Idaho Statesman endorsement: Does Idaho Gov. Brad Little deserve a second term?

Idaho Gov. Brad Little has earned a return trip to the governor’s office.

We hope that he can and will stand up against the extremists in his party during his second — and possibly final — term as governor. We continue to believe that Little can cement a legacy as one of Idaho’s greatest governors, with a little bit of courage, vision and boldness.

But we also know that he has missed opportunities to show those traits when they were needed.

Little is facing a challenge from Democrat Stephen Heidt, a veteran, retired teacher and prison instructor from Marsing.

Heidt puts prison reform on his list of priorities as governor and he rightly ties that issue to public education, recognizing that spending more on public education upfront means reduced costs on prison later. He also wants to see better legal defense, increased substance abuse treatment, increased work-release programs and a reduction in incarceration of non-criminal parole violators and simple drug offenders, adding there’s “no good reason for people to be placed in custody, whether in jail or prison for using marijuana.”

Little also faces a challenge from Ammon Bundy, an independent candidate who doesn’t feel our state’s or nation’s rules and laws apply to him. He is not a serious candidate in our estimation, and electing Bundy as governor would be a complete disaster for a state that already has shifted dangerously far to the right.

While we have some misgivings and criticism about Little’s performance so far, the Idaho Statesman editorial board endorses him for a second term.

It’s hard to argue with the success of the Idaho economy and the Idaho budget. Yes, some of Idaho’s good fortune the past two years can be attributed to federal coronavirus relief funds flooding into the state. But under Little’s leadership, Idaho has been able to dramatically increase funding for public education, bolster rainy day funds, increase transportation funding, pay off state building debt, fund backlogged infrastructure maintenance and cut taxes that make Idaho even more attractive to businesses and new residents.

Little has set the priorities and brought along the supermajority Republican Legislature, a skill and political benefit that cannot be overlooked.

The downsides are that Idaho still has not properly addressed property tax relief and still has a ways to go to catch up on funding public education. And Little has not done nearly enough to address the threats to the long-term prosperity of this state that come from within his own party.

Little often talks about his north star being making sure that Idaho is a place where our kids and grandkids want to stay or come back to. That’s all well and good as an abstract. But if your children or grandchildren are gay, transgender or women who seek to handle their own reproductive health care decisions, Idaho is looking less and less like a place for them.

Talk to Idaho’s major employers, and they make clear that one of the biggest impediments they face is convincing skilled workers to move to a place with a political climate like Idaho’s. A place where doctors, librarians and teachers have to be afraid every legislative session because they have become pawns in the far-right’s culture war. A place where the LGBTQ community has no assurance their basic rights will be respected. A place where women can’t be sure they can access lifesaving care for an ectopic pregnancy.

Little has pushed back on some of these developments, but he’s too often stopped at words. Little has signed some terrible legislation — and he knew it was terrible because his transmittal letters sounded more like veto letters. We hope, moving forward, Little will have the courage to follow his heart and his mind, and veto legislation that he knows is bad and unconstitutional.

Little may think he’s being humble when he says he doesn’t think about what his legacy will be, but we find that to be a negative: We want a governor thinking about the long-lasting impacts of his decisions. We want a governor who is going to be bold and make investments that will affect generations to come. Simply cutting taxes and socking away money is good governance, but it falls far short of striving toward the just society that Idahoans deserve. That’s why we are hoping to see a second Brad Little term that is more aspirational, more visionary.

Most of all, we hope Little will find the courage to do what he already knows is right.