In Idaho, the political race is ‘between right and far right,’ school board trustee says

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Barely a week after he turned 18, Shiva Rajbhandari won an election for a seat on the Boise School District Board of Trustees. It marked a victory for youthful enthusiasm, with Mr. Rajbhandari still in high school, where he is enrolled in a series of advanced placement classes. But it also marked a setback for the forces of Idaho’s far-right, who had given their backing to his opponent.

The Idaho Liberty Dogs, a far-right group that compared a local rabbi to Hitler and listed the Captain Underpants children’s books as “disgusting smut filled pornography,” recommended five school board candidates for its followers. None were elected.

“Idaho is the testing ground for extremism,” said Mr. Rajbhandari. The state is a “battleground not between left and right, but between right and far right.”

Those who voted for a progressive like Mr. Rajbhandari, he says, were sending a message: “This has gone too far.”

Idaho schools have banned books, the legislature has banned transgender athletes from women’s sports, universities have warned employees against counselling contraception, and armed citizens have made threatening statements inside the legislature.

But in a series of votes this year, Idahoans have rejected extremist candidates as Republican nominees for key offices, including governor, secretary of state, lieutenant-governor and superintendent of public instruction. Across the U.S., too, there are signs of faltering support for the far-right agenda. President Joe Biden is resurgent, with polls showing a lift in approval ratings since midsummer. Public anger over the Supreme Court decision that overturned a constitutional right to abortion has shifted sentiment enough that the Democratic Party is no longer expected to be crushed in November midterm elections that will determine the makeup of the U.S. Congress – and the ability of the Biden administration to keep pursuing its agenda.

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Idaho, one of the most conservative states in the U.S., offers a glimpse into the intensity of battles for control between moderate Republicans and a far-right movement that continues to exert a strong hold on the country’s politics after empowering the rise of Donald Trump.

Primary votes held earlier this year selected a slate of Republican nominees for the Idaho legislature who are expected to tilt the state even further to the right.

“I’ve got a list of 24 bills that are coming,” Brent Crane, a powerful Republican who has supported some far-right legislation and who chairs the House state affairs committee, said in an interview. It’s more than he can recall any other time in the past 17 years. Some will be resurrected bills that had previously been quashed by the state Senate, where a number of moderate figures will not be back after the midterms.

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Those senators, some unseated in primary votes by more extremist figures, had served as a “firewall” on certain issues, Mr. Crane said. Without them, he said, it is a certainty that legislation will be revived to impose possible jail time for librarians and museum staff found guilty of providing material deemed harmful to minors. He also expects a new effort to pass into law a bill that outlaws gender reassignment surgery and other gender-affirming health care for minors. The latter previously included a provision that would criminalize taking a child to another state for such care, language Mr. Crane supports. Another expected bill, he said, will outlaw attendance of children at drag performances.

Abortion may be the one issue where the state’s legislators moderate their stance. Some Idaho universities have cautioned staff they cannot counsel abortion – or even promote prevention of conception – a warning that has trained public attention on the draconian consequences of current laws. Some “fixes” may be necessary, Mr. Crane said.

But overall, Mr. Crane said, Idaho is growing more conservative and legislators want to use their powers to govern what they see as the state’s values. “Idaho has a very strong moral core,” he said. And “the legislature can be there to say: ‘These are values that we agree with.’ ”

Critics employ different language. Idaho’s far right politics are being driven by “Christo-fascists” who “have seen us as a bellwether. If they can swing our legislature, then it’s very replicable in other states,” said Jennifer Ellis, a long-time Republican operative who leads Take Back Idaho, a group that has sought to combat the far right.

Ms. Ellis’s fight has taken her to places she once considered impossible, like supporting Democrats. “I hate to have Idaho be the ridiculous clown show that it’s becoming,” she said.

Senator Fred Martin, a Republican dislodged in a primary election this year by a far-right politician, has also thrown his support behind Rick Just, the Democrat now running for his seat. The reason: “To not have one more far right person in the Senate,” he said.

The far right, Mr. Martin said, has been able to gain a stronger footing in part through untraceable dark money. In the primary election he lost, one group blanketed his district with signs urging voters “DON’T VOTE FOR FRED.” The group has never reported its spending. But the campaign “was effective,” Mr. Martin said. In a legislative race in a small state, even a few thousand dollars can make a significant difference.

Mr. Martin’s concern is what happens now. “The far right wants to decimate, do everything they can to drastically cut the funding for public education,” he said.

Further change is likely to the legal checks on government policy. The Republican nominee for attorney general is Raul Labrador, who has promised to take an activist approach to the office, and previously said he favoured joining lawsuits to challenge results of the election that Mr. Trump lost.

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If Mr. Labrador wins, “we’re going to have someone in the attorney general’s office that supports legislating somebody’s sensibilities, rather than protecting the First Amendment,” said Tom Arkoosh, an attorney who is running as a Democrat against Mr. Labrador. He deplores the extremist right, who he accuses of pushing government interference deep into the lives of citizens. “Those aren’t Idaho values, and they’re sure as hell not liberty,” he said.

Mr. Labrador’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Though Mr. Arkoosh is backed by some establishment Republicans, he enjoys far less name recognition than his opponent. Few political observers expect him to win against Mr. Labrador, a former federal congressman who is well-known in the state, and those who support abandoning political moderation believe they are ascendant. In July, the Republican Party in Idaho elected as its chair Dorothy Moon, who has criticized the Boise Pride festival of sexualizing children and accused Canadians of crossing into the state to commit election fraud.

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It’s part of a nationalist shift, a representative of the Idaho Liberty Dogs – the group that backed Mr. Rajbhandari’s opponent, Steve Schmidt – said in a Facebook Messenger chat. The representative spoke admiringly of Russia and China.

Still, the Liberty Dogs backing did little to help Mr. Schmidt, a mechanical engineer who lost to Mr. Rajbhandari. Mr. Schmidt, who is politically conservative, said he ran for the school board because “I don’t want some extremist getting on the board influencing education.” He did not ask for the Liberty Dogs’ endorsement and said he opposes extremism from both the left and the right.

In an interview, Mr. Schmidt lamented the state of affairs in a place where the space for civil dialogue has grown increasingly strangled.

“Our political environment is so divided right now that nobody is willing to stop and have a conversation,” he said.