GOP primary race in Boise pits Republican leader against challenger backed by IFF wing
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Idaho Elections 2024
Learn who’s running for state and county offices in Ada and Canyon counties, and follow our coverage of the May 2024 party primaries and the November 2024 election.
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West Boise’s longtime state Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder faces a Republican challenger in this month’s primary after a legislative session replete with clashes with his party’s most conservative wing.
Winder, of District 20, faces Josh Keyser, a former Marine, Boise Police Department employee and school administrator, in the May 21 primary. The challenge to Winder, who is seeking his ninth term, comes as the Republican faces the ire of his party’s right flank.
In the waning days of this year’s legislative session in April, Winder rebuked his caucus for trying to cancel a real estate deal to sell the Idaho Transportation Department’s State Street campus to developers. Winder narrowly lost that fight, but whether the new law that nixed the deal stands is still unclear after the developers challenged it in the Idaho Supreme Court.
Before the session, Winder also butted heads with members of the Idaho Freedom Caucus, the party’s most far-right members, over their vocal public campaigns against other lawmakers.
Winder stripped two of those senators — Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld, R-Twin Falls, and Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa — of their vice chair positions on committees and disciplined a third, Sen. Scott Herndon, R-Sagle, over online posts or cartoons lambasting their colleagues. Winder’s actions outraged the Freedom Caucus and led the newly elected leadership of the Ada County Republican Central Committee to censure him shortly before the session began.
“The Senate has always taken the position you debate the bills and you don’t attack the people,” he told the Idaho Statesman, noting that he took action because he had received complaints from other members of the Senate Republican caucus.
Winder fears ‘dark money,’ supporters of weed
In campaign fundraising, the eight-term senator remains the frontrunner. Winder has raised over $88,000, while Keyser has raised $28,000, according to campaign records.
Thousands of dollars on independent expenditures have also been spent on the District 20 race, including thousands spent against Winder by a political action committee called Make Liberty Win, which is based in Alexandria, Virginia, and receives much of its money from the Austin, Texas-based Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian student group, according to campaign finance records.
Winder has received support from groups like WinAg PAC, an agricultural political action committee, and another called Hometown Heroes, which has money from firefighters and carpenters’ unions, as well as Lift Local Idaho, a group pushing for a shift in local sales tax collection.
Winder said he is concerned about the “dark money” coming into Idaho races, including from the Young Americans for Liberty, which he said supports marijuana decriminalization. Winder said such groups could “destroy true Idaho conservatives” by leading to reduced minimum drug sentences and higher crime rates.
He said the amount of money coming into the state this election cycle is “unprecedented,” and that ads and political brochures have falsely portrayed him as opposing border security and restrictions on pornography in libraries. Winder co-sponsored a bill to restrict “harmful” materials for minors at libraries and voted for a Senate memorial that asked President Joe Biden’s administration to stop illegal immigration.
Winder has also voted in recent years for bills to impose mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl crimes, cut some taxes and increase funding for education and state infrastructure.
Earlier this month, 16 of the Legislature’s most conservative lawmakers withdrew their membership from a Young Americans for Freedom coalition, citing the group’s misleading advertising, according to a letter posted online.
GOP challenger supported by IFF
Keyser has been endorsed by Stop Idaho RINOs, a group that has endorsed several members of the Freedom Caucus around the state, and the Idaho Freedom PAC, the political spending wing of the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
“He’s hiding behind the people that are supporting him,” Winder said, in reference to Keyser.
Keyser in the Statesman’s Voter Guide said he was running with a “fresh perspective” on issues affecting the state. In an email, Keyser said the community is “excited for a change in leadership” and said on his donors are listed on the Secretary of State’s website. He added he is “grateful for Sen. Winder’s many years of service and wish him well in retirement.”
His website lists that he supports “parental choice” for education and health care free from “government overreach.”
His biography also notes he was “valedictorian” of his academy class at the Boise Police Department. Keyser joined the department in January 2019 but resigned 10 months later after a dispute with the department’s leadership over alleged retaliation against a colleague that led to a lawsuit, according to previous Statesman reporting.
Haley Williams, a spokesperson for Boise police, told the Statesman in an email that there is no official ranking of academy graduates but that each group of graduates picks a graduation speaker. She said she didn’t know whetherKeyser was his year’s speaker.
Only registered Republicans can vote in Idaho’s Republican primary.
This story was originally published May 19, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
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