Driving a few weeks ago across back roads in the Magic Valley, I was interested to see a few political signs up already, and several in a top of ticket race many people don’t have on their radar.
To the extent Idaho gets some national attention on the night of the 21st - the night the votes are counted after this month’s primary election - it could relate to one contest, not likely to generate a surprise but significant if it does.
That’s not, as it would have been in years past, the presidential primary: Republicans held caucuses back in March, and former President Donald Trump then received 84.9% of the vote, over contenders who had withdrawn (Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis). That settled the question of who would get how much of the state’s support for the Republican nomination.
Be it noted that the caucus was held at a point when Trump already had the nomination more or less sewn up, meaning there wasn’t a real contest. While he easily won the primary four years ago, when he was running essentially unopposed as an incumbent president, Trump did not win Idaho four years before that, in 2016. The blue ribbon that year went to Texas Senator Ted Cruz; Trump was in second place, about 20 points behind him.
This year, Idaho won’t provide in its primary the Haley percentage some other states have.
So whatever else we learn about attitudes of the state’s Republican voters this year is more likely to come from just down the ballot. Legislative races may tell us a lot, but keep watch too on the numbers in the primaries for the two U.S. House districts.
Not, that is, in the first district, where Republican Russ Fulcher is unopposed in the primary. (In the fall he faces Democrat Kaylee Paterson and two minor-party contenders.)
But do watch the numbers in District 2, where veteran Representative Mike Simpson, first elected to the House in 1998, does have primary competition from Scott Cleveland and Sean Higgins.
Higgins is likely to wind up in third place. He has not been especially visible, and for a congressional candidate has raised little money, often a good tipoff to political strength.
Cleveland is a little different. He ran for the U.S. Senate as an independent in 2022 (losing to Republican incumbent Mike Crapo), pulling 8.4% of the vote - not bad, actually, as independents go - and raising about $104,000, also not bad for an independent.
That independent run is likely to weigh against him this time, as he contends to be a Republican standard-bearer for Congress. The money he has raised so far, roughly in line with the amounts he raised last time for the Senate race, is pretty good for an outsider but way behind what established incumbent Simpson can do and has done.
In all, Simpson, who has swatted back lots of primary challenges over the years including a serious one just two years ago, is unlikely to lose, and it’s not likely to be close.
But the unexpected does happen from time to time in elections, and even if Simpson wins, his percentage could be - depending on the attitudes of the district’s Republican votes - small. If it’s either unusually small or unusually large, some kind of message can be drawn from it.
Why might Simpson be harder pressed this time? It could relate to his uncomfortable relationship with the Freedom Caucus side of the House Republicans, and his overall centrist - in the context of House Republicans - role in the House. Or, if he’s not centrist enough for you, there are two challengers who can serve as a repository for that opposition. This kind of calculus is what can make election analysis so tricky.
Or, of course, Idaho might be more or less ignored by the national news coverage on May 21, and probably you can count that as the most likely outcome.