Politico published a fascinating article about Idaho’s extremist Republican politics. The story focused on one former Republican state legislator, Jim Woodward, who is anti-abortion and pro-gun in a state where Democrats are a tiny minority, only 12.6% of registered voters.

Idaho has one of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

Woodward was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2020. But he lost in 2022 to Scott Herndon, an extremist who wants to criminalize abortion and codify it as murder; who wants vouchers for religious schools; and who wants guns everywhere.

This year Woodward is running as a moderate Republican, still anti-abortion but supporting exceptions like the health of the mother.

Idaho’s ban, which automatically took effect when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, begins at conception and doesn’t make an exception for the future health of the mother. In 2020, Woodward, a Republican, voted yes on a law that requires physicians to prove that a mother’s life is at risk before performing an abortion or face fines, lawsuits, jail time and revoked medical licenses. In March of 2022, Woodward voted yes on another law that allows family members, including those of rapists (although not rapists themselves), to sue providers for performing abortions.

But Woodward is now running to moderate the law, having realized belatedly that physicians are fleeing the states and the hospital in his own district has closed its labor and delivery service, leaving 50,000 women without access to OB-GYN health services. Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary. So Woodward must reach out to moderate Republicans.

His opponent Scott Herndon opposes any exceptions to the ban on abortion. Herndon believes that there should be no abortion allowed even for a child who has been raped. Instead, the child should view her pregnancy as “an opportunity.”

Woodward beat Herndon in a close election by 52-48%. But in the same election, other moderate Republicans lost their seats to extremists, who picked up two Senate seats and five House seats.

The Politico article uses the contest between Woodward and Herndon to illustrate the close link between extremist views on abortion and on vouchers. They want to ban all abortions and destroy public schools.

The Recall Replace Rebuild West Bonner County School District (RRR) group was started by a group of Priest River moms — both Republicans and Democrats — when their school board was infiltrated by far-right culture warriors in the 2022 election. In June 2023, those members, who held a majority as three of the five trustees on the board, elected a superintendent, Brendan Durst, with zero state-required education certifications and ties to the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right political activist organization that aims “to defeat Marxism and socialism”; it has called public schools “the most virulent form of socialism.” Militia members began showing up at school board meetings, the school levy that funds basic operations failed to pass as residents became divided into camps “for” or “against” public education, curriculum slipped out of state compliance, and Durst began working to have intelligent design taught in biology classes and offer an Old Testament course (neither came to pass). The resulting chaos, social and political division, and lack of resources sent nearly 50 teachers, counselors and a principal fleeing the district. Many families left as well. Durst told one reporter that “his takeover was a ‘pilot’ others could learn from.”

Less than three months after Durst was hired, RRR gathered enough signatures to hold a recall election — framed not along party lines, but as those who cared about a functioning school district for their children against those embracing extremism. An astonishing 60.9 percent of voters turned out, and two of the three far-right board members were voted off. Durst resigned the following month when the State Board of Education blocked his certification.

“Eight hundred people voted in the 2022 election where those three board members were elected, and they won by a handful of votes, literally single digits,” Woodward says as we pull up to the community center. “But when 2,100 people showed up to vote in the recall election, then two of those same people were told to pack their bags. When you get a bigger slice of the population showing up, you get a decision that really reflects the values of the community.”

The RRR meeting tonight is attended by at least 50 people, in a town of only 1,700 on a rainy Monday night; there’s a lot of work to be done still to pass a levy to fund the school district. It’s clear that there’s no love in the room for Herndon. People say he escorted Durst into the first school board meeting where Durst was considered as superintendent, which was packed with militia members (Herndon says he was at the meeting, but did not escort Durst). After finishing the meeting agenda, Dana Douglas, one of the group leaders and a self-described conservative Christian, introduces Woodward with a reminder to the group that in the 2022 election, “only a third of Priest River turned out to vote. And of those votes, 75 percent went to Herndon and 25 percent went to Woodward. We want to flip that this time, and we need your help.”

Even if Woodward does win this race, it’s doubtful how much he can accomplish in a legislature with a far-right caucus bullying legislators into voting in lockstep. But he’s optimistic that a stronger moderate showing in the election will empower more moderate lawmaking.

“It takes leadership and a few strong individuals to do the right thing,” he says. “If the voters are supportive of a more moderate position, then legislators can step forward and do that. The party’s controlled by the minority position, so that silent majority needs to step up and let people know that they want to be represented.”

The article is a stark reminder of the deep divide that splits the nation and the rise of extremist politics in the Republican Party.