Idaho has taken a turn for the very, very right-wing. Some people are thrilled, but others in the state are terrified – and being targeted for harassment and violent threats.
HuffPost's Christopher Mathias traveled to Idaho to report on how people are handling the state's powerful extremists. He talked to both Democrats and more moderate Republicans about what life is like as the far-right gains power.
We talked to Mathias about what he learned.
You spoke to numerous people about how Idaho is changing, and how scary those changes are. Some people said they're wondering if they should move away. How is living in an increasingly right-wing state affecting them?
It's made it very hard for some people to engage in democracy and civic life. It's so toxic. I talked to a few people, for example, that served on school boards during the pandemic and were just completely traumatized by the experience. The level of harassment and scorn they faced from COVID denialists was remarkable. All for trying to navigate this really complex problem of trying not to get kids and teachers sick but still making sure kids got an education. A real public service they were doing, and their reward was having to have a police escort to their car after every school board meeting. The people I talked to resigned their positions.
One of them was a Republican. And that's something I was trying to stress in the story. This isn't only Democrats that are bearing the brunt of this. More moderate Republican officials and activists have been targeted by the far-right in Idaho in a very intense way.
I think a lot of people I talked to were feeling a little hopeless. Like they're watching this far-right takeover happen in local and state government, and it's really hard to organize a meaningful response. They are trying, though.
You also describe the white nationalists' tactics of harassment and intimidation. How have they used these efforts to get what they want?
So the harassment and intimidation is basically designed to make people not want to engage in democracy and civic life. To push them out of the public square. And it's worked to a certain degree.
I'm thinking of someone like Laura Tenneson, who organized an anti-hate campaign called Loves Lives Here CDA in Coeur D'Alene. She also organized a local Women's March. Both very innocuous projects that are common in towns and cities across the country. But the backlash she endured was horrifying. "You're a dead woman walking," someone messaged her, leading to her filing a protective order. She also found a bullet on her car after work one day. Unspent shotgun shell. Someone also sent these truly awful, racist postcards that included a depiction of her as a clown around town. She's since decided to take a "huge step back" in her activism which, when you think about it, is exactly what those threats are designed to do.
The more the far-right can scare people out of participating in public life, the more power they can grab. An age-old strategy!
The primaries took place last week. How did the extremist candidates fare, and do you think the result says anything about the state's lurch to the right?
People are still sorting through the results to see how the far-right did. We know that two major figures — Janice McGeachin and Priscilla Giddings — lost their races for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. And they're both very extreme figures. (McGeachin was endorsed by Trump.)
But then you had someone like Greg Chaney in the state Senate lose. I talked to Chaney for the story. He's a conservative Republican who turns up to work every day with a gun because of the harassment he's received. He had a far-right challenger backed by the Idaho Freedom Foundation and he lost.
On the local level, the far-right really consolidated power, especially in Kootenai County, where the far-right candidates basically won everything. People there are really worried about it.
