Idaho's Radical Democrats
Make no mistake, their agenda is extreme
Last week I explained how the left constantly accuses us of being far right extremists despite the fact that it is leftists themselves that are constantly pushing the boundary of acceptable discourse in their preferred direction.
One of the left wing’s most potent weapons in the rhetorical war is the news media. Though most outlets claim to be unbiased, their worldviews and agendas are often clearly discernible in the way they choose to frame controversial issues. For example, western media yesterday described newly-elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as far right, a subconscious signal to readers that she is bad. When was the last time you saw corporate media describe anyone as far left?
This paradigm is common in Idaho media as well. Even though we live in one of the reddest states in the union - the breakdown between registered Republicans versus registered Democrats is approximately four to one, and the State Legislature reflects that ratio - our mainstream press leans far to the left. As of this writing, the top story of the Idaho Press is a hit piece on a conservative donor, the Idaho Capital Sun has two front page headlines denouncing the pro-life movement, and the Idaho Statesman’s four front-page political stories are all attacks on Republicans. Boise’s TV news has a similar slant. Remember how the Idaho Press Club sued Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin to obtain not only the testimony of whistleblower parents who shared their stories of CRT in the classroom with her Education Task Force, but their names and addresses as well? That sort of hostility to conservative families is par for the course with local media.
One could argue that objective news coverage in a solid red state would naturally be more critical of Republicans, since the Democrats have almost zero power. Yet the long term agenda of mainstream Idaho press really seems to be to promote left wing causes while consistently denouncing the far right. Of course, their conception of the far right consists of anyone with views that would have been considered normal just twenty years ago.
You see, that is the main problem with media bias - it is mostly unconscious. Journalists at corporate media outlets often assume that they, as supposedly unbiased and impartial reporters of the news, occupy the center of American politics, the middle of the Overton Window that I mentioned last week. They look to their left and see a few outliers, while they look to their right and see Republicans ranging from Brad Little to Ron Nate, not to mention a few Democrats as well.
Keep all this in mind as you watch how local media treats candidates in this year’s races.
Let us take a closer look at the races I am most familiar with: the State House campaigns in my own District 14. For the last decade, District 14 has covered the cities of Eagle, Star, and the north end of Meridian, and has been one of the most red areas in the state. Gayann DeMordaunt defeated local activist Shelley Brock 70.4% to 29.6% with more than 40,000 votes cast in the 2020 elections. The Democrats did not even bother fielding an official candidate against House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, who defeated “independent” Cindy Currie 71.2% to 28.8%.
After redistricting, LD14 covers Eagle and all of Gem County, including Emmett. Will Republican dominance continue? This year, Shelley Brock has returned to face Eagle Fire Commissioner Josh Tanner, who defeated Representative DeMordaunt in the primary, and former BSU professor Crystal Ivie faces Ted Hill, a retired US Navy aviator who won a contentious four-way race last May.
Full disclosure: As a Republican PC and the District 14 secretary I am supporting both Ted Hill and Josh Tanner in numerous ways. Unlike corporate news I am not claiming to be objective. However as always I aim to be fair.
I have been keeping an eye on both women since the primary, curious to watch how they run their campaigns. As one would expect as Democrats running in a red district in a red state, both Ms. Brock and Ms. Ivie have mostly stayed away from controversial issues, framing their campaign around education, public lands, and water conservation.
Shelley Brock has been a fixture in Eagle politics for as long as I have lived here. She presents herself as a common sense moderate, someone concerned with tangible issues such as water and land use rather than headline controversies. She quotes herself on her official website saying, “If the Democrats had been in control of our state for the past 30 years and were failing on so many levels I’d be running as a Republican.”
There are several ways to read this statement. The first is that she simply does not care about the major issues dividing the two parties such as abortion, taxation, regulation, immigration, gun control, etc. This is possible, but one would hope that a prospective elected leader would have a vision regarding these important issues.
The second is that she is not being entirely up front about her opinions. She knows that someone espousing left-wing views on those controversial issues has no chance of being elected in such a red district, and so she downplays them as not important.
Ms. Brock’s campaign finance record indicates that the second reading is likely closer to the truth. As an individual, she donates regularly to both Reclaim Idaho and the Ada County Democrats, and has also donated to Democratic candidates Stan Ridgeway, James Lemon, and fellow District 14 contestant Crystal Ivie. She has also given to Representative Steve Berch of District 15, who is tied as the third most statist member of the House according to the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Index and the most left-wing in the American Conservative Union’s latest ranking.
As a candidate, Brock is supported by the usual Democratic power brokers, including Mary Hunter, Russell Buschert, and former Eagle Council Member Jill Mitchell. Democrat megadonor A.J. Balukoff gave Brock a thousand dollars last year in addition to the thousands he has given to far left figures such as Boise Mayor Lauren McLean, House Minority Leader Lauren Necochea, and Boise Council Member Lisa Sanchez. Mr. Balukoff gave the maximum to Terri Pickens Manweiler for her campaign for Lieutenant Governor.
If Shelley Brock were elected, I believe she would keep her word to try and address issues such as property rights, water conservation, and public lands. However, I am convinced that she would also be a reliable vote for every extreme Democratic position regarding abortion, gun control, and immigration as well.
Even on her wheelhouse issue of water, however, Brock falls short. Last August, Brock highlighted complaints about the new water system in Eagle. The whole affair is too much to go into in this newsletter, but suffice it to say that Suez, later Veolia, purchased the Eagle Water Company which had been privately managed for more than half a century. The City of Eagle, with first right of refusal, settled their lawsuit by extracting significant promises and concessions from Suez, who promised to modernize the archaic systems.
Part of that modernization process involved chlorination, which is standard for all water systems in the area, and flushing the valves. Suez/Veolia sent out mailers warning us that our water might taste a bit off, but the effect would be temporary. Shelley Brock surely understood this, but still chose to use it as a campaign issue, implying that our water tasted bad because we voted Republican. Does this sound like putting principles over politics?
If Shelley Brock is somewhat circumspect about her controversial positions, first time candidate Crystal Ivie is less so. While her website is just as narrowly focused as Brock’s - it lists her issues as corporate taxes, public education, property taxes, and infrastructure - several months of following her campaign Facebook page has demonstrated how extreme she really is.
In July, Ms. Ivie boasted about meeting many people who were “tired of extremism, attacks on education, and the private constitutional rights of 50% of the population.” Consider what her euphemisms mean:
As I said last week, extremism is nothing more than a pejorative used by the left to attack anyone more conservative than Barack Obama. It is entirely without meaning in this context. It is a word designed to scare people away from certain political figures. You don’t want to vote for him, he’s an extremist. Are you an extremist too?
Attacks on education is how Ivie characterizes efforts to improve a failing public school system. As a standard Democrat, her only answer to the myriad problems in public education is more taxpayer money. In another post, Ivie denounced her opponent Ted Hill for allegedly opposing public schools. Captain Hill has indicated his support for allowing families to take their tax dollars to public schools, charter schools, private schools, microschools, or any of the many homeschooling options. Hill’s wife spent many years as a public school teacher, and the charge that he is opposed to public schools is laughable. But Democrats like Ivie do not seem to want to allow families and children any escape from the public school system as it is now.
In fact, Crystal Ivie resists any attempts at reform. When the West Ada School District created a policy to crack down on far left indoctrination in our public schools, Ivie decried it as an infringement on the free speech rights of teachers. I suspect she would not be so enthusiastic about those rights if they involved teachers sharing their Christian faith with their students.
Finally, we all know what the private constitutional rights of 50% of the population means. The Democratic Party has gone all-in on abortion, refusing to countenance any restriction on the barbaric practice. Most Americans support some form of restriction, perhaps at fifteen weeks, perhaps at twenty, but Democrats want to keep abortion legal until the moment of birth, or even afterward, as lawmakers in California and Maryland recently proposed.
A vote for Crystal Ivie is a vote for abortion in Idaho. On her literature, Ivie lists as her number one priority “protecting the fundamental, Constitutional right to bodily autonomy and privacy.” Once again, we all know that this is a euphemism for abortion on demand without restrictions. I suspect that her commitment to bodily autonomy does not include the right to refuse a mandated experimental vaccine.
Ivie makes no secret of her enthusiasm for abortion, casting it as empowering women. After the Supreme Court ruled that the issue should be decided by the states, she collaborated on an op-ed with other Democratic women titled We Are Being Oppressed Because We Are Powerful. This is the sort of empty rhetoric that Crystal Ivie would bring to the legislature.
Ivie attended the Boise Pride Festival this year, amid public outcry over the plans to feature a child drag queen show on the main stage. Rather than engaging in any introspection as to why people were so worked up, and asking herself if her side had crossed a line, she simply denounced any opposition as hate.
If elected, Crystal Ivie would surely be another reliable vote for everything on the Democratic Party platform. I doubt that is what she says to constituents when she is out knocking doors, but it is the truth.
I am sure that Shelley Brock and Crystal Ivie are nice people. I have nothing against them personally; in fact I laud them for putting themselves into what Teddy Roosevelt called the arena. But the fact is, once you’re in the arena, mixing it up, getting covered in metaphorical mud and blood, you must expect to be scrutinized. By their own words, by their own donations, by their own associations, Ms. Brock and Ms. Ivie clearly demonstrate how much closer they are to the radical socialist left than they are to most Idaho voters. They can try to hide it, they can obfuscate their positions on controversial issues, but the truth is the truth. The fact that many Democratic candidates in Idaho produce literature and signs lacking any mention of their party proves that they understand the need to conceal their true nature if they want any chance of victory.
The Democratic Party is the party of abortion until birth, the party of sex change surgeries for children, the party of racial animosity posing as racial justice, and the party of endless taxation, regulation, and censorship of dissident opinions. It does not matter how moderate any individual candidate presents him or herself, because they support this system, this organization that is dedicated to radically transforming our country into a socialist totalitarian hellhole. We, the voters of our communities, can and should reject this extremist ideology.
Brian, thank you for this unvarnished piece. I believe that it is fair minded, fearless "keepers of the watch" that are unrelenting on their reporting on the radical left that will have the biggest impact on keeping Idaho mostly red. Reading your piece brought me back to a time in my life that I was living in another state that was known for its conservative leadership and ideals. I know, it seems laughable that California, the cesspool it is today was the home of Ronald Reagan. I was in California since 1952. I watched the camel get his nose under the tent. Many worked hard to in my community to keep the ideals that made it a once great state. A state that has now become the epitome of raunch and homelessness.
What worries me most is the resemblance of the "25%-75%" blue to red ratio here in Idaho and the 50%-24% blue to red ratio in California. With the "pride festival" being supported by the biggest and most powerful businesses and employers in the state, along with CRT being taught in schools, the Largest medical provider developing a not so under the radar trans "etcetera" care/sex reassignment surgery center, the Governor allocating millions under the guise of "education", It's beginning to look a lot like the more than the California camel has gotten under the tent here in Idaho. And it appears that it's being accomplished by old and established Idaho families, not the "you know who's" using the same tactics that has ultimately turned California into one of the bluest states in the nation.
I appreciate your clear and concise telling of the facts and I hope you inspire more like you.
Well done -- again -- Brian. Heaven help us if Brock and Ivie take District 14! As you pointed out, we must look at the candidates carefully. Study their positions. Read their websites but dig into what they DO NOT say. Ignore the mainstream press’s opinion and form our own based on research and facts.
Don’t be lazy, voters! Dig, dig, dig with the help of critical thinking like Brian has employed here. Prioritize our state, our families, and our country over any particular party or ideology. And think for ourselves once armed with the facts. Thank you, Brian, for helping us do that with the races you covered in this article.