Another Establishment Group Targets Conservatives

This time they're twisting a tragedy to attack good people

Last month, Gem State Substack broke the news that there was a direct link from Governor Brad Little to a campaign against conservative senators Brian Lenney, Tammy Nichols, and Chris Trakel. The Idaho Liberty PAC hired an out-of-state firm to produce and distribute materials attacking the three senators from Canyon County as California liberals who wanted to defund police, prisons, and veterans.

A new set of fliers is currently being distributed that attacks two more conservative senators. Dan Foreman represents District 6, which includes the college town of Moscow, and Cindy Carlson represents District 7 to the south. The fliers accuse the two of voting against additional security at the University of Idaho in the wake of the quadruple murder there last year.

Rep. Mike Kingsley, also from District 7, denounced the fliers on Facebook:

The University of Idaho who has enough money to buy the University of Phoenix 20 million down payment, asked the Legislature for a million dollars due to the student killings in Moscow.

If you were concerned about tax payer dollars, knowing U of I had plenty, saying NO is a reasonable vote.

Once again hammering someone politically for looking out for the taxpayer is disgusting.

This is why the taxpayer has nobody in the Legislature looking out for them.

He’s absolutely right, of course. The University of Idaho is flush with cash, but they saw an opportunity to ask the Legislature to give them even more taxpayer dollars. The fact that the murders were committed off campus was immaterial to the debate, which assumes that any problem in society can be solved with more government and more money.

Idaho Citizens for Good Government has covered the hit on Sen. Carlson already, so check out their work here.

Unlike the attacks on Senators Nichols, Lenney, and Trakel, these new ads are sponsored by a 501c4 political nonprofit, which means we don’t know where they got their money. These fliers are careful not to call for recipients to vote one way or another, so the nonprofit is technically not engaged in electioneering and does not need to report donations or expenditures to the Sunshine website.

The Conservative Accountability Project Inc. was initially registered with the Secretary of State’s office in 2021 and remains active today. Its board of directors consists of Robert Jones, Guy Hurlbutt, and Billie Jean Siddoway, all of whom registered with the same post office box in Boise:

Billie Jean Siddoway is a lawyer from eastern Idaho who has also worked in Utah. I would guess that she is related to the other Siddoways who are active in Idaho politics.

Guy Hurlbutt served as US Attorney for Idaho during the Reagan Administration and worked at Boise Cascade until 2004.

Robert Jones is the most interesting name on this list. He is also the chairman and treasurer of the Idaho Liberty PAC, the very group that attacked the Canyon County senators earlier this fall:

So who is Robert Jones?

He appears to be the same Robert Jones who is a partner at GS Strategy Group, a political research firm in Boise. According to Mapquest, GS Strategy Group’s physical address is 505 W Bannock Street, just a block away from the Capitol. Interestingly enough, that is also the address of a high end Boise restaurant called The Lively:

This is also the address listed for Robert Jones as the registered agent for Conservative Accountability Project Inc. This makes sense after learning that the founder of GS Strategy Group, Greg Strimple, is also cofounder of The Lively restaurant. According to his bio, Strimple has been conducting research for Republican politicians for many years, working on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s two gubernatorial campaigns, and most recently for Sen. John Cornyn of Texas in his capacity as Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

As a vendor, GS Strategy Group appears to work closely with the Idaho Victory Fund and Idaho Liberty PAC:

Recall that the Idaho Victory Fund is directly connected to Governor Little and his Friends of Brad Little PAC, sharing the same post office box. I don’t know enough about campaign finance law to know if there is anything untoward about money being transferred from Idaho Liberty PAC to GS Strategy Group when the chairman of the former is a partner at the latter. Maybe this is perfectly normal.

There is nothing surprising about any of the donations Strimple and his company made in the past few years:

If you’re waiting for some bombshell revelation, I don’t have any. It’s all very banal, actually. A longtime Republican pollster is in some way behind several groups that are attacking conservative senators in Idaho as the 2024 primary campaigns get underway. I doubt they see anything they are doing as nefarious in any way; they’re simply professionals working to promote their agenda.

The question is, then, what agenda are they promoting? Recall that Governor Little sent out a fundraising email for his PAC asking for donations to fight President Joe Biden and the Democrats, only to funnel some of that money through his Idaho Victory Fund to the Idaho Liberty PAC which has instead attacked conservative senators.

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that these attacks on conservative senators are not being made by voters or grassroots activists, but by big league players from Idaho’s political establishment. Neither are the attacks being made in good faith, as if Chris Trakel really wanted to defund police and veterans, or Cindy Carlson really is callous toward a college town that experienced an awful tragedy. Instead, these are cynical poll-tested campaigns designed to oust conservatives who oppose big government spending and replace them with candidates more amenable to the governor, to Senate leadership, and to the big business special interests that bankroll that same establishment.

They will keep doing it until voters say enough, so it’s up to you and me to continue calling it out. As always, sunshine is the best disinfectant.