Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Melissa Davlin: As we're nearing the end of the legislative session, contentious debates are filling the lawmakers days.

So how might those floor votes affect the upcoming legislative primary?

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week former Governor Butch Otter, Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News and Dr. Stephanie Witt of Boise State University join me to discuss legislative dealings and upcoming primary races to watch.

But first, let's get you caught up on the week.

Idaho unemployment remained at 3.3% in February, the same as January.

That's lower than the national unemployment rate, which went up to 3.9%.

Of Idaho's six metropolitan areas, four saw non-farm job increases in February, with Boise and Pocatello at the top of that list.

On Wednesday, the Senate state Affairs Committee heard testimony on the third library bill of the session after it passed the House last week.

The bill would allow parents or guardians to ask in writing for a school or public library to relocate material to the adult section.

If the library doesn't relocate that material, the adults could file a lawsuit for $250 plus additional damages.

And once again, most of the testimony was against the bill.

Robert Wright: In the House, it was said this is a relocation bill.

And that's true, it is relocation bill, and in school libraries it will relocate stuff right out of the library, because school libraries don't have adult sections.

Anybody can file an action.

So we get outside groups coming in to local Idaho, they're going to pick on the smallest libraries because they don't have the funds.

What are reasonable steps?

We believe we've taken reasonable steps in our library.

But you know what?

Somebody might not, and that ends up in a lawsuit.

And we still have to pay for the attorneys fees.

Grace Howat: As we all know, children's access to school and library pornography is a widespread issue across the Gem State.

In fact, when IFPC scoured public school and community library catalogs across Idaho last February, we found obscene titles were made available to children in more than 50 libraries throughout nearly 30 communities across the state.

Nick Grove: I don't know what can be said that will be persuasive.

I don't know if it's facts.

Is it stories?

Is it refuta ls to the false narrative?

Is it hypotheticals that happen in the future?

You know, this is a bad bill, pure and simple.

We don't have the luxury of passing it and then seeing what will happen and then coming back to fix it next year.

This will be detrimental to our communities.

Full stop.

Davlin: The committee has not yet voted on whether to move the bill forward.

On Friday morning, the Senate passed a bill in a 26 to 8 vote that would prohibit the use of any public funds for transgender medical care.

That includes Medicaid recipients, medical care at state and county hospitals, and potentially health care coverage for state employees who use the state health insurance plan.

That bill now heads to the governor's desk.

One of the biggest questions lingering over the session was whether the legislature would fund Launch a year after creating the program to provide up to $8,000 in grants to graduating high school seniors for workforce training or tuition for in-demand careers.

The bill to create Launch passed the House by just one vote in 2023, and House Speaker Mike Moyle has been a vocal opponent of the program this entire time.

Meanwhile, negotiations continued over a separate, wide ranging bill to fund school facilities.

The bill commits an annual $125 million in sales tax revenue for the next ten years to take out a $1 billion bond and distribute the proceeds to school districts for facility modernization needs.

But the legislation includes multiple other disparate sections, too, including eliminating a school election date, changes to leadership on the State Board of Education and adding parameters on school districts transitioning to four day school weeks.

The Senate hadn't yet taken up that bill.

This all came to a head this week when Speaker Moyle parked the bill to fund Launch in the House Ways and Means Committee, where legislation often goes to die.

House and Senate leadership met on Thursday morning to negotiate, then broke the stalemate and convened their respective bodies to take up the two contentious debates at the same time.

With the House considering Launch.

James Petzke: Last year when we debated this policy bill, I was a yes, but I was a little bit hesitant because I was concerned that $80 million, that was the original idea for this program, was going to be way too much money.

I didn't think we would ever see enough applicants to spend $80 million on this program.

And I have to admit, it's actually been the exact opposite problem.

So far, a total of about 13,500 students have applied for Idaho Launch.

Dale Hawkins: Traditionally, in this country and in this state, industry has apprenticeship programs.

They train people the way they want them.

I think this is the state engaging in something that it doesn't belong in.

And we're talking about, Oh we get to vote for something that we already see the success.

We see sign up rates, that's what we see.

That's what we have right now.

Lance Clow: I think we have a moral obligation to follow through on what we promised last year.

If we want to change it for the future, we should do that.

And I can tell you several things that I would like to have different, but that isn't the question before us.

I think we have an obligation to fulfill what we promised last year.

Thank you.

Davlin: Ultimately, the House passed the bill with 39 to 31 being the final vote.

The Senate, meanwhile, took issue with the way the House handled the school facilities bill, particularly loading it with so many unrelated items.

Ben Adams: You know, I'm a co-sponsor on this bill.

And there's a lot of things in this bill that I really, really, really like.

And there are some things I really don't like.

And the thing I don't like the most is how this bill has come to our floor today.

Jim Guthrie: Quite frankly, I get tired of it.

Every single year.

We even call them going home bills.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

And we put ourselves in a corner.

We have this sense of urgency, like we got to pass it, we got to pass it.

Do we really?

James Ruchti: We twist ourselves into pretzels talking about it.

Justifying one side or the other, but not feeling good about the outcome?

The vote that we're going to make either way.

Because we're hurting somebody, we're not.

Which brings us back to the single subject rule.

It turns out the framers were pretty smart when they put that into the Constitution.

Lori Den Hartog: The only way we're not going to have to deal with a big, complicated bill like this at the end of the session is if we finally take a stand an And for me, that day is today.

Enough is enough.

Davlin: After a long debate that passed 23 to 11.

Joining me to discuss everything that led up and what's next is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News, Dr. Stephanie Witt of Boise State University, and former Governor Butch Otter.

Kevin, lots of showdowns over education this week.

Kevin Richert: And it really kind of all came to a head within the span of a few minutes, basically in the House and the Senate.

The House took up the budget for Idaho Launch, and that had been in limbo for some time.

And House Speaker Mike Moyle has made clear he's not a fan of Launch, allowed the vote to to occur.

It passed narrowly, but it did pass.

So that moves that budget forward to the Senate.

At the same time, across the Rotunda you had the Senate finally taking up House Bill 521, which is the income tax reduction, school facilities bill that has a whole lot of other stuff.

And it passed fairly handily.

But as you mentioned previously, a lot of debate about this and really a lot of debate about the contours of the bill and what all is within that bill.

Davlin: We've talked about this so many times before, but there are so many things in that bill.

And yet lawmakers have argued that there is a golden thread that ties it all together.

And that golden thread is either education or taxation.

But that golden thread is stretched pretty thin.

Richert: Especially on this bill.

But, you know, this is something that has been leading up for some time.

I mean we've seen this single subject rule really pushed to the extreme.

Even if you go back to May 2022, in the special session, the one bill that passed that Governor Brad Little pushed for, it pushed the single subject parameters as well.

But this one really does push it hard.

What was interesting about Thursday, among other things, there was a lot that happened on Thursday, what was interesting was you had Senate State Affairs discuss House Bill 521, this omnibus bill and you heard Majority Leader Kelly Anthon say, I think there are a lot of folks in the Senate right now who are tired of this.

Less than 5 hours later, 23 of those senators voted for that omnibus bill.

So how tired are they of this really, when the rubber hits the road?

Davlin: And Dr. Witt, you know, a lot of senators debated seemingly against the bill specifically because of that single subject issue and the process where it hit the Senate floor and then ultimately voted for this.

This is something I think that I don't remember seeing as much, you know, 10, 12 years ago where where people were kind of holding their noses this often.

Stephanie Witt: Well, I think that's part of why the omnibus approach works, that you stick enough things in there that a whole lot of people will find at least something they like and vote for that.

And so you decrease the number of times you have to get everybody to vote yes by putting a bunch of things together.

And maybe that's what we're seeing here.

I, I can see some through lines of taxes or education, losely, but, you know, I'm not sure where the state board reorganization, you know, fits into there as a tax policy.

I don't see that as a single issue thing.

So my guess is that this is happening because it makes it easier to get enough people on board to get something passed.

Richert: One of the things that's really interesting about the debate about House Bill 521 is that I think one of the most contentious issues right now is the language pertaining to five day schools versus four day schools.

And I have a hard time personally seeing how you draw the connection between five day, four day schools and school facilities.

They're kind of different education issues and really didn't have much to do with income taxes.

But you had this morning school officials from rural Idaho, several of them come before the Senate State Affairs Committee and say this is a local control issue.

We want to keep our four day calendar, and in fact, our communities like it.

And really view this bill is potentially an affront to that.

Davlin: Governor, when you served in the legislature or as lieutenant governor or as governor, did you see quite so many of these omnibus bills that were trying to sneak in under that single subject?

Butch Otter: Well, one of the things we haven't talked about that you need to is where we are in the session.

And, you know, there's always a going home bill, or a going home cluster of bills.

And so I suspect that had something to do with 23 votes, which, by the way, your first observation, it's veto proof.

And there would be no reason, I think, for the governor to veto.

But that's up to him.

But I always would look at how many bills do we have to get through and how late are we in the session?

Things are starting to grow, the farmers want to get home.

Other folks want to get home.

Spring break is on.

And so sometimes it's a timing issue and it has nothing to do with the value or the pro or the con.

Richert: And the timing is interesting here, too, I suspect, Governor, because this bill came through the House fairly early.

It passed the House a month ago and the Senate sat on it basically for a couple of weeks.

Now, we really are in the endgame of the session.

So it does become a go home bill, whether it started out that way or not.

Otter: Right.

Witt: Well, that primary is just around the corner.

Otter: And you might have had a bit of a hostage situation.

I tried to cure the legislature of that in my first year as governor.

My first term, my first legislative session as governor.

Everyone I told them, I said, you know, listen, don't start that hostage stuff with me because I've never taken a hostage I wasn't willing to shoot.

And so we kind of nip that in the bud from the very beginning.

It would happen once in a while, but usually between not with my bills.

It happened between the House and the Senate.

Davlin: And for people who aren't familiar hostages, when, you know, the Senate is holding on to a bill that the House really, really wants them to pass, and maybe the House is doing the same thing and they're kind of at an impass So you suspect that this was a hostage situation between Launch and.

Otter: If tt passed the House that early and it's taken this long to wind it's the serpentine path through the Senate to come up.

And then the debate, you had, what did you say?

5 hours.

Richert: Within 5 hours from the committee hearing on Thursday and the vote on the floor.

Otter: Then I suspect that somebody released the hostage.

Davlin: But there are potentially more hostages that we're going to see for the rest of the session.

Senate State Affairs hasn't taken a vote on the library bill as we mentioned earlier in the show.

Richert: We still have questions about how does Launch really work out?

What are the mechanics of Launch?

What are the parameters around Launch?

Empowering parents is still a question mark.

And still a question mark for me is what does the legislature do, if anything, regarding the University of Idaho, University of Phoenix deal?

You know, what we saw unfold on Thursday and Friday, what's interesting and just really quickly, I'm kind of hung up on the process of this all.

This bill that Governor Little wants is headed to the governor's desk.

It's going to be signed into law, you would assume, in the next few days.

Now you have the Senate trying to pass bills after the fact, that would change pieces of this.

The four day school, the formula that the money goes out.

And I really wonder tactically, does that happen?

And what sort of bargaining position does the Senate have at this point to try to make changes in this bill with trailer bills?

I'm really going be interested to watch this end game.

It's unusual.

Davlin: One of the things that came up in Thursday's debate on the Senate side over the school facilities bill was all but saying Speaker Moyle's name and saying, hey, you know, we are seeing this increasingly happen under Speaker Moyle where we feel strong armed into passing legislation that we don't like.

Is that though?

You know, as Governor Otter mentioned, hostages aren't new.

Is that really unique to Speaker Moyle or is there something different about the way he operates versus the way a speaker Bedke or Speaker Denny or Speaker Newcomb worked?

Richert: I think one of the things that's different is that whether you love him or hate him, Mike Moyle is effective at this stuff.

I mean, last year House Bill 292 his his tax bill passed, Governor vetoed it.

He got the override.

I mean, that holds a lot of sway within that statehouse.

I mean, people know that, you know, again, love him or hate him, he gets this stuff done.

Davlin: And Governor, I mean, you don't get to be House speaker without getting your way and being very, very good at getting your way.

How do you see Speaker Moyle operating differently than, you know, the most recent past speakers?

Otter: I think Kevin said it very well.

Mike is very effective.

He's smart, he's a good vote counter.

And he knows where the bones are buried.

You know, Phil Batt always used to say, I know where the bodies are buried.

Mike's been there long enough, and been effective enough for a long time, that whether you love him or hate him, I happen to love him.

Mike is very effective.

And I think the people saw that when they voted him in as speaker.

I don't know how many votes he won by, but he is the speaker.

And he has sustained his leadership position as speaker.

Davlin: All right.

I wanted to shift to the primary elections that are coming up in May.

The filing deadline was last Friday.

We now know what these matchups are going to be in May.

And depending on the outcome of that, what we're going to see in November.

Kevin, you wrote an analysis on some of the major ones to watch and there are a lot on the Republican side.

Richert: I mean the raw numbers, there are 57 contested primaries across the state on the Republican side.

So that's over half of the legislative seats in the state have a contested GOP primary.

I just tried to break it down and tried to focus in on some races that are going to be most interesting to watch.

Races where there have been a lot of money, a lot of donations already pouring into these races.

Races where you have rematches, former legislators wanting to try to get back into the legislature.

High profile challengers.

I mean, there are interesting races that are going to unfold all over the state.

Davlin: Let's highlight a few of them.

You know, starting at the very top of the state.

District 1, Senator Scott Herndon, against Jim Woodward, former senator who Herndon beat two years ago.

Richert: This is a rematch from 2022.

The two candidates between them have already put about $200,000 combined into this race.

Get out.

I looked at the numbers.

I'm not making this up.

And we're two months out.

Otter: Raise my rent.

I can't believe it.

Davlin: Your reaction, I think, says it all.

This is like a new frontier.

As contentious as these primaries have been in the past.

And that's nothing new.

The money Richert: Let us write about campaign finance.

It's interesting to people.

Otter: In all the years, 14, 14 years is I was in four races, well, actually eight races, as lieutenant governor, I never spent $200,000 on one race.

Davlin: For statewide Otter: Statewide.

Witt: Statewide versus District 1.

Otter: Not where I could stand and see the end of my district.

Davlin: Well, you know, inflation.

Otter: From my house.

Holy smokes.

Davlin: So we're definitely keeping an eye on that race.

Richert: Yes, definitely.

Definitely have to keep an eye.

And it's not the only race where we're seeing a lot of money.

That may be the most extreme case of it.

But we've got candidates right now that have tens of thousands of dollars and we're two months out.

I mean, you would think that the fundraising picks up more towards the end of this race.

Otter: I got to get back in this game.

Davlin: Governor, you don't get to keep the money.

The difference.

Some of the other races that you highlighted is Senator Dan Forman against Robert Blaire, who served as a substitute.

Representative Laurie McMahon, who has faced censure from her own local Republican committee.

Richert: Right.

And I think that's one of the races where you have, you know, the hard line Republicans have really targeted more mainstream Republicans like Lori McCann.

And I think we're going to see that in a lot of these primaries.

That's why I'm watching the the race involving Julie Yamamoto, the chair of the House Education Committee.

She's got a couple of hard line opponents.

I think the prevailing theme out of all of this and no surprise to anybody who's been watching this in past cycles, you've got this collision between the more mainstream Republican wing and the more hardline Republican wing.

It's kind of a mixed bag of results two years ago.

So we'll see how it unfolds this time around.

Witt: Well, the number of sitting members who've been called in to these tribunals that the party now holds about whether you're conservative enough, I mean, isn't that 40 some members who have received an F rating from their own their own party?

Right.

So, yeah, this is going to cause I think it's going to make those primary elections even more interesting and more vicious.

Richert: And it's ramped up in Bonneville County where you have Stephanie Mickelson who's running for reelection.

The District Central Committee has basically told her that she should not use Republican in her campaign literature.

And Mickelson has said, well, nice suggestion but I'm going to run my campaign the way I run my campaign.

That's really going to be an interesting primary as well.

Davlin: Governor Otter, you've we've talked about this before, about how different wings of the Republican Party have often disagreed with each other.

But this is a new level, right, where the precinct committees are calling people in to account for their votes and saying, you can't run as a Republican anymore.

You can't run using our R logos.

I wanted to get your thoughts on this shift.

Otter: Well, I had never seen it as the association structure do that.

You know, I'd have Republican leaders come to me and say, Butch why are you doing this or why are you doing that?

But it was never, never a sanction until after I would say 20, 2012.

After Kurt Sullivan was bumped out and Norm Semanko was put in, which happened in 08, why the party really took a hard turn, and applied tough, you know, tougher than I thought they had any right to.

In fact, you might recall that they sanctioned both Tom Luna and I at the state convention that summer, and I won two more campaigns anyway.

So I don't know how much the sanction makes any different, but I think the criticism that is coming on the state party and the state party leadership right now, including the seven people that resigned right here in Ada County, which in Ada County is one place where the Republicans really need to work hard, because you can see a lot of the other party's gains in Ada County, probably more than anywhere else.

So it doesn't surprise me that they're doing that.

But we need to get back to the Phil Batt days where everybody's reasonable.

Or the Ronald Reagan where if you agree with me, 80% of the time, you're not my enemy.

Davlin: Well, the very conservative wings of the Republican Party aren't anything new.

I mean, you you knew Ralph Smeed.

You knew you served with a lot of these guys.

And arguably, you were one of the more conservative members of the legislature when you served in the 70's.

So, you know, is it really that different now, holding, you know, bringing people in and saying, can you please explain for this vote and why it doesn't line up with the flanks of the republican party?

Otter: Never, never happened.

Even even during my days in 1972.

Yeah, we questioned whether a lot of people were true Republicans because of some of the stuff that they voted for.

But as far as setting up a tribunal, I mean, we could sit and argue on the floor of the House half a day, Perry Swisher, probably the smartest man I ever served with, and I would argue all day long and then go have a beer together at the end of the day.

You know, we were like divorce attorneys.

We could do that.

Today you can't do it.

People have to hate each other in order for, they think, in order to be effective.

And we got to get that kind of stuff out of politics.

And that's just graduated up to these tribunals.

And that's what worries me so much about the caucus system of identification of candidates.

When they tell somebody that they can't, they've been a Republican all their life and they tell somebody they can't use the elephant emblem on their material, that simply isn't right.

Davlin: Now, how much did did that specifically factor into your decision to sign on to the ranked choice voting initiative?

Otter: Well, I never liked the idea of closing the Republican primary.

That's how I lost Kirk Sullivan.

I asked Kurt not to pursue that, and there were those who felt like they wanted to close the primary because all of these people were crossing over and this conspiracy in the primary to vote for the weaker candidate, which is why they didn't get elected in the primary.

And that's why they were getting defeated.

And so most of the people initially that were behind that and my good friend Mike Moyle was one of them that wanted to close the primary, and maybe he still does, I don't know.

But I'm on the other side of that.

But I still love him.

Davlin: Let's talk a little bit about your support.

You're signed on, I think, under the Veterans for Open Primaries is the group.

Otter: Actually Scott Syme is the head of that.

But I'm a veteran and so I qualify to be part of that group.

Davlin: How did they approach you and get you on board?

Otter: I approached them.

Davlin: Did you?

Otter: Yes.

Davlin: Did you?

So let's talk a little bit about where they are.

They're about a month out from the deadline to submit their signatures and then they think that they're pretty close.

Some of the signatures are going to likely be disqualified.

But they think that they're going to reach the threshold of qualifying 18 legislative districts.

And if the secretary of state signs off on it and they do, in fact, meet that threshold, it would be on a general election ballot.

How do you think that would change the address some of the concerns that you brought up about the division within not just the Republican Party, but how it is affecting conversations at the state House?

Otter: Frankly, where we are right now is we're at 72,000 signatures, but we're headed for 100,000 for the 66,000 that we need.

Now, that makes sense to the audience.

We need 66,000 official qualifying signatures in order to get it on the ballot so that people can vote as to whether or not they want to have to sign an oath that they are a Republican in order to vote in the Republican primary.

And so I, I feel like the people are going to win on this if that passes and we overcome the windmill decision on the party has a right to their own, well, the party may have a right, but the state's paying for it.

So everybody's paying for one one party to have their own little party, separate party from everybody else.

And we either got to change that or I'm all for open primaries.

Davlin: But considering the vitriol on the national level, will the open primaries actually address the concerns?

Otter: If it passes, I believe that it will.

Because people are going to see this is what the people want.

And they want to be able to go into that voting booth and with their all by themselves, decide which page they want to vote on.

Republican, Democrat, Independent, the White Pages are always for the nonpartizans.

Davlin: That's all the time we have.

We're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.