How to transform Idaho politics
Idaho is dominated by one political party.
The real contests in our state are within the Republican Party, between their moderate and extreme factions. Democrats have not been able to viably contest power in decades. This has been demoralizing for Democrats and Independents, and they don’t have a believable theory of change that brings them hope and reliably motivates them to action.
But, the most important distinction to make in Idaho state politics is the balance of power — Grassroots vs Big Money.
This situation is on clear display when our legislature focuses year after year on tax breaks, slashing government services, and controversial culture war issues. Those policies serve to enrich wealthy individuals and corporations by divesting from working families and communities, while preoccupying people with issues that don’t significantly distribute resources. Conversely, people-focused policies are “bread and butter” or “consensus” issues that make the lives of working people substantially better — like access to affordable healthcare, quality education, and fair wages. All these things have steadily declined over the years.
What this looks like on the map is a major concentration of Big Money power on the capital with lobbyists, associations, and party leadership, and small pockets of grassroots power scattered across the state.
For substantial political change in our state, we have to change the balance of power to an extent that bread and butter issues are the focus and the primary arenas for political battles. That requires significantly strengthening grassroots power.
But how can we do that? Sometimes a change like that seems hard to believe. But we know how to do this. The answer is building durable, local political ecosystems through ballot initiative campaigns.
Idaho has difficult ballot initiative laws that require us to collect massive numbers of signatures in most legislative districts of the state. This is a challenge, but it’s also a blessing. It forces ballot initiative campaigns to adopt local strategies across the whole state. The below diagram shows what it looks like.
At the center of the diagram are local leaders for the campaign (black dots). They build “local teams” (dark green) of volunteers that engage their communities about the problem and solution that the ballot initiative campaign addresses, collecting signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. Those local teams recruit other volunteers to join in these efforts at varying levels of involvement (light green). Together they contact thousands of voters in their communities (purple), leaving a deep impression on their region about the campaign issue and our failing political system. Contacted voters will in turn discuss the campaign and their impressions with family and friends (light purple).
The impact of this local ecosystem is massive. As an illustration, each local leader recruits 5 core volunteers for their local team. Each core volunteer recruits 3 occasional volunteers to help out. Each volunteer contacts 100 voters. Each contacted voter has conversations with 4 people. Add all that up, and each local ecosystem has touched 18,000 people in their area.
Now, imagine dozens of these across the state. To qualify an initiative for the ballot, we need roughly 75,000 signatures. To pull that off, we need teams all over the state. By my estimates, about 50. The result of that is about 300,000 Idahoans having conversations about our issue and the broken political system. That’s a recipe for a big shift. Here’s what it looks like.
These local ecosystems are the key. If done right, they don’t go away after the campaign is over. They’re lasting, and they serve as network infrastructure that help hundreds of individuals develop leadership and skills to engage with and move their communities on issues. Today it’s a ballot initiative; tomorrow it’s legislative races. That’s how we change the power balance and arrive at a state where grassroots power meets and exceeds big money power.
We will have changed Idaho politics, and it will no longer be “business as usual.” Even big money politicians will be forced to change their strategies, to at least appear to engage their constituents in meaningful ways. If they’re not convincing enough, they won’t win re-election. And we will have cadres of local political leaders waiting in the wings to challenge them. It will be a new era.
