Daily Digest 4/14/26
Catching up on some news.
If you’re a paid supporter of the Gem State Chronicle, you should have received an exclusive legislative primary preview yesterday. All of us have finite time and energy, so it’s important to figure out where it the most bang for our buck (both literally and metaphorically).
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Congressman Simpson’s Newsletter
Congressman Mike Simpson’s weekly newsletter covered a congressional art competition, nuclear innovation in Idaho, and more.
Tim Oren’s Analysis
Data analyst Tim Oren continues his work mapping legislative factions during the session to the primary election, looking at how money correlates with political positions:
I used the data behind my House voting map to find out which votes had the greatest effect in separating the ‘RINO’ cluster (#2 in last week’s map) from the ‘Swing’ cluster (#3). Those were, in order: H951, HJM18, H700, H660, HJR9 and S1247 – all of them getting ‘ayes’ on average from the Swing group, and ‘nays’ on average from the RINOs.
Mean Girls
I’ve compared Idaho politics to the 2004 film starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams in the past. This week, contributor Brian Parsons did the same thing:
In our recent mayoral election, this was on full display as the mean girls brought the full quiver of labels and hurled their pejoratives at the uninitiated Greg Cates, who was lured into the Kafka trap. This is how the Kafka trap works… any acknowledgment of the insult is an admission of guilt. And acknowledge it they did. The mean girl politics weren’t limited to any one party or the extremes of Pocatello either; it was fully deployed by the good old boys of the genteel class, who had hoped to maintain control by proxy.
Mean girl politics is as much a Pocatello staple as potatoes. My response remains to encourage people to start talking again. Social Media is toxic, but if you take a moment to sit down and talk to people, you will find you have more in common than you think. Given our failure to do so, I’d like to correct the record on some of the latest targets:
I’m still analyzing the recent legislation session, including how many bills died in each committee as well as why the governor vetoed House Bill 978 following sine die. Stay tuned, and subscribe for regular updates that give you the tools you need to be more engaged in Idaho politics. Make sure you’ve bookmarked the Primary Pulse at the Gem State Chronicle for information about your Republican candidates for the Legislature.