Combatting cannibalism and jailing librarians: Idaho Democrats see opportunity in extreme GOP agenda

Democrat Loree Peery knows she’s a long-shot candidate for the Idaho Legislature.

But when her state House representative introduced a bill in February expanding an anti-cannibalism law — action prompted by a prank video — Peery decided she had to try to oust the far-right incumbent, Heather Scott.

“You can’t win if you don’t run,” Peery said, adding that Scott’s focus on irrelevant issues like cannibalism shows she isn't a serious lawmaker. “It forces the Republicans to work, it forces [Scott] to get out there and talk to people so they can see what she’s about. It forces Republicans to spend more resources on the races.”

Peery, a retired nurse, is one of dozens of Idaho Democrats seeking an office in Boise for the first time. Under new leadership, the Idaho Democratic Party has deployed a grassroots recruitment strategy to put a record number of candidates on the ballot. In fact, there’s a Democrat running in every district for the first time in at least 30 years.

Democrats feel emboldened by the GOP supermajority’s obsession with culture war issues like enacting a strict abortion ban, attacking LGBTQ+ rights and proposing jailing librarians over violating book bans. They also see bitter infighting between the conservative and moderate flanks of the GOP as an opportunity to present voters with a different vision for the future of the state. Idaho was thrust into the national culture war debate again this week when the Supreme Court allowed state officials to temporarily enforce a ban on gender-affirming care, reinvigorating opposition to the law that was passed last year.

It’s also not just Idaho. More Democrats than usual are running in states with GOP-dominated legislatures like Tennessee, Iowa and North Carolina. Democrats have made gains in recent years in state legislative races — flipping chambers in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan — after more than a decade of nationwide GOP dominance. But Republicans still control 55 percent of state legislative seats, compared to 44 percent for Democrats.

Yet Idaho Democrats are frank about their miniscule odds of sweeping the election in November — or anytime soon. Instead Democrats set a goal of knocking out the GOP’s supermajority in the next decade. But even then, there’s a long way to go: Democrats have just 18 seats across two chambers in the 105-seat legislature.

“Democrats just can’t win in this state because their ideas don’t resonate with the people,” said Republican state Sen. Brian Lenney, a member of the conservative Idaho Freedom Caucus. “Most of Idaho rejects Democrat ideas because they’re bad ideas and they don’t correspond to reality.”

Democrats’ “compete everywhere” strategy means building campaigns from the bottom up in deeply conservative districts like Scott's, an area where Trump won by more than 70 percent in 2020. Some of these precincts did not even have a Democratic chair until last year.

Scott is known as one of the most conservative members of the Idaho Legislature, where she serves as co-leader of the Idaho Freedom Caucus. She has posed with a confederate flag on a parade float. She has defended white nationalism following the violent demonstrations in Charlottesville. Scott has been elected four times and ran unopposed in 2020. She did not return multiple requests from POLITICO for comment.

Democrats throughout the country are running on restoring reproductive rights in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned — and winning, even in Alabama, where a Democrat who ran on abortion access won a special election in a competitive state House seat last month. In conservative Idaho, that’s often framed in language like granting residents the freedom to make their personal health care decisions.

More than 50 obstetricians have stopped practicing in Idaho since the state’s abortion ban, which makes it a crime with a prison sentence up to five years for anyone who performs the procedure. Most of those remaining doctors practice in the most populous counties — and only half of the state’s 44 counties have access to an obstetrician.

“It’s really been a hair on fire situation, even for people who are not historically Democrats,” said state House Rep. Ilana Rubel, the Democratic minority leader. “[Republicans] have really overshot the mark in a big way and we’ve seen in other states when Republican supermajorities do this, they can lose."

There’s some evidence that Democrats’ assessment of Idahoans’ mood may be right. A long-running public policy survey conducted by Boise State University found — for the first time — that more respondents said they feel the state is on the wrong track rather than headed in the right direction. Among those unhappy with the state’s trajectory, the top reason cited was Republicans’ conservative supermajority.

Building a party infrastructure from zero

Democrats’ recruitment effort began in the spring of 2023 with a spreadsheet and a group of interns.

The party’s new executive director, Jared DeLoof, had just moved to Boise after working in battleground states for NextGen America, a progressive group targeting young voters. He assembled a team of interns to scour the internet to find Democrats who were involved in their communities. DeLoof would then cold call more than 30 potential politicians every week and make his pitch. Most of the time, he was initially met with laughter.

“I would always say to people, there is no cavalry coming to save us here in Idaho, and it’s getting worse and worse every year,” DeLoof said. “The place they want to take us is really scary and we can’t take it lying down. That really resonated.”

Democrats are eyeing pickup opportunities in three districts where they hold two out of the three seats in the state’s multimember districts: one in Pocatello, a small town with a strong union railroad presence, another in the Sun Valley resort area and a third in the Boise suburbs. They’re also targeting the college town of Moscow, where the University of Idaho is located.

Julia Parker, the Democratic state House candidate and Moscow City Council member, said the demographics of Moscow make her race a realistic flip for Democrats because it contains lots of young voters and is home to the Nez Perce reservation. Looking across the state, Democrats are encouraged by recent population shifts: Idaho’s population has grown 25 percent since 2010, with much of that concentrated around Boise.

Idaho politics in recent years has been defined by brutal fights within the GOP as hard-right Republicans spar with moderates on everything from the party platform to the budget process. The 2022 election rattled the party as Republican incumbents, including Gov. Brad Little, faced challenges from right-wing candidates.

There are also deep divisions between the state GOP and local party leaders. The new GOP leadership has tried to crack the whip within its ranks by putting forward rules that empower precinct committees to ban Republicans from running with the party if they violate the GOP platform during votes. Those rules were approved during a contentious party meeting last year that left some moderate Republicans feeling burned. A number of local party leaders have since resigned in protest.

At the time, Republican Party Chair Dorothy Moon brushed aside concerns about party infighting, noting that the Idaho GOP “has had division for decades” and that the party today “is the least divided it’s been in years,” according to a statement provided to the Idaho Capital Sun.

Democrats say those close votes are what make them relevant.

Tom Luna, former chair of the Idaho Republican party who has been outspoken against the GOP’s current leadership, said he can understand why Democrats are trying to take advantage of apparent weaknesses in the GOP. Moderate Republicans see the same opportunity, he said, as a wave of Republicans are vying for county positions to cede back control from the far-right at the most local level.

“Democrats made it clear they had a goal to do something that hasn’t been done in a long, long time and they succeeded,” Luna said. “Republicans would be naive to not take that seriously.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this report incorrectly identified the source of polling data.