Longtime Idaho House speaker Bedke wins lieutenant governor race

Idaho House Speaker Scott Bedke secured a win in the race to be Idaho’s next lieutenant governor.

With all but one of Idaho’s 44 counties fully reporting Wednesday, the Oakley Republican led with 64.2% of the votes. Democrat Terri Pickens Manweiler received 30.6% and Pro-Life received 5.1%.

Bedke will replace outgoing Republican Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who ran for governor and lost against incumbent Brad Little in the GOP primary.

“We’ve been working hard for 18 months,” Bedke said in an interview with the Idaho Statesman at the GOP election party Tuesday night. “Our message of smaller government, living within the taxpayers’ means, doing what we’ve been doing for decades — we’ve had literally decades of conservative Republican leadership, and I think that that resonates in Idaho.”

The lieutenant governor’s office has been fraught with controversy during McGeachin’s term, which included a lawsuit with the Idaho Press Club after she withheld public records, and executive orders signed in Little’s absence.

The new lieutenant governor will serve a four-year term. The office holder substitutes as governor when the executive is out of state, runs a small office budget and serves as Idaho Senate president. Both lieutenant governor candidates said they hoped to restore integrity to the position.

Bedke has been Idaho House speaker for 10 years and spent 11 terms in the House. He comes from a longtime ranching family in Oakley. During his campaign, Bedke said as lieutenant governor he plans to be the spokesperson for Idaho. He said he hopes to address growth and how to pay for it.

Pickens Manweiler is a trial attorney who grew up in Pocatello. She ran on a platform of restoring reproductive rights for Idahoans and criticized Bedke’s leadership in the Idaho House, saying he failed to combat extremism from within his party and did nothing to stop baseless attacks on librarians.

Since Bedke announced his run in May 2021, he raised $1.1 million in campaign contributions. Most of the donations poured in before the Republican primary, when he faced hard-right conservative Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Board. Pickens Manweiler entered the race in August 2021 and raised about $266,000, according to Idaho secretary of state filings.

“I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently,” Pickens Manweiler said in an interview with the Statesman. “We ran a great campaign. We ran an honorable campaign. We outraised anybody who’s ever really run for lieutenant governor as a Democrat, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

On Wednesday, Manweiler said in a news release that she had already begun working to build an “initiative campaign” about abortion rights.

Reporters Ryan Suppe and Mia Maldonado contributed.