Idaho – like the rest of the country – is drowning in political money. The corrupting influence of all that money, much of it untraceable, hides in plain sight of the scheme.
By general agreement, at least $1.5 million in “dark money” – money from millionaires and billionaires trying to create political outcomes, while keeping their footprints out of often deeply unpopular policies – poured into Idaho this year to support largely right-wing candidates and promote issues like the privatization of public education .
The enormous sums spent on legislative lobbying to try to engineer the transfer of public funds to private schools again fell short this year, but the goal is obvious: destroy the all-American idea of a public school system that serves all children and the At the same time help create a civil and educated population.
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History tells us that money will come back in even larger and potentially more effective amounts.
It was precisely 50 years ago, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, that Idaho did what in retrospect was a remarkably progressive thing in trying to address what was then perceived as a threat to small “d” democratic government. In 1974, Idaho voters, in overwhelming numbers, approved what supporters called “Sun Initiative” require lobbyist registration and reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures.
The main driver of that initiative, an advocate of open and transparent government, was a seemingly unlikely advocate. John Peavey was one of Idaho’s largest sheep and cattle ranchers, a profession not immediately associated with progressive political policies. John was also a Republican, a decidedly progressive Republican the likes of which no longer exists.
Peavey, a dynamic and influential member of the Idaho Legislature for nearly 25 years and architect of the Sunshine Initiative, He died last week at the age of 90.He spent his entire political career, often in the minority, in the state Senate. His only run for state office was in 1994, when he lost to CL “Butch” Otter in a race for lieutenant governor.
Few Idaho legislators have left a larger mark on the state’s public policy.
Peavey was the rare politician who actually wore rancher attire and looked natural doing it. He long ago abandoned the Republican Party of his youth when his ideas about government transparency and environmental protection clashed with the GOP’s steady drift to the right. (Peavey’s mother, Maria BrooksHe was a Republican senator from Idaho and later a director of the United States Mint, appointed by Richard Nixon, while his grandfather was a Republican from Idaho. Senator John Thomas.)
“I’ve always thought of John as the quintessential progressive,” said Rod Gramer, a former political reporter who now runs Idaho Business for Education, a group fighting the forces of vast monetary interests bent on destroying public education in Idaho and across the country. “John represented politics in a different era,” Gramer told me, “when there were some who fought for reform.” Peavey also played a key role in forcing Idaho’s historic award of Snake River water rights and, unthinkable today, advocated for a “bottle bill” based on Oregon’s long-standing law. Along with his wife, Diane, the Peaveys founded the annual organization Sheep Tracking Festival in Blaine County.
Gramer, who reported on Peavey’s efforts to create transparency around money and lobbying in the 1970s, has more recently written authoritatively about the huge money that now routinely pollutes our politics. Two conclusions emerge from his analysis: Big money is buying legislative support for unpopular ideas, and virtually all the money being spent comes from far beyond Idaho.
“These pro-voucher groups are based out of state and have ties to some of the wealthiest people in the country,” Gramer wrote in the Idaho Capital Sun in April. “The American Federation for Children is based in Dallas and was founded by billionaire Betsy DeVos. Yes. Every Kid is based in Arlington, Virginia, and was founded by billionaire Charles Koch. Young Americans for Liberty is also based in Virginia.”
“Even the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which has the stated goal of abolishing public education in Idaho, has ties to out-of-state billionaires. The IFF is one of two Idaho ‘affiliates’ of the State Policy Network, which is funded by dark money provided by some of the richest people in the country. “The IFF political action committee has launched a vicious campaign against pro-public school lawmakers.”
When John Peavey bravely stood up to his own party to push for campaign finance disclosure and lobbying registration 50 years ago, he faced a monumental response. One of the worst attorneys general in Idaho, Robert Robson, brazenly predicted that Peavey’s efforts “will deplete campaign funds, and without funds the parties cannot operate.” Robson, a right-wing erratic similar to the current attorney general, said disclosure would lead to audits in “every county and legislative district.”
Such savage and wildly inaccurate attacks on the political sun caused the Idaho Legislature to repeatedly reject Peavey’s legislative efforts. After another defeat during the 1974 session, Peavey took the issue to voters. That move was motivated, in part, wrote Idaho Statesman columnist Ken Robison after 78% of voters backed the Sunshine Initiative, because corporate lobbyists from the then-extremely influential Morrison-Knudsen Company helped kill a planning law. of land use that Peavey also supported.
The new law, which had voter support, Robison wrote, “is a threat to the powerful and enduring coalition formed by the money and influence of Idaho corporations and the Republican party organization in the state.” Robison confidently predicted that the new level of disclosure “will put that influence more in the public eye.”
And for a while it worked. Idaho’s secretaries of state generally applied the law fairly, if not always aggressively. Candidates and lobbyists, fearing bad press for not disclosing information, generally took the law seriously. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a series of decisions that began in 1976has systematically opened the cash floodgates that now make John Peavey’s idealistic aspirations of half a century ago seem almost naïve.
The last time Idaho saw such an influx of outside political money was during the historic 1980 U.S. Senate campaign, between Senator Frank Church and Congressman Steve Symms. So-called “independent expenditureThe committees flooded the state with cash, modest by today’s standards, to smear Church and elevate Symms, a radical Republican backed by the John Birch Society.
Not surprisingly, as a congressional candidate in 1974, Symms openly opposed the Sunshine Initiative, perhaps in part because national groups were grooming him to eventually challenge Church, which he did successfully in 1980, backed by cash from Out of state. .
The state Republican Party, now completely dominated by a new generation of Steve Symms-type far-righters, is guided by its recently re-elected chairman, Dorothy Lunawho wears his Birch Society credentials as a badge of honor.
If you think uncontrolled money from secret sources is good for democracy, you’ll love Idaho, where it’s increasingly impossible to know who’s pulling the strings. It’s time for another John Peavey to demand reform.
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