OPINION: Raul Labrador chooses sides in Idaho’s Republican civil war

An Idaho Republican civil war has been raging for the last several years between an extreme-right, culture-warrior branch and a reasonable, pragmatic branch whose goal is to deal with actual problems facing the state. For voters who have trouble differentiating between the two, an ill-named outfit called the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) compiles “legislator scorecards” that rate legislators based on their dedication to IFF’s extreme policy and funding priorities. The highest rated are the most extreme. The “slapdash" budget-cutting in the Legislature this year is thanks to lFF’s top scorers.

While the official State GOP, presided over by Dorothy Moon, is in the extremist branch and fully committed to IFF priorities, significant numbers of Republicans are in the problem-solving branch. The situation in the Magic Valley is an interesting case study of the competition between the two branches.

The official party committees in Twin Falls and Jerome counties are not ruled by extremists, but extreme candidates defeated problem-solvers in the 2024 Republican primary with the purported support of those committees. Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld and Rep. Clint Hostetler won in District 24 and Sen. Josh Kohl and Rep. David Leavitt won in District 25. Those four are among IFF’s seven highest-rated legislators. Before the election, a group supporting those candidates, the Magic Valley Liberty Alliance, circulated a campaign publication titled “2024 GOP May Primary Election Voter Guide.” It gave the distinct impression that the four were officially-anointed party candidates, but they were not. Members of the official party committees have asked the official state GOP to prevent a repeat of the false endorsements.

The misrepresentation of party support has consequences. The four 2024 winners all supported HB 93, the education tax credit law. Their opponents all opposed the $50,000,000 taxpayer subsidy of private and religious schooling. Indeed, Hostetler proposed a subsidy of $250 million. The winners all supported slashing higher education budgets by 5%, which will have adverse economic consequences for years to come. Sen. Zuiderveld argued that the state does not have to fund its universities, suggesting they could be funded through charities, donations and tuition. The IFF has historically opposed public education and there is no reason to believe the four would not agree.

The GOP warfare has also affected the political leanings of our top officials. Gov. Brad Little started his first term as a perceived moderate and has moved steadily to the right ever since. After Little got Donald Trump's endorsement for a third term last June, he turned full-on MAGA and has become a frequent supporter of the GOP’s culture warrior branch.

Attorney General Raul Labrador has always been inclined toward the extreme branch of the GOP. During his tenure in the U.S. House, he was a charter member of the Tea Party extremists. As attorney general, he has supported the education tax credit, the national GOP’s restrictive voting law, any number of culture war issues that are solutions looking for a problem and Trump’s draconian immigration policies.

Labrador made his choice between the two branches of the GOP when he chose to keynote the March 28 Liberty Dinner hosted by the Magic Valley Liberty Alliance in Twin Falls. He’ll be rubbing elbows with the IFF-supported Magic Valley foursome and sticking it in the eyes of official Republican Party Committees and problem-solving Republicans across the state.

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Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as Idaho Attorney General (1983-1991) and 12 years as a Justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He also publishes at substack.com/@jjcommontater