Idaho lawmaker: Be wary of those who use ‘a fake view of your liberties’ in coronavirus protests
Editor’s note: This column has changed since its original posting to remove a reference to Idaho Second Amendment Alliance president Greg Pruett, who disputes his involvement in the arrest of a Meridian woman and disputes Greg Chaney’s accounting of events.
The outrage over Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s stay-home order because of coronavirus reached peak political theater this week, with the arrest of a Meridian woman for using a closed city playground and then Ammon Bundy showing up with a posse at the private residence of the police officer who arrested her.
Now is the time for common sense to prevail.
State Rep. Greg Chaney, R-Caldwell, offered that common sense this week, when he posted a video on social media Wednesday, decrying the drama.
“There’s a group of people you need to be a whole lot more afraid of than Brad Little,” he says in the video. “And those are people who are manipulating you, manipulating you by telling you that they’re concerned about your liberty.”
In his video, Chaney criticizes what he calls a staged arrest and the bandwagon that others, such as Ammon Bundy (“Bringing all kinds of additional threat and risk to this police officer and his family. Go home.”) jumped on.
“This group of people, who are using a fake view of your liberties to manipulate and leverage you into their own personal gain, in my opinion, are far, far more dangerous than anything else that we have going on in this state right now,” he says in his video.
He is also critical of Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at an “all businesses are essential” rally in east Idaho this weekend. She wrote a letter to Little, showing she’s not on the same team: “I also fear the potential of a constitutional showdown between some of the people of Idaho and your administration,” she wrote.
“You know who I’m most upset with right now?” Chaney says in his video. “It’s our supposedly Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. She’s in a leadership position, and she could be calling (out) this sort of absolute ridiculous behavior. I’m watching a feed right now on the video of this poor officer’s home. She could be tamping this down, but instead she’s feeding the fire.”
I spoke with Chaney the next day about his video and the reaction to it.
“I’ve been thinking about things for a bit,” he told me by phone Thursday. “But I wasn’t really resolved to talk about it, and then when I saw somebody shared a live video on Facebook (of the protest at the police officer’s house) was going on in front of that officer’s home, that’s why I decided to jump on and comment in the manner I did.”
He said he’s most frustrated with those who are fanning the flames of discontent, making matters worse.
“Everybody has the right to protest, but I think that in this situation that people need to be smart about how they do it,” he said. “It’s one thing to express displeasure or opposition, and even maybe act outside of the order in certain ways. It’s another to congregate large groups of people in a way that can escalate the health risk to people, and then by the time you get to the point of a mob assembling outside of a police officer’s home address, that’s an escalation of compromising other people’s safety that’s even in another classification altogether.”
Chaney said he supports how Little has been handling the situation and the message he’s sending about enforcement.
“The way Gov. Little has handled this, by and large, has been to treat the order as a really, really emphatic suggestion,” he said. “The manner of enforcement has suggested that, in fact, in order to even get an arrest, (the protesters) kind of had to go out of their way to do it.”
During his press conference Thursday announcing the phased-in reopening of the state, Little said: “Given the fact that out of 1.8 million people in Idaho, we’ve got a few of them that are doing that. I don’t think it’s … a good business plan. I don’t think it’s good for their business. I think it’s disrespectful of everybody else that’s complying with it, and I trust consumer opinion and peer pressure to be perhaps the best cure for this.”
However angry it makes me to see people disobey the order while the vast majority of us are obeying the order to maintain public health, going around arresting people is a bad idea on two fronts. First, it simply plays into their hands. It seems like they want to get arrested so that they can play the role of martyr. Second, I am squeamish about the constitutional ramifications, as is Chaney.
Chaney posted another video April 18 responding to anti-stay-home protests, comparing violating the order to drinking bleach. The government doesn’t have a right to tell you not to drink bleach, Chaney says in that video. Yes, you have a constitutional right to go on ahead and drink that cup of bleach, he says, pouring himself a glass, but that doesn’t mean you should drink that bleach just to prove the point. (That video takes on a whole new meaning this week, after President Donald Trump suggested the possibility of injecting disinfectant to kill coronavirus.)
“Look, whether this is constitutional or not, (the stay-home order) is still really, really, really good advice,” Chaney told me in our interview. “If you have concerns, that’s fine. Then, rather than complying with an order you feel is unjust, comply with a suggestion that is awfully good science.”
Chaney said he hasn’t received any sort of “official” push back to his public comments, but he has heard from people through social media.
“A good number of Republicans have expressed, ranging from reason to just rather colorful objection,” he said. “But overwhelmingly, the response has been positive that I’ve received back so far. ... on balance, I would say I’ve gotten a good deal more positive response than negative response.”
He did say, though, that his criticism of McGeachin was “the source of the lion’s share of the blowback.”
Chaney and I spoke right after Little announced the roll-out of the four-phase reopening plan, and, moving foward, Chaney said he’s encouraged, hopeful that the plan will assuage some opposition and get the economy moving again.
“Certainly, my focus is now on helping the governor,” he said. “Get the state back open .... that should be the focus of everybody. I think the responsible thing for everybody in government to do from top to bottom, is to — all along has been — to encourage people to follow the sorts of things that will reduce the transmission of the virus that will allow us to reopen our economy fully as quickly as possible, and (it) will save lives.”
This story was originally published April 24, 2020 at 11:12 AM.
