Message to Idaho AG Labrador: Drop your frivolous lawsuit against citizens initiative | Opinion

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s attempt to prevent Idaho voters from voting on the open primaries initiative has reached farcical levels.

As reported this week by the Idaho Statesman’s Ian Max Stevenson, Labrador wants to continue to represent Secretary of State Phil McGrane in a lawsuit filed by Labrador against McGrane.

If you’re confused, don’t worry; the Idaho Supreme Court is, too, and wants to know why Labrador thinks this doesn’t present a conflict of interest.

This latest episode is just another reason Labrador needs to stop his silly, frivolous, anti-democratic lawsuit.

To catch you up, Labrador is suing to stop the open primaries initiative from appearing on the November ballot for two reasons.

First, he claims it violates the statutory requirement that initiatives be on a single subject. The open primaries initiative creates an open primary and creates a top-four ranked choice voting system in the general election. Labrador argues that’s two subjects.

Proponents argue — rightly — that the initiative is still a single subject because it has to do with how we elect our leaders.

But there’s plenty of precedent of legislation bending the single-subject rule, far worse than the open primaries initiative. Take, for example, House Bill 292, passed in the 2023 session. That legislation was a property tax relief bill, funneling money from all sorts of state funding buckets to reduce school property taxes. At the same time, the bill eliminated a March election date available to school districts. That’s a far more egregious violation of single subject. Where was Labrador suing the Idaho Legislature then?

But here’s why Labrador’s argument is particularly disingenuous, as the Idaho Statesman’s Bryan Clark has previously pointed out: The deputy attorney general who wrote the challenge on the grounds of single-subject violations is Jim Rice, a former state senator who voted during the 2022 special session for House Bill 1, which included three separate items: a $500 million tax rebate; a major change to a flat income tax; and an education appropriation of $410 million annually to additional school funding.

In other words, he was for it until he was against it.

‘Duping’ voters?

Second, Labrador claims that signature gatherers duped petition signers by giving them misleading information.

That shows Labrador doesn’t give you, the voter, very much credit for intelligence.

Also, upon what is Labrador making that assumption? Have we heard any complaints from any one of the 96,000 people who signed the petition that they didn’t know what they were signing?

This lawsuit is clearly a farce and waste of taxpayer money.

This is exactly what we and many others predicted during the 2022 election: that Labrador was going to be too politically motivated to be a good lawyer.

And we think something else is going on here.

Labrador’s opposition to the open primaries initiative is self-serving. After all, Labrador’s chances of winning the gubernatorial race in 2026 would be likely diminished in an open primary and ranked choice voting system.

Labrador shouldn’t even be trying this case to begin with. He showed preemptively that he has a bias against the initiative.

Right after the initiative was filed in May, Labrador posted on social media, “Let’s defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups.”

And he’s already lost — and cost taxpayer dollars — on a decision because his legal judgment is tainted by his political advocacy.

The Idaho Supreme Court in August 2023 ordered Labrador to change the titles of the open primaries initiative that he had written, ruling that Labrador’s language was likely to cause prejudice against the initiative.

Who’s the one trying to dupe the voters? According to the Idaho Supreme Court, Labrador.

This editorial board is not yet prepared to recommend to voters whether they should support the open primaries initiative. But we at least want to take the next three months to examine the issue and ask more questions.

We think voters should have the same opportunity.

If Labrador really wants to represent “the people,” as he so often claims, he should quit wasting the people’s money, drop his silly lawsuit and let the people decide on the open primaries initiative in November.