To understand the values of a political party, look at its platform. In Idaho, the difference could not be starker.
The Idaho Democratic Party platform is rooted in freedom and economic opportunity. The newly revamped Idaho Republican Party platform is an extreme far-right vision to control your life and gut the investments that create good jobs, strengthen families, and make life more affordable.
Idaho Democrats support quality, affordable health care wherever Idahoans live. We want to restore the enhanced premium tax credits that Trump and Republicans in Congress ended, causing 30,000 Idahoans to lose coverage. The Idaho GOP platform would eliminate health coverage tax credits entirely. By repealing the Affordable Care Act, Republicans would end protections for people with preexisting conditions. By repealing voter-approved Medicaid expansion, they would rip coverage from another 90,000 Idahoans.
The Idaho Democratic platform recognizes that strong schools prepare children to be good citizens. It supports technical training, higher education, and job skills programs that help workers adapt and earn family-sustaining wages. Republican leaders want to end public funding for education beyond high school. That would devastate Idaho colleges and universities, along with the communities they anchor. Their opposition to LAUNCH scholarships would end career training for nurses, welders, linemen, and other skilled workers Idaho needs.
Our platform supports the freedom to make intimate medical decisions without government interference. We support legal abortion, contraception, and IVF. The Republican platform treats abortion as murder and calls for criminalization, including in cases of rape and incest. It would force rape survivors to give birth, force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, and threaten doctors for treating patients in crisis. By defining personhood at fertilization, it would make IVF legally impossible for Idaho families trying to have children.
Idahoans are proud to pay taxes when those dollars are invested wisely and everyone pays their fair share. The Idaho Democratic platform calls for tax fairness so the ultra-wealthy do not keep getting the biggest benefits from tax cuts. It also calls for restoring policies that help regular families, like the child tax credit and a homeowners exemption that rises with home values.
The Republican platform calls for more tax breaks for those who need them least and stays silent on how to replace the revenue. Idaho already has budget holes so deep that we are starting fire season without a penny, while cuts to Medicaid mental health services have been connected to four deaths.
Scores of Republican candidates have pledged loyalty to a platform written by extremists instead of pledging to represent their constituents. Idaho Democrats offer a different path. I invite Idahoans to read both platforms and vote this November for candidates who will put people over party.
