Which Blue Should We Back?

The race for Ada County Sheriff exposes deep philosophical questions on the right

Warning: This turned out to be a long piece. Get yourself a cup of coffee and settle in.

The sudden resignation of Ada County Sheriff Steve Bartlett in June 2021 has set into motion a collision course between two philosophies of governance as they relate to law enforcement and the constitutional role of the county sheriff.

Since Sheriff Bartlett was a Republican, the Ada County Republican Central Committee met to select a slate of candidates to present to the Board of Commissioners. Of the six who submitted their applications, three moved on to the final round:

• Former sheriff’s deputy Mike Chilton

• Sheriff’s department lieutenant and Eagle Police Chief Matt Clifford

• Former sheriff’s deputy Doug Traubel

Mr. Traubel impressed the PCs of the central committee, earning the most votes out of the three. However, Mr. Chilton earned the endorsements of former Governor Butch Otter and former Congressman Raúl Labrador. The Board of Commissioners, however, selected Chief Clifford to fill the spot.

Source: mattcliffordforsheriff.com

I met Sheriff Clifford nearly three years ago. I was attending my first luncheon as a member of the Eagle Chamber of Commerce, and Clifford was introduced as our new police chief. Exactly two years later I was back at the Chamber luncheon, this time as a sponsor, and Clifford was introduced as our new county sheriff.

I have had the opportunity to chat with Sheriff Clifford numerous times over the last year, and have found him to be extremely personable and down to earth. By all indications, Clifford has run the sheriff’s department well in the past year - he was endorsed by the Ada County Sheriff Employees' Association just last week, and he has the confidence of the mayors of Eagle, Star, Meridian, Kuna, and Garden City.

Source: dougforadacounty.com

Having been denied the position by the Ada County Commissioners, Doug Traubel decided to take his case directly to the people, challenging Sheriff Clifford in the primary election. Mr Traubel has centered his campaign on the concept of being a constitutional sheriff who will step in to protect the natural rights of the citizens of Ada County in case of any form of government overreach.

Mr Traubel looks at the deterioration of law and order in places like Portland, San Francisco, and Minneapolis, and wants to keep that from happening here. The first steps on that road to hell are not high profile events such as riots or calls to defund the police, rather they are small changes to the culture of a police department. Implicit bias tests are supposedly used to unearth hidden racial bias, but in reality they create a problem that doesn’t exist. In fact, they instill a culture of fear among law enforcement officers. They watch the news and know that any traffic stop involving a minority could end up the next George Floyd incident. This hinders their ability to do their jobs, which leads to an erosion of public safety.

Doug Traubel is a brilliant man. I have read some of his work and I had a chance to speak with him directly at the candidate forum in Eagle last week and I found him to be erudite, well-read, and most importantly keenly aware of the precarious state of the American Republic. He agrees with my view that the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper if our elected leaders do not really believe in its principles. He is committed to speaking the truth, no matter how controversial.

Indeed, leftist media called him anti-semitic during his interviews with the Ada County Commissioners because he says that many of the founders of the USSR were Jewish. (They were.) They called him racist because he said that black men commit violent crimes at a higher rate than men of other races. (They do.) Being tarred with these labels is often the kiss of death for a Republican politician. Most do not have the stomach for that fight, preferring to retreat, apologize, genuflect, and beg for absolution. Mr. Traubel, on the other hand, fought back, penning a long and detailed defense of his positions in the Idaho Dispatch earlier this month.

The left has been engaged in a rhetorical (and sometimes kinetic) war on cops since the riots in Ferguson following the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014. Recall that even though President Obama’s Justice Department concluded that Officer Darren Brown acted properly, left-wing activists still use the hands up, don’t shoot lie to justify attacking law enforcement. Conservatives reacted to the accusations that police were racist and systematically hunting down black people by doubling down on our support for law enforcement. And why not? Police really are the thin blue line between civilization and barbarism. Many conservatives are old enough to remember the days of rage in the 1960s and the high crime of the 1970s, both of which stemmed from a tendency to tolerate criminal behavior.

However, while Back the Blue is an excellent slogan to counteract the left’s war on policing, it cannot become an absolute dogma. We absolutely must criticize law enforcement personnel when the situation warrants it. We all saw video of policemen arresting people for not wearing masks or for visiting forbidden playgrounds. We saw policemen take a child away from his mother because a social worker decided it was necessary. We saw video of police standing by while Antifa and BLM burned cities and assaulted innocent people, only to step in when patriotic Americans stood up to defend themselves and their businesses. We saw policemen in some cities kneeling in support of those violent thugs.

When video came out of Ottawa showing Canadian policemen trampling people on horseback, I posted it to a Facebook group, only for another conservative to chide me for doing so, saying it made the police look bad. But if they are doing bad things, it needs to be exposed, not hidden. We raise law enforcement officers to a pedestal in our society because we understand that they put their lives on the line in the name of public safety, but with that honor comes a higher standard as well. Policemen who abuse their authority should not be tolerated, neither by the public nor their fellow officers. If the civilian leadership of a police department has turned against public safety by ordering their officers to stand down in the face of mob violence, then the good cops in that department need to leave and find a place where the rule of law is upheld. Simply following orders has never been a good excuse for allowing evil to flourish.

A side effect of conservatives’ deference toward law enforcement is the belief by some in that field that their voices carry more weight than others. When I criticized the endorsements of the Fraternal Order of Police as being too left-wing, too establishment, I received pushback from some who were incredulous that I would dare disagree with police veterans. After all, they put their lives on the line and they all have friends who have been injured or even killed in the line of duty, so the implication is that they know better which candidates are best for public safety.

I believe that some activists use the social cachet of law enforcement as a shield, deflecting any criticism of the candidates and issues they support. When the FOP endorsed Speaker Bedke rather than Rep. Giddings for lieutenant governor, it allowed Bedke to send out mailers saying that he, not she, truly backed the blue. Remember that former Sheriff Gary Raney created an entire PAC dedicated to attacking Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin and other candidates who are considered too extreme by the moderate establishment. Former Boise Deputy Chief Ron Winegar recorded a video for this PAC, using his experience in a shootout with a militia in the 1990s to denounce McGeachin. When I brought this up this on social media I was attacked by supporters of law enforcement for daring to disagree with such a man.

Over the weekend, Mr. Traubel hosted a gathering for Peace Officer’s Memorial Day. Despite making it clear that this was about honoring fallen officers, not a campaign event, his opponents still seized on it. Keith Graves of Code 3 to 1, an organization of retired law enforcement personnel, wrote that “Traubel is disgracing fallen Idaho Police Officers” and that he “has single handedly alienated every cop and retired cop in the State of Idaho.” Mr. Graves, incidentally, was one of those applicants whose name was not forwarded to the Ada County Commissioners in 2021.

If a sheriff candidate hosting a non-campaign event on Peace Officer’s Memorial Day is beyond the pale, then do you call using that same event as a way to attack the candidate in question? Code 3 to 1 endorsed Matt Clifford in both 2021 and 2022, which means that this attack did not come from genuine outrage, but was simply a political hit on an opponent. Organizations such as Code 3 to 1 and the Fraternal Order of Police want to use their honored states as veterans of law enforcement to give their political proclamations extra weight, as well as to shield themselves against any criticism. The sheer hubris of Code 3 to 1 in denouncing Traubel, a retired law enforcement officer himself, for having a memorial event calls their other positions into question, including their support of Clifford. Conservatives need to start looking beyond the badge and asking what other factors are at play in these political games.

All Republicans agree that we back the blue, but when it comes to the Ada County sheriff’s race, the question is which blue do we back? Sheriff Clifford is endorsed by the FOP, the ACSEA, and men like former Sheriff Raney. But Mr. Traubel is also blue, having served in the sheriff’s departments of San Diego and Ada Counties as well as working as an investigator in the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office. He has a list of endorsements from retired Ada County Sheriff’s Deputies as well. Clearly, we need more information.

I have been debating this race with myself for a long time now. I could stand up right now and make equally good cases for either candidate.

Sheriff Clifford runs a good department and trains his deputies to be keepers of the peace, not enemy soldiers. He has kept the Ada County Sheriff’s Office a positive institution in our community. He has shown that he is willing to push back against unconstitutional orders. When the Central District Board of Health instituted a mask mandate in 2020, then-Chief Clifford agreed with Eagle Mayor Jason Pierce that there would be no arrests for noncompliance in our town. That is exactly the attitude we need in our top law enforcement officer, and that is the very same attitude that Doug Traubel preaches.

Mr. Traubel is absolutely right that there is a war on cops, and he is also correct that social justice is a Trojan horse for Marxism that is seeping into every institution in our society, including our police departments. He has a deep understanding of the role of the sheriff in protecting our liberties. As our community’s only elected law enforcement position, the sheriff has a unique duty to protect the citizenry against government overreach. I have no doubt that Traubel will indeed step in when he thinks rights are being violated, no matter if it is by the State of Idaho, Ada County, the City of Boise, or any other government entity.

On one hand, knowing the precarious state of the American Republic, we need men like Doug Traubel in office to draw a hard line against ever more overreach of our constitutional rights. Not only is the war on cops headed here, but so is Marxism in the guise of antiracism, antisexism, and social justice. We need men like Doug Traubel who have a deep understanding of our enemies and their tactics if we hope to keep Idaho the last refuge of freedom in this country.

On the other hand, Sheriff Clifford is doing a fine job of that already. Under his watch, the Ada County Sheriff’s Office has not fallen to Marxism and neither have they given in to left-wing demands to stop enforcing the law. I have been told that deputies are flourishing under Clifford’s leadership; bringing in a new boss, without as much leadership experience, who has a clear ideological agenda, might shake things up in the wrong way. Sheriff Clifford has the confidence of Ada County’s mayors as well as political moderates in our community. Mr. Traubel, on the other hand, would draw a lot of controversy from left-wing media, and the Sheriff’s Office would suddenly be under the microscope as national outlets begin poking and prodding, trying to cancel him.

On the other hand, we cannot give a heckler’s veto to left-wing media. Both the Idaho Statesman and the Washington Post are avowed enemies of American liberty, so why should they get to decide who the citizens of Ada County choose as our sheriff? The fact that some of the most notorious establishment figures in Idaho are scared to death of Doug Traubel is, in my eyes, a mark in his favor.

In my piece about former Sheriff Raney’s attack on conservatives, I wrote about how he had opposed plans by the state legislature to protect our 2nd Amendment rights in the face of the Obama Administration’s plans to restrict them. Raney appealed to the supremacy clause of the US Constitution, claiming that state officials had no authority to countermand federal law. I wrote that this ignored the proper role of the sheriff in defending the peoples’ rights, a role that goes back centuries to medieval England. However, attorney general candidate Art Macomber wrote me the next day with an even stronger rebuttal to Raney’s argument.

Mr. Macomber pointed me to Article VI of the US Constitution which says that the only national laws that supersede state laws are those that are made in pursuance to the Constitution itself. If a state decides that a federal law is unconstitutional, then it is not only their right, but their duty to oppose it. Macomber also sent me to Article I, Section 11 of the Idaho State Constitution, which declares that Idaho citizens have the inalienable right to keep and bear arms, and that no “law shall impose licensure, registration or special taxation on the ownership or possession of firearms or ammunition. Nor shall any law permit the confiscation of firearms, except those actually used in the commission of a felony.”

Former Sheriff Raney fell short in his duty to protect the liberties of the citizens of Idaho. Thankfully, President Obama’s dreams of gun control never came to pass, and the state legislature eventually passed constitutional carry against Mr. Raney’s advice.

What guidance does this give us going forward? Raney strongly supported Matt Clifford in 2021, and surely still does today. Does he believe that Clifford will be as deferential to the establishment as he was, or does he simply fear Doug Traubel?

The ability of citizens to elect their own sheriff is one of the most important developments in the history of freedom and liberty. Consider how profound that is: we are not ruled by law enforcement officers, rather we the people are the ultimate authority over the sheriff’s department. The last two Ada County Sheriffs were initially appointed, not elected - Steve Bartlett was appointed when Gary Raney retired before standing for reelection in his own right, as was Matt Clifford when Bartlett retired. Is this a loophole in citizen oversight over the Sheriff’s Office? Or is it a necessity to ensure smooth transitions in the largest law enforcement agency in the state of Idaho?

After four and a half months of campaigning and 2,500 words in this essay, I have yet to reach a conclusion on this race. Perhaps I am overthinking this.

If your priority is to maintain the smooth operation of the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, and you believe that our state is pretty safe from the progressive tide, then vote for Matt Clifford.

However, if you are concerned that the Marxist attack on our society is already on our doorstep, and you want to send a message to the rest of the country that Idaho conservatives are on the march for liberty and the Constitution, then vote for Doug Traubel.

In the process of writing this piece, I have become convinced that we need Mr. Traubel involved in the fight to save our community, our state, and our nation. Why not in the Sheriff’s Office?