop 1.

The closed GOP primary is their guarantee of political survival.

If you prefer electing problem solvers such as former Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, former Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and former state Sen. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, vote yes.

With the benefit of hindsight, the current closed primary system has delivered a string of decisions quite at odds with what ordinary Idahoans want.

Among them:

The harshest abortion ban in the country with no provision to safeguard the health of Idaho women and empty promises to protect victims of rape and incest. In fact, the Legislature flirted with shutting down the state’s maternal mortality review process. Doctors are fleeing the state. Maternal care units are shutting down. And the health of Idaho women is being compromised.

A state often ranked last or next-to-last in the amount of resources devoted toward each public school pupil is being pushed toward siphoning off scarce tax dollars toward subsidizing the education of children whose families are wealthy enough to enroll them in private and/or religious schools — often in urban centers. This is no grass roots effort. The pressure is coming from the out-of-state private school lobby.

Persistent histrionics about culture wars. Idahoans aren’t book-banners. But their Legislature has put a bull’s eye on libraries. Idaho college students understand the economy they will inherit is global and multi-cultural. But their Legislature wants to shut down all campus diversity programs. And whoever came up with a parental rights package so poorly worded that it requires schools to get a waiver before a staffer can apply a Band-aid to a child’s scraped knee? You guessed it. The Idaho Legislature.

An absolute refusal to update the citizen-passed Homestead Exemption for a decade’s worth of inflation. As a result, the property tax burden carried by Idaho’s homeowners has mushroomed while the proprietors of commercial property have enjoyed a windfall.

Absolute fealty to the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a dark money-funded outfit that threatens to taint Republicans lawmakers as being insufficiently conservative, making them prey for a challenge from the right in the next closed GOP primary election.

Loyalty oaths and local GOP central committees whose members assume for themselves the right to issue instructions to lawmakers who have been legitimately elected by the people. Among those targeted were Rep. Lori McCann, R-Lewiston, as well as Sens. Kevin Cook and Dave Lent and Reps. Stephanie Jo Mickelsen, Wendy Horman, Marco Erickson and Barbara Ehardt, all R-Idaho Falls.

This is not about — as Moon suggests — “Californicating” Idaho or transforming the Gem State into a Democratic stronghold.

The Californians are already here and they’re moving the state more to the right. Outside of a few legislative districts and local elections, the question is not whether Idaho will remain Republican, but what kind of Republican — those who build bridges or those who live to do nothing more than burn down the house.

If you like the direction Moon and her cohorts are taking you, then vote no on Prop 1.

But if you’ve grown weary of this political minority dictating your destiny, vote yes. — M.T.