She said they were friends. Then he went ‘negative.’ 2 Meridian council members clash
Brad Hoaglun and Liz Strader have served side by side on the Meridian City Council since 2020. Both say they have enjoyed working together. Strader says Hoaglun has attended celebrations at her home.
She says they were friends.
Enter the Idaho Legislature. In 2020, lawmakers passed a bill requiring cities with over 100,000 residents to elect council members by geographic district. The law pitted Hoaglun, who is seeking his third four-year term, and Strader, who is seeking her second, against each other in their bids to keep a City Council seat in Tuesday’s election. They both live in Northwest Meridian’s City Council District 2.
Now their friendship is strained. Strader said Friday that she was shocked and hurt by a mailer from Hoaglun’s campaign, sent to voters, that she characterized as an “attack ad,” and which she said risked the safety of her family by including her home address.
The mailer told voters in the mostly Republican district that Strader “registered as a Democrat” until she changed her party affiliation in 2022. It noted her decisions to donate to Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 and criticized her vote in August to increase salaries for City Council members.
District 2 extends north from Ustick Road to Chinden Boulevard, and east from Linder Road to Meridian Road.
“I think because I got the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police and the Meridian Firefighters Union, that put Brad on his back foot, and I just think he must have a terrible campaign manager,” Strader told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “I am convinced that somebody has convinced him to go negative and campaign this way.”
But Hoaglun is neither blaming nor crediting his campaign manager. Hoaglun told the Statesman that he sent the mailer because it “bothered him” that Strader was “trying to be something that she’s not.”
“The voters should have that information and decide those facts on their on their terms when they go to the ballot box,” Hoaglun said by phone. “I wanted to make sure voters were aware of her political affiliations, donations and endorsements.”
When asked about the timing of the flyer, less than a week before Election Day, Hoaglun said his campaign requested public records about Strader’s party affiliation from other states, and “those took time.”
The new law triggered discomfort among incumbent city council members in Boise, Meridian and Nampa, each with more than 100,000 residents.
At the start of 2023, three Boise City Council incumbents faced the unpleasant prospect of running against one another in one new district, and two in another. By September, three of the five had left the council and a fourth had decided not to run again, all citing various reasons.
Party affiliation allegations
Strader, who went to college and worked for years in New York, said she was a registered Democrat until 2018 or 2019, when she switched to an unaffiliated voter. She is now a registered Republican and is “very comfortable with that.”
“That’s a place that I evolved to and I ended up as,” she said. “I didn’t agree with the progressive direction (the Democratic Party) was going, and this is a better fit for me.”
Strader criticized the mailer for omitting her connections to the Republican Party. She said she was recently a delegate to the Republican state convention.
“What bothers me is I’m not looking to just be a city council person for Republicans,” she said. “This is a nonpartisan election. I’m looking to be a city council person for everyone.”
Strader, 40, was elected to the council in 2019. She works as a financial executive and touts herself as someone who “backs the blue,” meaning she supports funding and giving resources to public safety departments.
Mailer included Strader’s home address
The mailer included Strader’s home address, where she lives with her husband and young children. Strader said she was deeply uncomfortable with the inclusion of her address.
“I can’t understand what the purpose of putting my home address was, so prominently on the front of this thing,” Strader said.
Hoaglun stood by his decision to include Strader’s scanned voter registration card on the mailer, which included her address. He said her home address is public record and is on the donation page on her campaign website.
Hoaglun, 65, was first appointed to the City Council in 2008. He won his election in 2009 and served his first full term. He didn’t run in 2013 because of a change in jobs, according to his campaign website. He ran again in 2019 and won.
Hoaglun outpaces Strader in campaign fundraising, having raised nearly $50,000 compared with Strader’s $14,000. Strader declined to accept any developer donations for her campaign, while Hoaglun has received thousands of dollars from real estate and development donors including Mark Bottles, a prominent Treasure Valley real estate agent, and Travis Hunter, a co-owner of Boise Hunter Homes, a development company.
Has Meridian gone negative?
Strader said this is the first time she has seen “this kind of negativity” in Meridian elections. Sometimes fringe groups send out negative campaign ads, she said, but for the most part she hasn’t seen two incumbents send such advertisements before.
“To have this kind of negativity come up in a race like this really surprised me,” Strader said.
Treg Bernt, a Meridian Republican who served with Hoaglun and Strader on the council until his election in 2022 to the state Senate, was listed on the mailer as one of Hoaglun’s endorsers. On Twitter, Bernt wrote: “I didn’t give Brad’s campaign manager permission to use my endorsement in this manner, and I was unaware of the negative mailer. I love both candidates, and It’s disappointing to see such negativity in local campaigns in Meridian.”
When asked about the negativity, Hoaglun said he “enjoys working” with Strader but was bothered when her previous party affiliation came up.
In the Idaho Statesman’s Voter Guide, Strader answered the question “What sets you apart from your competitors?” by saying “I admire my opponent and consider him qualified.”
This story was originally published November 3, 2023 at 6:32 PM.
