Presentation of Idaho reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

With additional major funding provided by the estate of Darrell Arthur Kammer in support of independent media that strengthens a democratic and just society.

And by the Hansberger Family Foundation.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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Thank you.

they're macro cutters and they're micro cutters.

We've done the macro.

And now what will we add back in?

And at what point will there be resistance?

As testy as the legislative primaries are shaping up to be, the statewide primaries are shockingly quiet.

We discuss what the factors might be and how it could affect the rest of the legislative session.

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho reports starts now.

Hello, and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, former Governor Butch Otter, former Attorney General David Leroy, Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News and Dr.

Jaclyn Kettler of Boise State University join me to discuss an upcoming primary election like Idaho hasn't seen in decades.

But first, on Thursday, Governor Brad Little, Attorney General Raul Labrador and Coeur d'Alene Tribal Chairman Chief J. Allen announced a historic water rights settlement after years of litigation.

The agreement protects most existing water rights and protects water for future growth for North Idaho communities, while also protecting and retaining tribal authority for their water rights.

communication and working together is the best way to do it.

There's always.

We should be like this as a partner.

When I first started, you know, the tribe and the State of Idaho don't always see eye to eye.

And there was, you know, there were some fights and disagreements, you know, but I was never looked at it that way.

Always like, just like the family.

We're all family, you know, we're all Idahoans, at the heart of it.

And I'm really proud of Ernie and Don, who served our country.

And that's what we do.

You know, we are part of this state, too, and we don't want to hurt it.

we worked with the tribe, federal government, and more than 300 stakeholders to reach an agreement that protects everyone in the basin.

the agreement fully and finally resolves all tribal water rights claims.

The tribe also gains defined judicially recognized quantities for its Federal Reserve water rights, and affirms its opportunities to develop the natural resource within the reservation.

The tribe retains authority to manage its water resources within the reservation, and the agreement also authorizes creation of a tribal water supply bank, allowing the tribe to leech water off the reservation.

You can see that full press conference on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/idahoreports.

Meanwhile, at the statehouse on Monday, the Senate passed a bill that trims an additional 1% from the current fiscal year’s general fund budget.

That's in addition to the 3% hold that Governor Brad Little ordered for most state agencies last summer that's already in place and baked into the budget moving forward.

I think that at this time we need to to go forward with this recission so that we can continue with our work.

Next year, hopefully after maybe we're done eating beans and rice for a session, we can maybe start to bring some of that back.

When the the gentleman on the second floor took those cuts during the interim, I across the board, I wasn't super happy with that.

Obviously, we all voted for a tax cut here last session.

I didn't I thought it was, lazy, quite frankly.

When you have agencies that have grown at the rate that we've seen in the state, I don't know why we would do across the board cuts.

the Senate approve that rescission bill by a single vote, sending it on to the House.

We'll continue to track the legislature's spending plan as the chambers consider more budget proposals, including trimming an additional 2% from next year's general fund appropriation, as well as enhancement bills to undo some of those cuts for select agencies.

Producer Logan Finney is keeping tabs on those dozens of bills daily.

To keep track of the full picture, you'll find a link to the 2026 budget bill tracker on our website Idahoreports.org.

And we must note that Idaho Public Television is a state agency subject to those budget hold backs.

And as these bills work their way through the process already we're seeing impacts of budget cuts and uncertainty at some of Idaho's higher education institutions.

Here to discuss is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News.

Kevin, what's the latest from Boise State?

Well On Boise.

On Tuesday, Boise State announced a pretty major restructuring.

What they're doing is they are combining two schools, the College of Education and the School of Public Service.

And full disclosure, I'm a public service grad myself.

They're combining that into a College of Education and Public Service.

They're also eliminating a college entirely.

This is the College of Innovation and Design that was announced a little bit over ten years ago, with a lot of fanfare, that it was designed to be this interdisciplinary college that would foster innovation across academic disciplines.

That is going to be phased out with the idea, Boise State says, that all of that innovation work is going to continue.

It's just going to continue under all of the other academic departments.

We should note that this decision is coming, while Boise State is under the leadership of an interim president.

Interim president also a interim provost, they were the two people who are at the head of making the announcement on these reorganizations.

On Tuesday, I had a chance to talk to Interim President Jeremiah Shinn on Wednesday, and he said it's really unclear at this point how much money they would save with this reorganization, that it's really he couches it more as a long term strategic plan that he feels it kind of combines these departments and positions them more for the long haul.

Maybe heads off the possibility of further and more difficult cuts down the road.

I mean, when you add it all up, and I did this week, Boise State is looking at about $16 million of cuts between this year and next when you put together all of the cuts.

It's starting to have a really profound impact on operations.

And come spring for all of these universities, it's going to have a profound impact on tuition and fees.

That discussion is beginning at the college and university level.

It will go to the state board in the spring.

Students are going to be paying more.

There's no question about it.

Those increases are inevitable.

It's really only a question of how much the increase turns out to be.

This also comes a few weeks after Idaho State University announced its own reorganization.

Right.

Idaho State has said that they are going there in the process of cutting positions.

The University of Idaho said they will have to cut positions as well.

And it all comes at a time when all of the universities are experiencing enrollment increases, increases that are outstripping what we're seeing at the national level.

So while there's been a lot of talk and a lot of, you know, you know, deserved timely talk about this enrollment cliff, this, you know, this loss of 18 to 22 year olds as we move forward, that they're just not going to be as many college bound students.

Idaho colleges and universities have been pretty well in terms of recruiting and retaining students in-state and attracting students.

But at the same time, right now they're facing this really, tight budget situation.

So it's, it's a combination of factors facing there that the universities.

We have a little less than a minute left.

But as we mentioned earlier, the legislature is looking at maybe restoring some of those budget cuts, whether this fiscal year or the coming fiscal year, that they're budgeting for right now.

Any indication that there's sympathy from the legislature for these higher ed institutions?

Interesting votes in JFAC on Monday.

So, JFAC did do enhancement budgets that will restore money for the community colleges, which were facing the same kind of cuts, the 2% cuts for next year.

Those are restored.

They did some restoration of funds for career technical education, but that's at the high school level.

And then on a tie vote, the committee voted against making, putting together an enhancement budget to reverse the 2% cuts for the four year schools.

So they are still subject to about a $7 million cut when you look at the next year 2% cut.

What happens on the floor is what kind of sentiment there is on the floor.

Well, we saw in that rescission vote, the 18 to 17 Senate vote that you mentioned a few minutes ago.

There is a lot of, angst right now within the legislature about these cuts, how that translates into these budget bills, and how in these votes in the future, we'll see.

And as always, you can check out Kevin's great reporting and the great reporting from his colleagues at idahoednews.org.

And we'll have much more with Kevin later in the show.

There were plenty of surprises in the candidate filings or in some cases, what wasn't in those filings.

Joining me to discuss is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News.

Doctor Jaclyn Kettler of Boise State University, former governor Butch Otter and former attorney general and lieutenant governor David Leroy.

I want to start with you.

Have you ever seen a statewide primary with so few challenges to incumbents?

Of the seven statewide incumbents.

Only Governor Little has primary challenges, and we aren't seeing a high profile challenge like we did in the past with him.

I agree it's a rarity.

First of all, however, there are no open seats.

Incumbents are all running.

The nature of politics has changed a little bit, and it's more costly to run a statewide race.

And many of the likely challengers actually would have to give up something, to run.

They'd have to leave a particular post at the end or leave a potential, employment to that pays good money.

And these days in politics, more like, as my wife observes to me, the contributors rather than the constituents elect people.

It's expensive to run for statewide office.

We have absolutely talked about the role of money in elections before.

And I know that you had some thoughts on why Governor Little didn't have a high profile challenger during the primary, and we should note during the general, he will have, a Democrat and an Independent and others challenging him to.

But for a Republican primary, it's kind of quiet.

Well, it's always been my experience that if you're doing a good job and keeping people happy, at least for the most part, there isn't anybody going to run against you.

They feel like you're.

I mean, I went through 25 elections and lost one against 49 opponents.

And so I always figured, well, they were pretty happy with the job I was doing.

And so that's why I didn't have at least in the primary now in the general.

Yeah.

Those are more territorial races.

It's it's time we changed horses.

It's time we change the party.

Who's in control?

And if you remember, the Democrats between Andrus, they, they owned the white house for 24 years.

And then when, Phil Batt started until the end of my third term, we controlled for, 24 years.

So, now, the the Republican Party is breaking new ground back again.

You know, Governor Otter says people are likely happy with Governor Little.

I know that that isn't always the case.

He has had criticism from both the left and the right.

Yeah.

But it's still really interesting.

And you look at the runway that he is facing in this primary, it's not just that there is no high profile, you know, an office holder or a legislator or somebody like that who's running against him.

He's in an eight way primary.

And if you're a two term incumbent and you have basically unlimited funding at your command whenever you need it to run, and you've got seven opponents on the ballot defusing any of that anti-Little sentiment on the ballot, you couldn't draw up a much better scenario of Brad Little for this primary.

And just one cycle ago, we saw some pretty bruising primary races for these same offices.

We've talked about Governor Little, but there's also lieutenant governor and secretary of state and superintendent of public instruction and attorney general.

None of those six offices that are also going to be on the statewide ballot for the general election have primary challengers for those incumbents.

That's really remarkable.

I mean, there are 90 Republicans in the legislature.

Like there are plenty of people who probably are interested in running for higher office, representing a bigger constituency, and yet decided not to.

So the money may play a role.

Maybe the the incumbents will are perceived to be very strong and would really be hard to challenge because of approval, the job they're doing or other factors going on.

But it's really interesting to not see challengers emerge in the primary for them.

And since we are talking about money, this is happening as we are seeing record breaking races in the state legislature a couple cycles ago.

Nationwide, some shockingly high numbers for the congressional in U.S.

Senate seats.

But when we don't have high profile statewide primaries, how might that affect the legislative primaries and the turnout for these races?

Jackie?

Yeah, I think, though, having those competitive statewide races are important for mobilizing people, right?

That's more campaigning there, encouraging people to vote to get out so that it does play a really big role in turnout.

So now it'll be interesting to see if it's more similar to 2024, where we see really uneven turnout across the state.

Yeah, I ran some of those numbers for a piece I did this week.

You look at those 2024 legislative primaries from yeah, you look at the district one Senate race.

This was the Jim Woodward Scott Herndon race, this hugely expensive race.

Over about 16,000 people in that legislative district voted in that primary.

That's a huge turnout for a legislative primary.

You look then in district 11, that's the Caldwell area.

And two incumbents lost.

A hard line Conservative Chris Trakel lost.

A moderate Republican Julie Yamamoto lost about 3400 votes in those primaries.

Real, real split in the turnout, which makes these legislative primaries all the more hard to read, because who knows who's going to vote and you know what kind of turnout you're going to see.

The nature of these legislative races, and you've both been involved in Idaho politics for a while.

Has has the nature and the tenor of those primaries changed in your experience?

Absolutely.

They now have been more single issue oriented.

They now have been more right versus very right oriented.

And obviously, if we are not having a lot of general turnout from the top, then the most conservative voters who are most driven to participate will be generally favored, as too likely to turn out and likely to support the more conservative candidate in those races.

And, governor, what are you going to be watching for with these legislative proposals?

I think we're starting to already see, and we have been, I think we saw that that it was coming on, and that was there's a split in the party itself, there's more of a fracture I see in the Republican Party than I have seen ever before before.

And so and that then has a tendency for the, the candidates themselves to split up the, the support of the, Republicans that are either on their, their, their side or that side.

And so, and I see that as a, as a deep, deeper split than I've ever seen before.

Which I joke that I try to keep a foot in every one of the Republican camps, and I've got about five feet.

Would you say that the the split in the Republican Party is more so than you, when you were facing some intense primary challenges in 2014 from now, Congressman Russ Fulcher and in 2010 from Rex Rammell.

I mean, those were contentious primaries that were were and you were the target of them.

Is it more split now?

I think it's more split now in more different ways and deeper split.

Fulcher did not have, the, he had one issue and the, David just reflected on that.

And that was Obamacare.

And, we had 72,000 people that didn't have, any kind of insurance, that we wanted to try to cover so that they did have some kind of protection on the on their medical needs.

And, anyway, that's why, I think that he beat me or I beat him by 11,000 votes.

But he did win some major counties.

No question about it.

And and it was counties that I had never lost, ever.

In any of, of the elections.

With somebody or as somebody with five feet in all of these camps.

Would you agree that it is more split now than it was even ten years ago?

Yes.

We've always had divisions.

We've always had an an array of conservative to less conservative or moderate, certainly.

However, we wouldn't change the terms from time to time.

But it is fractured now, and it's fractured to the very lowest level at the precincts.

We have very contentious county committee meetings, and we have moderates attempting to take over the, county committees of the Republican Party and Monroe County successfully a new county not quite so successfully and elsewhere.

And, Ada County itself is very fractured between and among the membership of the county Central Committee.

I know that a lot of these fractures really started erupting with the Tea Party movement, and that's when a lot of folks started feeling especially motivated to run for those precinct committee chairs.

When, they couldn't pay people to run for them previously.

Do you think at this point the the fracture is coming from the bottom of the precinct level, or is it coming from the top, the top, and some of the divisive rhetoric we're hearing from the White House?

Well, I note that, the state party chairman, Ms.

Moon, from time to time issues a call for unity or issues a call for a bringing us back together, you know, at the same time, we are still purging people in the Republican Party from some of those precinct committee seats because they were not pure enough or they did not do this, or were reprimanding legislators for a vote or or even a thought or an articulation sometimes.

So, it's it's very problematic.

Up and down.

But it seems to me that if you had to say, where does it start, I presume it would be some flavor of ideology.

Do you adhere strictly to every single plank of the Republican platform, or do you now disagree that we should elect the United States Senators by the legislature?

That's one of the touchstones between A and B. Now that the filing period has passed.

How might that affect some of those difficult budget decisions that are in front of the legislature that we talked about earlier, Kevin?

I think it's really it's hard to tell.

And I think it probably depends on the legislator and the district that they're in.

I think that's the problem with kind of reading what to expect in these primaries and what to expect in the final few weeks of this legislature.

What we've seen in the past with these elections is, you know, conservatives hard liners have picked up some seats and probably made the Senate more conservative in the House and a little bit more of a mix.

So if you're looking for an ideological trend within these legislative elections and how that might affect the budget decisions, I'm not sure I really see a strong one.

So.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I mean, I think you had this kind of a weird week last week where a lot of the, the oxygen in the statehouse was about, well, who's filed against who?

Do I have an opponent?

Am I being primaried?

Now that we're clear of that?

Maybe not coincidentally, you started to see some minor movement, some first movement on these budgets.

I don't think that that's completely coincidental.

But what happens the next few weeks?

And I think we are talking about a few weeks, is really hard to tell.

And as this gets further down the road as March, as May 19th, as the primary date approaches, are these incumbents going to start to get a little bit nervous about, hey, I get home, I got to get to know my constituents again.

And Jackie, you and I have talked before about how election years affect people's voting.

But but this year, when we have such contentious budget discussions up and down, it seems like it's more fraught than normal, if that was possible.

Yeah.

I think these budget decisions our policy decisions, right?

It's determining what are we prioritizing, what are we going to cut, what what services are going to be affected.

So these are really core critical debates to be had.

And I think we're seeing legislators, I mean some legislators take them very seriously.

And we're seeing a lot of conflict about how to approach it.

Do you anticipate, Governor Little being a little bit more bold with the veto stamp, if he isn't seeing funding to the levels that he thinks is appropriate?

Well, I do.

I think that, as he sees a third term looming, as he likely would not be worried about reelection or a primary challenge four years down the road, even if he were to run for a fourth term, I think he'll be more vigorous for the freedom that that gives him, and also for the fact that it's his team that is most grossly threatened by these cuts.

You'll see the legislature continue, in my opinion, to divide into two camps, the macro cutters, we want x percent.

And the micro cutters, t==his particular program is X, y, z. The governor will be in the middle of that.

But I do think that we'll see some gubernatorial vetoes on budgets that are not agreeable to him or that cut too deeply under the administration.

I wanted to get your take on that, too.

Do you think we might see vetoes from Governor Little?

Oh, I think, I think, he's absolutely right.

One of the, one of the toughest parts is going to be how we control, the Republican Party and the Republican Party leadership, because a lot of the Republican Party leadership that have been, the, the the tough part to get along with.

Not a member of the of the legislature, not a member of the of the, the Constitution appointments.

But it was because I think, at least from what I'm hearing, is, how are we going to survive?

You were governor during the recession.

You oversaw some tough budget conversations and cuts.

Can you give us some insight into what might be driving Governor Little's decisions and thought processes right now?

Well, we needed at that time.

We needed an overall philosophy of how we were going to budget, how we were going to take the limited resources we had.

So I called the in oh eight.

I called the, the leadership from the, from the both sides of the aisle in.

And I said, we're going to redefine the proper role of government in Idaho to be, what is necessary and not what is nice.

And so, when we when we did that, that's why, you know, between oh eight and ten, we cut $1 billion out of a three, billion dollar budget, $3.2 billion budget, by 2002 and a half, we cut $1 billion out of that.

And we kept everything going.

And in the long run, it paid off.

Well for us, we were the we led the nation, back out of the recession that they were having and, and, our, our ability to provide the leadership, provide the, the efforts that we needed for the state.

We're we're fantastic because the, the legislative leadership and the governor's office were on the same page last week.

Attorney General Raul Labrador spoke to the Joint Budget Committee and the media about how concerned he is that if his office sustains these cuts, that they won't be able to do critical work, including protecting children from predators online.

If these budget cuts to his office stay in place, you served as attorney general.

What was your reaction when you heard that news?

Well, the attorney general makes a good point.

His office, like other offices in the state, are going to have to constrict, during budget crisis times.

But the point he makes is this not all of these departments or agencies or elected offices are run.

The same kind of operations where you're all personnel money doing all direct services like legal services or, or related, investigations.

Those cuts are pretty harsh in terms of function.

If you have a, an office that has a large operating budget for roads or this or something else, those cuts can more easily be absorbed.

So the attorney general's point as well taken, although he obviously will have to take some cuts as well.

Do you think the legislature was sympathetic to his pleas?

Well, I don't think the legislature knows with whom it's yet sympathetic.

That's why I say they're macro cutters and they're micro cutters.

We've done the macro.

And now what will we add back in?

And at what point will there be resistance?

I'm sure they gave him a sympathetic ear, but he stands, alongside the other elected officials in every other state agency.

And hope for him for sympathetic results.

You know, nobody is getting out of this session without some bruises.

It seems.

Governor Butch Otter, Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor, Esquire.

David LeRoy, Dr.

Jaclyn Kettler, Kevin Richert, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for watching.

We'll see you right back here next Thursday.

Presentation of Idaho reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

With additional major funding provided by the estate of Darrell Arthur Kammer in support of independent media that strengthens a democratic and just society.

And by the Hansberger Family Foundation.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And donations to the station from viewers like you.

Thank you.