OPINION: A moderate sign from Idaho’s reddest county

The recall of West Bonner School Board Chairperson Keith Rutledge and Vice Chairperson Susan Brown last week is all the more remarkable for its context.

These two conservative school leaders were ousted in a county that:

Gave professional insurrectionist Ammon Bundy one of his best showings in last year’s gubernatorial election. Bundy received 5,110 votes, compared to 12,126 for Republican incumbent Brad Little.

In the spring 2022 GOP primary for governor, it favored hard-right Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin over Little 6,323 to 4,834.

In the same primary election, Bonner County Republicans backed former state Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, over then-House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, for lieutenant governor 7,212 to 3,905.

For superintendent of public instruction, former legislator Branden Durst outdistanced his two GOP rivals — former schools Superintendent Sherri Ybarra and former State Board of Education member Debbie Critchfield. Durst won 6,648 votes to 1,889 for Ybarra and 2,550 for Critchfield.

In the race for secretary of state, Bonner County Republicans were solidly behind former Rep. Dorothy Moon, R-Stanley, over former Ada County Clerk Phil McGrane and former Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene. Moon got 6,746 votes to 2,904 for McGrane and 1,663 for Souza.

When it came to attorney general, Bonner County Republicans favored Raul Labrador over incumbent Lawrence Wasden and attorney Arthur Macomber. Labrador got 5,802 votes to 2,725 for Wasden and 3,089 for Macomber.

In every race but attorney general, Bonner County was a right-wing outlier compared to the rest of the state. Little, Bedke, Critchfield and McGrane all won the GOP primary and went on to win office in November.

And West Bonner — with less than half the enrollment of Sandpoint’s larger Lake Pend Oreille School District — is the more conservative corner of the county.

Yet when a 3-2 conservative majority on the school board offered the superintendant post to Durst, a political operative with ties to the Idaho Freedom Foundation and a questionable background in two states, over a candidate who was more qualified to lead the district, it set off a rebellion.

Those events culminated Tuesday in one of the rare examples of a school board member getting the boot in a special election.

Rutledge, who had won election with 245 votes two years ago, lost nearly 2-to-1. A total of 762 voted to recall him.

Brown, who won election two years ago with 177 votes, lost by almost the same margin, with 624 people voting to oust her.

Moreover, turnout was enormous. Two years ago, slightly more than 800 people voted in the community’s school board election. Tuesday, 2,129 people went to the polls.

That doesn’t necessarily translate into an ideological shift in the reddest of Idaho’s red counties. But it does tell you something about what Idahoans of all political stripes want from their schools.

They want qualified teachers and administrators. Instead, Durst had no classroom or administrative experience and required a waiver from state rules to hold his new job.

What he did was wear his politics on his sleeve, a nonstarter in an administrative role that engages in such nonpartisan matters as recruiting and retaining qualified teachers, finding resources to keep schools open and raising test scores. School superintendents are not there to proselytize.

They want stability. On top of a defeated supplemental levy that undermined the district’s finances, what West Bonner County patrons got was the new leader ousting the school district’s administrative employees, replacing them with outsiders, including the wife of a noted alt-right figure tied to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. At the same time, there was talk of teachers leaving the district in large numbers.

Regardless of political persuasion, school patrons do not appreciate condescension from elected leaders. While they’re willing to give great deference to local school boards and education experts, they do not like their complaints being dismissed or belittled.

Throughout the summer, West Bonner board meetings were described as disruptive and raucous.

Simply put, education is not retail politics. It’s a service provided to a community’s children and their families.

This is not a place for scorched earth politics.

If that’s the message coming out of Priest River, all the better. All of Idaho needs to hear it. — M.T.