Petty conniving or rank corruption? Either way, McGeachin has no place in public office

She just couldn’t do it.

Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin has been dogged by scandal almost since the moment she took office. But after her bruising loss in the primary to Gov. Brad Little, she had a chance to sit back, kick her feet up, and simply wait out her lame-duck period until she could be replaced.

It would have been so, so easy to avoid yet another scandal.

And yet.

As the Associated Press first reported Wednesday, McGeachin notified the state that she would be paying Machele Hamilton, first vice-chair of the Idaho Republican Party and the only employee of her largely ceremonial office, what amounts to an annual salary of around $77,000 — apparently for secretarial work.

Hamilton had been paid about $20,000 per year for part-time work. No explanation has been forthcoming for nearly quadrupling her salary.

Those funds will have to come out of the next lieutenant governor’s budget — and Hamilton’s annual salary plus benefits amount to almost half of the budget for that office — which has led some to speculate that this was an act of bureaucratic sabotage.

That’s possible, but it’s not McGeachin’s most likely motivation.

Let’s consider two explanations for McGeachin’s actions. In one scenario, she’s trying to use up funds meant for her successor while she still holds office, in an effort to hamstring them — both Republican Scott Bedke and Democrat Terri Manweiler have been quite critical of McGeachin. This is the corrupt, but not incompetent, explanation.

It’s possible this is true, but McGeachin has rarely shown this level of creativity or capacity for strategic thinking. And if she were capable of strategic thinking, why intentionally kick off one last, and eminently predictable, scandal to tarnish what little of her reputation remains in her last few weeks in office?

More likely is an explanation that involves both corruption and incompetence:

1. McGeachin had some taxpayer money in her personal piggy bank — the budget of the Office of the Idaho Lieutenant Governor.
2. She had a friend and political ally in Hamilton, a party official and legislative candidate coming off a primary defeat.
   
   “Loyalty means a lot in this business, so she’s one that I count as being one of my most loyal friends,” McGeachin told Kevin Fixler in an April interview. Fixler also noted Hamilton had served as McGeachin’s campaign treasurer for a time. And the two hit the campaign trail together before voters rejected both.

So perhaps McGeachin simply gave public funds to her friend. Perhaps these are the wages of “loyalty” to McGeachin.

Or maybe Hamilton is such a good administrative assistant that she warranted $37 an hour — roughly twice her hourly rate and nearly four times her annualized pay during the period when McGeachin was not a lame duck on the verge of leaving office.

The Attorney General’s Office or the U.S. Attorney’s Office should investigate to determine whether this action violates Idaho Code 18-5701(10), which forbids using public funds “for any purpose other than for the use or benefit of the governmental entity.”

If McGeachin would answer questions about her conduct, perhaps we could learn more about her motives. But she has fled accountability since she first took office, despite betrayal after betrayal of the public trust. Indeed, she worked so hard to deny Idahoans access to public records that she essentially bankrupted her office and had to defer her last paycheck.

Her only public statement did not address her own conduct at all, and simply lobbed accusations about, while claiming those investigating the scandal had ulterior motives.

This is just the latest in a sickeningly familiar pattern from McGeachin.

If once, during her time in the Idaho House, she had the integrity required to hold public office, she lost it long ago. The former campaigner for President Donald Trump so modeled her new political persona on his that she took on all his worst qualities — the deception, the view that her office is an opportunity to dispense favors, the total disinterest in the complex realities of governing, the habit of blaming the media every time she fails, the perpetual victimhood.

The best thing that can be said about McGeachin is that we will soon be rid of her.

This story was originally published July 14, 2022 at 10:24 AM.