Leaders selected for the Idaho Legislature. It’s cause for (very) minor celebration
The outcome of leadership elections in the Idaho House and Senate was only surprising because the utterly mundane results followed a post-redistricting election cycle that was anything but.
Fully half of the Idaho Senate is fresh faces, as are a huge number of incoming House members. Each represents a new district because the district maps were redrawn following the 2020 Census.
Add in the fact that a huge number of moderate incumbent senators lost to far-right challengers during the Republican primary, and the 2022 election season had the potential to cause catastrophic consequences.
But the first signs from the organizational session of the Idaho Legislature, where lawmakers gather to select new leadership, are that the impact of these Senate races has been limited. The far-right has by far its largest contingent in the Senate, but not enough to put in place far-right leadership.
In the House, longtime Majority Leader Mike Moyle won his bid to become speaker. Moyle has a reputation for being more hard-nosed than former Speaker Scott Bedke. (And more ruthless. We may have to start listing his challenger, the former assistant majority leader, as Rep. Jason Monks, R-Siberia.)
Moyle is also significantly more conservative than Bedke. But other parts of the leadership of the House nudged an inch in the more moderate direction, including the selection of Rep. Dustin Manwaring as majority caucus chair.
Rep. Megan Blanksma advanced from majority caucus chair to majority leader, and Rep. Sage Dixon became assistant majority leader.
But most surprisingly, Senate leadership remained entirely unchanged. Pro Tem Chuck Winder, Majority Leader Kelly Anthon, Assistant Majority Leader Abby Lee and Majority Caucus Chair Mark Harris all retained their seats. All are relative moderates, especially in comparison to some of the wild-eyed zealots to be found in the Senate’s incoming freshman class.
There will be bills targeting the LGBTQ community and bills seeking to limit women’s reproductive rights. And some of them will become law. (Hopefully, moderates like Gov. Brad Little and Winder will have more resolve to block such legislation when they know it’s the wrong thing to do.)
There will be attempts to undermine the initiative process.
There will be legislation that seeks to take the first steps in voucherizing Idaho’s public education system.
There will be efforts to limit cities’ and counties’ ability to govern themselves.
There will be bills to undermine access to public lands or to move toward the ludicrous goal of taking control of federal lands.
Don’t hold your breath for a serious fix to property tax increases.
But bills to subject librarians to the risk of criminal prosecution are likely to get blocked, along with bills to charge women who obtain abortions with murder — a proposal that some in the House have repeatedly tried to advance. And it’s likely that efforts to reroute the funds set aside for public education during the September special session will fail.
Far-right bills that do advance to the Senate floor, however, will have a much greater likelihood of passing.
And debates in the Senate may be much, much more raucous, as frustrated members of the far-right attempt to force votes on bills that leadership isn’t interested in hearing. (A moment of silence for the vocal cords of the poor soul who will have to read 30-page bills at length in the Senate this year, a favorite procedural gimmick of the far-right.) But Lt. Gov.-elect Bedke will preside over the Senate, and he’s used to such futile temper tantrums from his years as House speaker.
All that is to say we are in for two years of policy-making much like the last two, neither much worse nor much better.
If there is cause to celebrate, it’s this: Things could have been much, much worse.