Two political neophytes vie for District 7A seat

The race for Idaho’s District 7A seat features two political newbies — a retired nurse and an electrical contractor.

Democrat Vickie Nostrant hopes to flip the district that has been represented by Republican Mike Kingsley for the past several cycles. To do so, she will have to defeat Republican Kyle Harris, who aims to take the baton from Kingsley who endorsed Harris after bowing out of the primary.

Both would-be legislators are from Lewiston and both came to Idaho from Washington. Harris did not accept an invitation to be interviewed for his match-up against Nostrant, but he did talk to the Tribune before the primary election in May.

Nostrant started her career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and went on to work as a registered nurse and in emergency and critical care departments in hospital and clinic settings before retiring. She now volunteers as an EMT for the Elk River Ambulance Service. She moved to Idaho in 2007 and Lewiston in 2018.

She is pro-choice and said she wants to restore reproductive rights taken away by Idaho’s strict ban on abortions, improve funding for public education, and protect voting rights and the state’s initiative process.

Nostrant said she has long supported abortion rights.

“I do think there has to be limits, but I also believe strongly that it’s got to be a woman and their doctor’s choice,” she said. “I don’t think that politics has any place at all in health care decisions for anybody, but especially women.”

She noted that since the state’s abortion ban has been in place, Idaho has lost physicians specializing in obstetrics and gynecology who feel they can’t adequately care for patients, or fear they may be held criminally or civilly liable in cases where an abortion may be medically necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

Nostrant thinks physicians and other health care providers will continue to leave the state, and many young doctors and other practitioners likely won’t consider taking jobs here. In a state that already has a shortage of OB-GYN practitioners, women’s health care in Idaho will suffer, she said. Nostrant uses the example of early detection and treatment of ovarian cancer to illustrate her point.

“There are no diagnostic tests to predict or screen for ovarian cancer until it’s active. It’s aggressive, and you’ve got to get in somewhere with a specialist right away. You have to start treatment, and if they’re waiting weeks and months, that’s only collateral damage to a woman’s health care.”

A volunteer with Reclaim Idaho, Nostrant worked on the citizen’s initiative that expanded Medicaid in Idaho, one that would have increased funding for education, and the initiative that put open primaries and ranked choice voting on this fall’s ballot.

If elected, she will honor successful citizens’ initiatives.

“The initiative process is spelled out in our (state) constitution. It’s a voter right. It’s a counter to a legislative process, and it’s their right,” she said. Nostrant said Harris is aligned with the Idaho Freedom Caucus and the Idaho Freedom Foundation. She pledged to make decisions without influence from outside groups.

“Me and you and everybody that I know was born with free will. That means I can research, I can question, I can deep-dive, I can talk to constituents — boy, there is a novel thought — and come up with the best decision possible for any given situation or legislation that is proposed to me. That’s democracy — not being told by special interest groups how you’re going to vote. I don’t think that’s democracy. That’s not freedom. That’s not what this country was based on, and that’s the difference for me.”

Nostrant opposes state general fund money being diverted to private schools or home school programs through voucher programs. She said such programs lack accountability and would pull money from public schools.

“I’m not in favor of taxpayer dollars going to those programs. It should go to public schools.”

Harris wants to protect children, stop fentanyl, secure the southern border and protect the lower Snake River dams, according to a candidate profile on idgop.org.

During an interview last May, Harris, who has two children in the Lewiston School District, said he supports school choice and the voucher systems that divert public school funding to help parents pay for private school tuition. But he said any voucher system must protect homeschool parents from state oversight.

“Right now, the state has no involvement in homeschool and homeschool parents I’ve talked to want to keep it that way.”

Instead of harming public schools by pulling money from them, Harris contends vouchers will compel public schools to compete with private schools and that competition will improve public education.

“We can fix the problem but it has to come with competition,” he said. “Without competition, no one is going to do anything.”

Harris moved to Orofino from Kent, Wash., in 2010 and later moved to Lewiston. He owns and operates Modern Electric, an electrical contracting business.

He supports transferring federal lands to the states.

“I think the state should take back most if not all the federal lands. I don’t think the federal government should be involved at all,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to have lands.”

He is opposed to federal funding that comes with requirements and said the federal government should not be involved in education.

“We are a sovereign state. We need to be treated as a sovereign state and we need to take our state sovereignty back,” he said.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273.