Good morning and welcome to the 14th annual edition of the Academy of Cheers & Jeers Arts and Sciences Awards.
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In the category of who forgot the people they were supposed to serve, the nominees are:
State Rep. Mike Kingsley, R-Lewiston
First, he voted to strip Nez Perce County commissioners of the means to build a needed $50 million courthouse through certificates of participation — essentially a lease-purchase form of financing — without raising taxes or passing a bond issue.
Next, Kingsley voted against the $338.1 million higher education budget that supports Lewis-Clark State College.
Then he used official legislative letterhead to issue a character reference on behalf of former Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, R-Lewiston, who was convicted of raping a 19-year-old legislative intern at his Boise apartment during the 2021 legislative session. Pending the hearing that would sentence von Ehlinger to eight to 20 years, Kingsley wrote 4th District Court Judge Michael Reardon: “Aaron proved to me his outstanding character, looking out for the people that he was (elected) to serve.”
Could Kingsley have done anything more to further embarrass and shame the constituents von Ehlinger had already betrayed?
Congressman Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho
If there was ever a program that approached unanimous popularity, the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 was it. With an 11% excise tax on hunting firearms, ammunition and bows and arrows, as well as a 10% tax on handguns, the law has helped support everything from shooting ranges to wildlife management.
In the case of Idaho alone, Pittman-Robertson has provided hunting, fishing and wildlife programs with $263.5 million overall and $21 million in the past year.
Yet it was this program that the 1st District congressman sought to eliminate.
He went onto play mischief with the Dingell–Johnson Act, the 1950 law that uses excise taxes on fishing equipment to fund sportsman programs. Last year, it generated $7.35 million for Idaho — about 5.7% of Idaho Fish and Game’s budget.
In so doing, Fulcher closed his ears to everybody from the Boone and Crockett Club, the National Rifle Association and the Wildlife Society.
Fulcher continued to thumb his nose at political norms by refusing to debate his Democratic opponent Kaylee Peterson because, he said, she was such a lightweight that he didn’t need to.
Then, to run his slam-dunk, autopilot reelection campaign, Fulcher hired his daughter, Meghan Fulcher, and paid her a lucrative salary.
As the Idaho Statesman’s Kevin Fixler reported, one of every three dollars Fulcher’s campaign spends wound up in his daughter’s pocket.
Normally, his attitude would raise eyebrows. But when you’re an entrenched incumbent, you can ignore that sort of thing.
Professional insurrectionist and failed gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy
Can you believe this carpetbagger from Nevada had the chutzpah to invite his political adversaries to abandon the Gem State?
“Idaho liberals say that if I’m elected governor, they will leave the state. Well, I’m here to tell you that when I’m elected governor, Idaho will help pay for their moving costs,” Bundy said in a campaign commercial as he emerged from behind the wheel of a U-Haul truck. “After all, it’s cheaper than keeping them here.”
You first, Ammon.
U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both R-Idaho
Three times — on June 16, July 27 and again on Aug. 2 — Crapo and Risch joined as few as 11 Republicans who resisted the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, which extended medical treatment to Vietnam vets suffering the effects of Agent Orange exposure as well as military personnel who got ill after breathing toxic fumes from massive burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq.
These votes came from a pair who routinely wrap themselves in the flag during Veterans Day observances and who represent the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Boise, Mountain Home Air Force Base and Gowen Field at Boise, headquarters of the Idaho Air National Guard and the 124th Fighter Wing.
And the JEERS goes to ... Fulcher.
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In the category of keeping their eye on the ball, the nominees are:
State Rep. Lori McCann, R-Lewiston
Appointed to replace the disgraced von Ehlinger, McCann could have played it safe and avoided getting primaried by a right-wing challenger. Instead, she cast the decisive vote in the House Education Committee against a tax-funded $6,000 school voucher plan — which would have hollowed out public schools to the benefit of private academies.
She stood up to the voter suppression tactics of current Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon and others, which would have prevented many unaffiliated voters from casting a ballot in the closed Republican primary election.
And if it was a choice between burnishing her credentials with the Idaho Freedom Foundation or supporting public schools, McCann picked the schools. IFF said McCann voted its way 38.5% of the time. But Idaho Business for Education gave her a score of 120%. No kidding. IBE gave her extra credit.
Congressman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho
Simpson had far from a perfect year, but he wasn’t afraid to stand alone. Simpson’s $33.5 billion plan to breach the four lower Snake River dams to rescue imperiled salmon and steelhead from extinction — while mitigating the effects on communities and industries — came as close as this Idaho politician ever has to facing an existential political threat.
The plan earned him a GOP primary rematch with Idaho Falls attorney Bryan Smith. Eight years ago, Simpson dispatched Smith with 62% of the vote. This time, it was closer — 54.57% — and Simpson’s margins slipped even more in the agricultural Magic Valley.
That anemic performance did not deter Simpson from voting twice to preserve marriage equality should the radical right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court reverse the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in favor of same-sex marriage and the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision that recognized the rights of interracial couples to marry.
“Ultimately, Americans want Congress to solve problems, not to engage in fearmongering and political games. In light of the narrow scope of (the Respect for Marriage Act) and the conscience protections for people of faith, I saw no good excuse for voting against this bill,” Simpson said. “Doing so would only have played politics with people’s lives and families.”
Idaho Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder, R-Boise
Along with former Senate State Affairs Committee Chairwoman Patti Anne Lodge, R-Caldwell, Winder dispatched some of the most odious of the House-passed bills, including jailing librarians who distributed materials deemed “harmful to minors,” imposing a police state on families who seek gender-affirming care for their transgender children, disenfranchising independents who wanted to vote in the closed Republican primary election and weakening a community’s legal defenses against armed militia groups.
And the CHEERS goes to ... McCann.
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In the category of 2022’s biggest hypocrite, the nominees are:
Sen. Risch
He wasn’t alone in voting against a package that included $52 billion to restore America’s memory-building infrastructure. Crapo, Fulcher and Simpson also opposed the CHIP Act, despite pleas from Idaho-based Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.
When Mehrotra announced plans to use CHIP Act funding to help build a $15 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant at the company’s Boise headquarters, Crapo, Fulcher and Simpson had the grace to stay away.
Not Risch.
At the groundbreaking, he showed up and grandstanded: “We want to bring back the semiconductor industry to America. It was born here. We deserve to have it and this is a step in that direction to bring this industry back.”
Does this guy think we’re that dumb?
Gov. Janice McGeachin
She claims to be the fiscal conservative’s fiscal conservative — unless it comes to spending your tax dollars on herself. Then she puts drunken sailors to shame.
Case in point: Her attempts to flout the public records law cost her a $29,000 judgment. Rather than absorb the loss by reducing spending elsewhere within her $202,000 budget, the part-time official doubled down by adding to her staff by almost 33%.
The result: By the end of the fiscal year in June, McGeachin was forced to lay off her staff and essentially shut down the office until the start of the new fiscal cycle on July 1 replenished her coffers.
Next, the lame duck politician — by then, she’d lost her challenge to Gov. Brad Little — fleeced the taxpayers by giving an employee, Machele Hamilton, a promotion and with it, a pay raise from $20,000 to $77,000 a year.
Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon
First, she invited Idaho’s GOP aristocracy — former Idaho Gov. and GOP Chairman Phil Batt, along with Sen. Lodge, former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Denton Darrington, R-Declo, former Idaho first lady Lori Otter, former Secretary of State Ben Ysursa and former Sen. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston — to leave the party.
The reason for this exile: They had endorsed Tom Arkoosh, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, over the Republican candidate, former Congressman Raul Labrador.
“If individual Republicans have decided to support another candidate publicly, then they should consider whether they are Republicans,” Moon said.
But during the course of the campaign, did your hear Moon abandon her buddy, Ammon Bundy, and make a forthright endorsement of her own party’s nominee for governor, the incumbent Brad Little?
And the JEER goes to ... Risch.
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In the category of people who exceeded expectations, the nominees are:
Jane Doe
For this former legislative intern, seeking justice meant confronting not only former Rep. von Ehlinger, but powerful people who would stop at nothing to defend him.
Among them were the morally bankrupt Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, who used social media to expose Jane Doe by name and picture, and Moon, who as a sitting member of the House, ridiculed Doe’s character: “I’m a woman. I think I know what it looks like to flirt.”
As she took her case to the House Ethics Committee, the police and the courts, Doe saw her work and education life unravel amid emotional distress, anxiety, inability to sleep, loss of appetite and an inability to focus.
Beyond removing a sexual predator from public office and sending him to prison, Jane Doe may have inspired other victims to emerge from the shadows.
Former state Sen. Carl Crabtree, R-Grangeville
The day he lost his office in the GOP primary, Crabtree was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer and was given six months — maybe longer if he underwent chemotherapy.
With courage, humility, perspective and even humor, he bet on a miracle — and won. Last month, doctors found Crabtree was cancer-free — something that happens no more than 2% of the time.
“Talk about a lucky dog, eh?” he told the Lewiston Tribune’s Kathy Hedberg.
University of Idaho President Scott Green
The Idaho Freedom Foundation is a master at message control. But Green turned the tables on the outfit and threw it on the defensive.
During his presentation to the legislative budget-writing committee, Green branded IFF President Wayne Hoffman and the people who support his assault on diversity and inclusion programs at Idaho’s institutions of higher learning as “conflict entrepreneurs ... (who) earn a living by scaring people. ...”
In so doing, Green nailed the IFF’s business model — stoking the outrage machine to separate a cloaked collection of contributors from their checkbooks — and demonstrated he was no pushover.
Former Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction and GOP Chairman Tom Luna
In a column released earlier this month, Luna became the first prominent Idaho Republican to argue it’s time for his party to move past former President Donald Trump, who he said will “be remembered for his abrasive personality and character flaws. Sadly, he has only himself to blame.”
Trump promoted terrible candidates, alienated voters with his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection and doubled down when he called for suspending the Constitution.
Luna called that “more than enough evidence that it’s time for Trump to step aside.”
And the CHEER goes to ... Jane Doe.
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In the category of promoting the “big lie,” the nominees are:
Congressman Fulcher
Fulcher did Trump’s bidding on Jan. 6, 2021, by voting against certification of Biden’s Electoral College wins in two states — after the rampage at the Capitol.
When the Huffington Post gave Fulcher and every other Republican who voted against certification the opportunity to recant or at least explain, they remained silent.
“Of the 139 House Republicans who voted to overturn the election, an aide to just one of them — one — responded to the HuffPost’s questions,” the news site reported.
That would be Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas.
Since then, Fulcher has had no change of heart. The findings of the Jan. 6 House committee — which placed Trump at the center of an attempted coup and insurrection — have not persuaded him.
“I’m sure the testimony is compelling, otherwise they wouldn’t have it,” Fulcher said. “But when you have an investigation, in which the function of the rules is to consider one side, then I don’t care what it is — pro-Trump, or anti-Trump — it doesn’t carry weight with me.”
Idaho Attorney General-elect Raul Labrador
Labrador rode to office by supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s proposal to toss aside President-elect Joe Biden’s victories in four battleground states, thereby throwing the election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where the rules gave the GOP the upper hand. His opponent, Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden refused to go along, and paid the political price for his principles.
Then, it turned out that Labrador had texted former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the midst of the Jan. 6, 2021, mayhem that he “believed in (former President Donald) Trump and I would probably object to the certification today.”
And during his debate with Democratic attorney general candidate Tom Arkoosh, Labrador said, “What I say is that the election was stolen in plain sight.”
GOP Chairwoman Moon
As a candidate for secretary of state — Idaho’s chief elections officer — Moon embraced the fiction that Biden was not legitimately elected.
“I think there was a big problem when we noticed at 11 o’clock at night that all of the battleground states decided to go to bed and then they were going to start back up at 8, 9 or 10 in the morning,” Moon said. “In my lifetime, I had never seen that happen, nor had most Americans who stay up that late to watch the results. So, sadly, the fact of the matter is we had to deal with it. Everyone was in shock. A lot of us. Based on polling, President Trump should have been reelected.”
And the JEER goes to ...Labrador.
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In the category of selfless dedication to the Constitution, the nominees are:
Idaho Secretary of State-elect Phil McGrane
McGrane faced Moon and former Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene, in last spring’s GOP primary. He was the only candidate in that race who spoke the truth about the 2020 election outcome.
“Joe Biden was elected president during that election, but one of the things I have seen and experienced as I have traveled around the state is the concerns that Idaho voters have,” McGrane said.
McGrane barely won, beating Moon by fewer than 4,500 votes statewide.
Outgoing Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash.
She was among 10 House Republicans, along with Congressman Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., who voted to impeach Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. For that, the GOP electorate tossed her out of office.
“The people who elect us put their faith in us to represent them, and we owe them the truth,” Herrera Beutler said earlier this month. “ ...We don’t do Americans any favors if we deceive them or if we stand by quietly as they deceive themselves.”
And the CHEER goes to ... Herrera Beutler. — M.T.
