A former Coeur d’Alene senator announced Thursday she will challenge Dorothy Moon for the chairperson’s position of the Idaho GOP, citing an extreme turn in the state party.

Mary Souza served four terms in the Senate before she unsuccessfully ran against Moon and Phil McGrane for Idaho secretary of state in 2022.

At the Thursday announcement she condemned the current leadership of the state central committee.

“I want to get down to a little bit more of the brass tacks and how we can solve the situation that we’ve found ourselves in, because we didn’t see it coming,” she said.

“It snuck up on us, I think with the extreme views that came into our party unbeknownst to some of us, and we never thought it would take off.

“But you get enough people brought over to this way of thinking and you will get a cult, and that’s kind of what it’s becoming.”

Moon served three terms in the Idaho House of Representatives before she also ran for secretary of state in the 2022 election, where she narrowly lost to McGrane.

At the 2022 state Republican convention, Moon unseated former Idaho GOP Chairperson Tom Luna in a 434-287 vote. All the incumbent party executive members lost their seats at this convention.

Moon is a former teacher and special education director at Challis High School. She serves as president of the engineering firm Moon & Associates and owns a gold mining operation in central Idaho.

The influential ultra-conservative think tank, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, highly rated Moon as a legislator. Souza has been critical of the IFF and on Thursday she said both the organization and Moon had a reputation for never collaborating.

“The collaboration is where we learn from each other,” Souza said.

She said the Republican Party needed to address the division and go back to being a “Big Tent” party.

The party has recently implemented platform compliance hearings, in which some local central committees have chosen to censure lawmakers for not voting in adherence to the party platform.

Souza called these hearings “tribunals” and said she opposes the practice.

“Honestly, the current leadership in the Republican Party does not respect Republican voters,” Souza said. “They want to tell them how to behave and how to vote, what to do, what not to do.”

Idaho Republican delegates will vote on party leadership during the Idaho GOP convention June 13-15 in Coeur d’Alene.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on X @EyeOnBoiseGuido.