Boise council incumbent seeking re-election tells why he apologized to police
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Boise District 6 forum highlighted housing, police racism probe and traffic policy.
- Incumbent Jimmy Hallyburton apologized to police and cited trust rebuilding.
- Campaign cash favored Bradescu and Hallyburton; Sánchez lagged with under $500.
Renting. A racism investigation of Boise police. Traffic. These are some of the hot-button issues two Boise City Council candidates addressed in a League of Women Voters of Idaho forum.
Three candidates are running in District 6: Lynn Bradescu, a conservative real estate agent who has organized against Mayor Lauren McLean’s priorities, including a failed 2020 recall of McLean. Jimmy Hallyburton, a longtime council incumbent who loves bicycles and Lisa Sánchez, a progressive former council member who faced multiple complaints while in office.
On Thursday night, in the purple-highlighted gymnasium of Pierce Park Elementary, Sánchez and Hallyburton traded the microphone back and forth, defending their votes for Interfaith Sanctuary’s move to State Street and touting their Boise roots. Bradescu did not attend because of an illness, according to Brian Almon, her communications director.
“I have lived in Boise, Idaho since 1989 when I had the honor to be the first person in my family to attend a four-year university,” Sánchez said in her opening statement, sitting at a table between two wall-mounted basketball hoops.
“This is the district that I was born and raised in,” Hallyburton said, in his opener. “I grew up on the very far edge of Northwest Boise.”
A big question is whether Hallyburton and Sánchez, former allies, will split the progressive vote, though the race is nonpartisan.
District 6 runs from West Downtown to Horseshoe Bend Road near Idaho State Highway 55. It’s bounded by the Boise River and runs all the way into the Foothills. (Boise residents can look up their district on the city’s website.)
Bradescu and Hallyburton had pulled in large sums of money as of Oct. 23, most from outside of District 6. Bradescu has raised slightly under $31,000 and Hallyburton has raised just over $19,000 as of Oct. 23, according to online campaign finance records. Sánchez has raised under $500.
Sánchez and Hallyburton struck similar tones on Thursday in some areas. Both talked about the Legislature’s practice of challenging Boise ordinances. For example, state lawmakers in 2024 preempted the city’s cap of rental application fees at $30.
But they often differed in messaging, with Sánchez focusing more on race, her status as a renter, and how she lost her City Council seat in 2023 after inadvertently moving out of her district. Sánchez sued the city after losing her position, but in June, the Idaho Supreme Court denied all of her arguments.
When the two were asked if they would have done anything differently on the council, Sánchez said she would have tried harder to meet with the city attorney while finding a new place to live before she moved out of her district.
“One aspect that I didn’t talk a lot about during my time on the council is just how difficult it was for me at times to serve in a place where I was a minority,” she said. “At times, it seemed like every small request came with pushback. I now realize that’s just my lot in life. I live in a place where I am a minority. I would have pushed back.”
Council member on police probe: ‘We could have done better’
Hallyburton pointed to the $650,000 investigation into racism in the Boise Police Department, after a former captain’s white supremacist ties came to light. The investigation revealed no widespread racism in the department, according to previous Statesman reporting. Boise Police’s union has criticized the investigation.
“Looking back on it, we could have gone about it in a different way,” Hallyburton said. “We could have worked with our police officers. We could have done a better job to build trust. We could have done an internal investigation.
“I’ve admitted that to our Police Department as well, and I said that I’m sorry.”
The forum took place about 2 miles away from the new Interfaith Sanctuary homeless shelter going up on State Street. After years of tense public hearings and legal battles, the Boise City Council voted 5 to 1 to allow Interfaith to move into the new shelter.
Sánchez said she voted for the shelter in its first round of meetings and hadn’t made up her mind until she voted. Hallyburton said his job as a council member was to figure out if the location made sense or if there were conditions that could mitigate the shelter’s impact. He said he’d often worked with homeless people and never felt unsafe.
On the topic of traffic, Hallyburton said the city needed to make it easier for people to bike and walk for some of their daily trips instead of driving.
“Improve traffic? I think the point is we don’t want traffic,” Sánchez said. “We can’t give up.”
One controversy this year centered around the flagpoles at Boise City Hall. The Idaho Legislature passed a bill banning most flags from flying on government property, but the law has no enforcement mechanism. Boise kept flying the Pride flag, drawing a warning letter from Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador.
The city ultimately designated the Pride flag and a National Donate Life banner as official city flags to comply with the regulation.
The final question of the night seemed to touch on the tension between those who supported that move and those who didn’t: “With all the kitchen table issues you face, why should the council make public pronouncements on social issues?”
Hallyburton, who answered first, said everyone in the city has the right to be safe and feel safe in Boise.
“When there is legislation that is passed at national or state levels that attacks any demographic or community member, it is the city’s responsibility to step and stand up for them,” Hallyburton said. “We’ve done that time and time again.”
Sánchez went further.
“It’s not enough to pass resolutions. It’s not enough to raise the Pride flag,” she said. “The resolutions are not enough. We need to make a commitment to be better, to do better, so that we don’t cause harm.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
