Invisible Candidates: Political power of precinct committee members

Committee member positions are something people don't know a lot about, but these positions can direct party politics.

We have covered the change in leadership and subsequent infighting within Idaho's majority party.

There have been stricter rules passed by the state GOP about who can registers as a Republican, about whether elected Republicans are Republican enough and the policies being pursued through the statehouse. This new direction of the party has prompted a lot of the long-term Idaho Republicans to question how this happened, and what can be done about it?

KTVB’s segment “The 208” shared the following story after they got messages from viewers like Pat Stroth, who said she moved to Idaho because it is a red state.

"How do we remove GOP chair Dorothy Moon and her unbalanced committee members out of the office she holds and out of our state," Stroth said

Or from Steve, who sent The 208 a message about Chair Moon and this trend of censuring elected republicans, calling it a joke.

"Who elected you to your office Dorothy," asked Steve.

Well, in a way, as a registered Republican – you did.

People may not know this, but on your GOP closed primary ballot there are a couple of names you either marked, or you didn't, that had a direct correlation to the current direction of the state's majority party.

When it's time to take a look at your primary ballot this May, squeezed in between selections for Supreme Court Justices and County Commissioners, you'll see a section for picking party officers.
The precinct committee members.

A political position people probably aren't too familiar with. Usually, the position is being sought by a singular, or sometimes a coupling of names, that may be just as unfamiliar.

Amos Rothstein was a candidate at one time. 

"Are they kind of like the invisible candidates? To a lot of people, yeah, they're not usually actively going out and campaigning," Rothstein said. "I first got elected in 2012."

Rothstein was a college student in Latah County, but he said he was bitten by the politics bug when he was just a boy. Watching the Bush/Gore election in 2000.

Watch the full interview on KTVB at https://www.ktvb.com/video/news/local/208/277-a1a416df-1595-4efb-bd1c-590c6ce613e4

"I thought this was the perfect mix of news, importance, and entertainment," he said, "I didn't really know what it all meant when I was 8 years old, but I got involved shortly after and every cycle since '02 when I was ten I volunteered in my first campaign every cycle since."

Helping a governor get elected was one way to get involved, but Rothstein said he also learned at a young age where his efforts might have more impact.

"The local organizations really matter, those are the ones who are putting together volunteers, those are the ones who are doing the outreach to voters in their community," he said. "I just kind of got thrown in."

Another candidate, Ben Fuhriman, was asked to run for his seat in Bingham County at the last minute two years ago.

"I got a phone call from Dan Cravens, 'hey, we someone to run for precinct committee member, will you do it,'" Fuhriman said. "I was like what's that? '155 he goes, Well it's no big deal, just fill out this paper work it'd be easy."

Fuhriman said he finished the whole process in about two-and-a-half hours.

"I turned it in and I was like, sweet, now I'm running for a position," he said. 

However, he said he soon realized the position didn't get a lot of attention at the poles.

"I think there's about 1100 registered voters in my precinct, I won my election two years ago by 70% of the vote and got just under 200 people," Fuhriman said.

But, it's a role that would reverberate through the Republican Party.

"My experience, my knowledge of it is usually precinct committee members are an afterthought, nobody really knows what we are, what we do," Fuhriman said. "So being the afterthought, there's a lot that falls to that position, but people don't realize that."

Fuhriman said a precinct committee member is supposed to be the liaison between the party and the community. He added they are also supposed to be active during election time, a person who rallies the troops.

"Then they vote at the county level," he said. "So when you have a sheriff or a commissioner who resigns or the office becomes vacant, it's the precinct committee members for that party that get together to vet and nominate someone to take their place. Then they vote at the state level." 

That state level responsibility is where the power of precinct committee members comes into play.

Rothstein said the members kind of control the direction of the politics in Idaho.

That direction is dictated almost immediately after they are elected in the May primary. Within ten days, precinct committee members meet, and they elect their leadership. That leadership then selects delegates to the state convention.

At the convention those delegates decide on the party platform, the party rules and party leadership. Like the election of Dorothy Moon as GOP chair in the summer of 2022.

According to Fuhriman the nominees can be anybody.

"Well, northern Idaho Kootenai County nominated David Reilly to be a delegate at the convention," Fuhriman said. "He's not a precinct committee member, he is what is he, and he went as a delegate."

What David Reilly is, is an antisemite who participated in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, who then moved to North Idaho. Further, just months before the 2022 GOP state convention, Reilly ran as a Democratic candidate for governor.

At the convention, Reilly was behind a political prank involving pizza and a local homeless shelter.

"When you stack the deck because people don't understand how this process works you get people to go to the convention who don't necessarily represent the traditional Idaho values that those precincts are supposed to represent," Fuhriman said.

Rothstein said the deck started getting stacked years ago and Fuhriman said the tide recently started to rise more quickly.

"At some point somewhere, you have people who feel like they don't have power, they don't have a voice. I think over the years those people realized we don't have any powers as Libertarians but if we become Republican then nobody would know the difference and then we can get in and then we can start pushing our agendas," Fuhriman said. "A true actual right-wing takeover is happening right now in the state of Idaho and there's nothing that these people can do about it."

A tactic amplified by the likes of white supremacists, and another North Idaho resident, Vincent James Foxx.

"Here's the solution, right, the solution is local politics, amassing power in these pockets of the country until it's time to unify, amassing power," said Foxx in a Youtube video. "Just get involved, go to your local GOP meetings push these people further right, push them and if they don't push, if they don't budge then replace them period, point blank."

Maybe that's why this election cycle is seeing a few more quote "mainstream" Republicans step into races that used to be relatively unknown.

"I believe across the state, I think there's something like 950 precinct committee members total, and we have over 500 of them that are contested because we've woken up," Fuhriman said. "We've said, wait a second that guy is not representing my community the way that I would represent my community. I think it's time for a change."

Both Rothstein and Fuhriman believe this recent growing trend of censuring elected lawmakers by central committees is not the party they joined all those years ago.

The party of Reagan, they both said, a party with a big tent where they agree on the core principles of fiscal responsibility and small, localized government; but where there's plenty of room under the big tent to disagree on fringe issues.

Speaking of a big tent, there are 145 precincts in Ada County, Idaho's most populated county. Compared to Clark County, Idaho's least, where there are three.

The 208 did reach out to the state party for their comment on precinct committee member elections. Our request, once again, went unanswered.