Analysis: 4 key takeways from Tuesday’s elections | Opinion
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean not only won her race for reelection by a wide margin over her main challenger Tuesday night, former Boise Police Chief Mike Masterson, but also saw allies win key City Council races, providing her with at least a majority of supporters for her second term.
McLean won about 55% of the vote in fending off a challenge from Masterson. I wrote early on in the race that Masterson was going to have to overcome the false perception that he’s a Republican in a liberal city. With support from far-right, anti-McLean factions and some statements of his own, I don’t think he was able to do that in the end.
And McLean won more than reelection. The City Council could have undergone a drastic change with the new format of district elections, but she was rewarded with a slate of supportive members who won: Colin Nash and Meredith Stead, both appointed to vacant council seats by McLean, and Jordan Morales.
Jimmy Hallyburton, who was reelected without a challenger, is also a McLean supporter, meaning at least four of the six council members will be firmly in McLean’s camp.
District 1 City Council member Luci Willits, also reelected without a challenger, is sometimes a dissenting voice to McLean.
That leaves District 3 on the Bench an important seat to see whether Willits might have an ally. According to final but unofficial results, Kathy Corless, who more closely aligns with McLean and earned the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, narrowly edged out vocal McLean critic Josh Johnston — by 15 votes.
While McLean can take Tuesday’s results as voter affirmation of her policies on homelessness, affordable housing and the zoning code rewrite, she should still clean up poor management practices that marred her first term in office. And council members, even if they support her policies, should make sure they serve as a backstop to McLean and not a rubber stamp.
Ada County Jail
Ada County’s Republican commissioners — Rod Beck, Ryan Davidson and Tom Dayley — now know what it feels like to be a school board member in Idaho.
A $49 million bond for a necessary jail expansion received a landslide number of votes in favor: Nearly 66% said yes. But in Idaho, a “no” vote carries twice as much weight as a “yes” vote when it comes to bonds, which require a two-thirds supermajority.
That means the bond failed, just like so many much-needed school bonds have failed over the years even though they got majority support.
Countywide voters skew more conservative, resulting in the current Republican lineup of commissioners. One might have thought voters would be more comfortable trusting them with raising their tax dollars.
Apparently not.
Eagle mayor
The Eagle mayor’s race will go to a runoff, as no one candidate received at least 50% of the vote. Incumbent Mayor Jason Pierce and Brad Pike received the top votes, with Stan Ridgeway coming in a close third and Marc Degl’Innocenti in a distant fourth. Really, though, Pike, Ridgeway and Degl’Innocenti were all anti-Pierce votes. So it’s not a stretch to imagine that those who voted for Ridgeway and Degl’Innocenti would not vote for Pierce, giving their votes instead to Pike. We’ll see.
Moderate Meridian?
Voters in Meridian rejected a slate of more “conservative” candidates in favor of moderates. Incumbent Mayor Robert Simison easily defeated challenger Mike Hon, who led a charge last year to dissolve the Meridian Library District over what his group said was pornography in the library.
Meanwhile, in the Meridian City Council District 2 election, Brad Hoaglun ran a last-minute ad campaign questioning opponent Liz Strader’s conservative bona fides in what is supposed to be a nonpartisan race. That seemed to have backfired, with Strader getting about 52% of the vote. Perhaps Meridian voters are looking for a more liberal candidate?
The other City Council winners in Meridian, Ann Little Roberts and Doug Taylor, defeated candidates Todd Ebeling and Bill Chandler, who land further to the right on issues.
This story was originally published November 8, 2023 at 12:11 AM.
