Uphill battle for Democratic candidate in Idaho, even with prominent Republican support

Even with a couple of prominent Republicans as his state campaign chairs, Tom Arkoosh is going to have an uphill battle to win his statewide race for Idaho attorney general as a Democrat running against Republican Raúl Labrador.

A Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race in Idaho for 20 years, when Democrat Marilyn Howard defeated Republican Tom Luna in 2002 for superintendent of public instruction.

“Make no mistake about it,” former Republican Secretary of State Ben Ysursa said Tuesday as he was introduced as one of Arkoosh’s state campaign chairs. “This will be a very difficult race against a well-known and well-financed opponent.”

In addition to Ysursa, Arkoosh on Tuesday announced four other state campaign chairs: Republican Lydia Justice Edwards, Democrats Cherie Buckner-Webb and Tony Park and independent Judi Danielson, formerly a Republican.

It’s an impressive lineup, for sure. Ysursa was a longtime secretary of state, Danielson a Boise County commissioner, Republican legislator for 12 years and GOP caucus chair in the Senate. Ysursa on Tuesday stepped down from the Idaho Statesman editorial board to avoid any conflict of interest, especially as we head into endorsement season.

Park is a former attorney general, and Buckner-Webb was a longtime state legislator, including stints as Democratic caucus chair and assistant minority leader. Justice Edwards is a former Republican state legislator and state treasurer.

That’s in addition to Arkoosh’s campaign treasurer Jim Jones, himself a Republican former attorney general and state Supreme Court chief justice who has of late railed against the direction his party has taken.

It was a theme oft-repeated at Tuesday’s announcement.

“I often tell people my party left me, not I who left the party,” Danielson said. “Moderates are not acceptable in my former party.”

And they all pointed to Labrador as evidence of the party’s hard-right turn.

Labrador defeated longtime incumbent Republican Lawrence Wasden, who touts his record of “calling balls and strikes,” when those on the far right want the attorney general to “throw a curveball” and be “a conservative voice.”

“The attorney general is a neutral arbiter who sits as an umpire, calling balls and strikes fairly and interpreting the law, telling agencies or the legislature what they need to know, not what they necessarily want to hear,” Ysursa said. “I sincerely believe that Tom should and would heed the advice of my good friend Lawrence Wasden.”

Many on the far right were upset, for example, that Wasden didn’t foolishly join a frivolous lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general suing other states for their elections in 2020. The suit was quickly thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even after, some on the far right still think Wasden should have wasted taxpayer money on joining the lawsuit.

That’s what most observers are expecting with Labrador in the AG’s office: more lawsuits against the federal government and more encouraging the Legislature to pass bad laws that will lose in court, such as the recent loss over a bill over transgender birth certificates, for which the state was ordered to pay $320,000 in legal bills for the plaintiffs.

“Make no mistake, bringing the ridiculous lawsuits that Labrador brags about that he would bring will cost all of us dearly,” Buckner-Webb said. “It will cost every single taxpayer just to bring it and if elected, he’ll lose them and we will still pay.”

Still, it’s going to be a hard sell in Idaho for anyone with a “D” after their name, no matter how many old-guard Republican leaders line up behind him.

Strong, moderate Democratic candidates facing weaker Republican opponents haven’t been able to crack that nut over the past 20 years. I’m thinking about Democrats Cindy Wilson and Jana Jones losing to Sherri Ybarra for superintendent of public instruction, and Kristin Collum losing to Janice McGeachin in 2018 for lieutenant governor.

Republicans hold a more than 4-1 advantage over registered Democrats (575,000 Republicans compared with 129,000 Democrats). There are still 274,000 unaffiliated voters, but that’s still not enough to counterbalance Republican voters. In the 2020 election, 554,119 Idahoans voted for Donald Trump, or 64% of the total, while 287,021, or 33%, voted for Joe Biden.

Still, A.J. Balukoff, a moderate Democrat who received 39% of the vote in 2014 gubernatorial campaign against incumbent Republican Butch Otter, expressed optimism.

“Tom is a viable candidate because he is moderate, middle of the road and will appeal to both moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans,” Balukoff told me at Arkoosh’s announcement Tuesday. “I think most people in the state are really tired of the extreme partisanship that we’ve been seeing in our state. A lot of us believe that some of these statewide offices, like attorney general, should be a nonpartisan office. I think if that message gets across, and Tom’s opponent is obviously part of the extreme element in our state. People in this state are ready to be moderate and reasonable.”

Arkoosh won’t be facing a popular incumbent, like Balukoff did.

But Labrador has name recognition, and he’ll likely be well-funded. The Club for Growth PAC spent $281,996 on broadcast advertisements attacking Wasden, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.

Labrador received 140,585 votes in the primary, or 52% of the vote, to Wasden’s 104,000 votes, or 38%, even with third candidate Art Macomber 11% taking away from Labrador’s anti-Wasden vote total. Labrador received the second-highest vote total of all Republicans with opponents in the Republican primary, behind only Gov. Brad Little’s landslide in his race.

As Arkoosh pointed out to me, “many of the other extremists lost” in the Republican closed primary, which is a limited snapshot of the overall voters who will cast ballots in November.

“The Republican Party is fractured,” Arkoosh told me afterwards. “And my opponent represents the extreme in that party. And I’m counting on getting Republicans who want an attorney general invested not in extremism but in the rule of law to vote for me.”

Will those anti-extremist Republican voters cast their votes for Arkoosh in enough numbers to join unaffiliated and Democratic voters to push Arkoosh over the finish line?

It’s a tall order.

But Ysursa hopes more Republicans will take his view of this race.

“Being a lifelong Republican, it’s not easy to endorse a Democrat attorney general candidate,” Ysursa said. “But the rule of law is under attack, constant attack, both at the national level and the state level. ... Idahoans deserve and expect in their attorney general a good lawyer, not a good politician.”