OPINION: Labrador has made primary vote all about him

Here’s a quick and easy way to decide how to vote on the Open Primaries Initiative.

If you want to keep Raul Labrador as Idaho’s attorney general — or even elevate him to governor — then vote against it and retain the closed Republican primary that allows him and his allies to engage in minority rule.

If you’d like to send Labrador back to private practice in Eagle, then vote to open the primary to all voters and subject the top four vote-getters in any contest — regardless of political party — to an instant runoff general election in November.

Open the primary and Labrador would be held accountable for positions that find support only within a narrow band of GOP primary voters but would not get past the broad swath of people who cast a ballot in November:

-- Obamacare — Labrador campaigned against it, even going so far as telling a Lewiston audience that “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

-- The closed primary itself — This was something GOP activists, with Labrador’s support, forced upon Idahoans by suing them in court.

-- Shutting down the Idaho National Laboratory — As a member of Congress, Labrador twice voted for the so-called McClintock Amendment, which would have cut more than two-thirds out of the budget supporting nuclear research on the Arco desert.

-- Medicaid expansion — Labrador not only opposed the 2018 initiative, in which nearly 61% of voters extended medical coverage to Idaho’s working poor adults, but the Spokesman-Review reported that he would “consider working to overturn the voter-passed initiative.”

-- Abortion — Polling indicates Idaho’s abortion ban is not popular. Two years ago, 59% told pollsters they wanted abortion legal in the Gem State, either almost entirely or with some restrictions. But Labrador has gone out of his way to block any effort to protect the health of Idaho women enduring a crisis pregnancy, going so far as to pursue the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court. He also issued an analysis that said it was illegal for health care providers to help patients get care in states where abortion remains legal.

As a result, he has managed to underperform most Republicans on Election Day. Against a last-minute Democratic challenger in 2022, Labrador won 63%. Gov. Brad Little and Sen. Mike Crapo fell below that — they each got 61% — but Little faced five opponents while Crapo ran against four. Everyone else, from Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke to Secretary of State Phil McGrane and Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield, performed better.

Imagine the outcome if Labrador faced a more mainstream Republican instead of a Democrat in the general election.

Labrador is not the only Republican extremist who is threatened by this electoral reform. GOP Chairperson Dorothy Moon and the Idaho Freedom Foundation would lose considerable clout.

But only Labrador has responded to this existential threat by applying the power of the state to block you, the voters, from deciding this issue.

After using social media to encourage people to “defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups,” Labrador used his office to devise ballot titles that the Idaho Supreme Court said blatantly misstated the nature of the initiative — an act so egregious that the Supreme Court ordered him to hand over nearly $80,000 to cover the court costs of Idahoans for Open Primaries.

He then returned to the Supreme Court with a scheme to pull an initiative — signed by 97,000 Idahoans — from the ballot. The court threw the case out and admonished Labrador that he “fundamentally misapprehends the role of this Court under the Idaho Constitution and the role of the Secretary of State under the initiative laws enacted by the Idaho Legislature.”

Next came his attempt to persuade District Court Judge Patrick J. Miller to do the same thing. The judge also refused, saying “the inferences that the Attorney General would require this Court to draw are not reasonable.”

What Labrador has always known ought to be clear to everyone else. The Open Primaries Initiative is the closest thing you’ll ever get to a referendum on this attorney general and his brand of extreme politics.

Vote accordingly. — M.T.