Something is happening in Idaho politics this year that I have not seen in the 50 years I have followed politics in our great state. The emergence of credible and well-financed independent candidates running for major political office.

It is as if we are seeing the emergence of a new political movement developing right in front of our eyes.

For years I have believed that the future of good, reasonable, moderate to right of center politics in Idaho is what I call fusion politics. Fusion politics is where Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who are unhappy with their party’s candidates join hands to take back their state and nation.

They can build a better future for our state and our nation without losing their identity as a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. But they vote for the best person out of loyalty to their fellow citizens, democracy, and the Constitution.

We have seen for many years now where the traditional Republican and Democratic Party primaries are not working. Especially in the Idaho GOP primary, they give us general election candidates who cannot work across the aisle, compromise, and find solutions that address kitchen-table issues that impact people’s lives.

In other cases, primaries produce challengers with little or no chance of winning the general election. As a result, our state and national politics remain polarized, gridlocked, and ineffective.

We just saw this play out in Idaho’s panhandle where Republican central committees, which have become radicalized, united to defeat effective and thoughtful lawmakers like Jim Woodward, Mark Sauter, and Lori McCann.

On the national stage, we saw the same thing happening with President Trump taking out his revenge on Republicans who did not kiss his ring 100 percent of the time. For example, Texas Senator John Cornyn was recently defeated by Trump-endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton who is one of the most corrupt politicians in Texas history. His fellow Republican lawmakers even impeached him.

The Democrats now have the best chance in more than 30 years of electing their candidate, James Talarico. We are also seeing independent candidates emerging in Montana and Nebraska with the support of the Democratic establishment. Why? Because they have the best chance of beating far-right GOP candidates.

Because primary elections often nominate candidates who are either too extreme or unlikely to win, many voters are looking for a better option. That’s what we are seeing now in Idaho.

Todd Achilles, a former Democratic state lawmaker, is running as an Independent against 83-year-old Jim Risch who has spent his entire adult life in political office. Achilles is a veteran and business entrepreneur who has a real chance to defeat the incumbent senator who has lost touch with both his constituents and the U.S. Constitution.

As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Risch is the third most powerful person when it comes to our international relations. And yet he has decided not to lead when the world is on fire with the first European war since World War II and Trump’s new war with Iran which is costing the country lives and treasure and causing prices to skyrocket for families.

In the governor’s race, former Idaho Supreme Court Justice John Stegner is running as an independent against two-term Governor Brad Little, who may be the most vulnerable incumbent since Don Samuelson in 1970. Stegner is a right-of-center candidate in the style of Republican Governor Phil Batt and Senator Jim McClure.

Stegner is tapping into those Republicans who are disillusioned with Brad Little’s leadership, independents, and even Democrats who believe he has a good chance of knocking off Little in the general election.

In the First Congressional District, Sarah Zabel is running as an Independent against First District Congressman Russ Fulcher who has even supported the transfer of public lands to the states, a politically perilous stance. But Fulcher believes he is invincible because he has won re-election easily in the past.

But Zabel has come along and stands a good chance of giving Fulcher his toughest run yet. Zabel is not a lightweight. She is a retired Air Force General who served her country for 31 years. She is a former Republican who became an Independent because the Republican Party made it “clear it no longer stands for the principles I believe in: free markets, fiscal responsibility, limited government, a strong defense, and the rule of law.”

So, what’s not to like about these three independent candidates for Idaho? Nothing. They are the full package – thoughtful, bipartisan, collaborative, with significant life experiences that would make them valuable public servants.

The only problem is that they also face Democratic challengers in addition to the Republican incumbents they want to unseat. With two candidates challenging the incumbents, the vote will split, and the incumbents will waltz to re-election. Then we will continue to have the cycle of dysfunction, extremism, and polarization.

Some people argue that the Democrats who emerged from the May primary do not have a chance to win. None of them have an electoral history that shows they can win 50 percent of the vote, plus one. Yet the party has supported them knowing their past records.

There is an example from Idaho political history that is instructive here.

In 1966, an ultra-conservative state senator from Sandpoint named Don Samuelson defeated incumbent Republican Governor Robert Smylie in the primary. That prompted a more moderate Republican senator named Perry Swisher to run as independent candidate.

In the Democratic primary, a Salmon lawyer named Charles Herndon defeated a state senator named Cecil Andrus by about 1,300 votes and a third candidate, William J. Dee, by a larger margin. Andrus thought his political career was over. But Herndon was killed in a plane crash while campaigning seven weeks before the November election.

A battle ensued in the Democratic State Central Committee to see who would replace Herndon on the ticket. The natural choice would have been Andrus since he finished a close second behind Herndon. But Democratic boss, Tom Boise, supported a more conservative candidate, Max Hanson, Federal Agricultural Services Director for Idaho.

It was a bitter contest which Hanson was confident he would win thanks to the backing of party boss Boise. What Hanson and Boise did not consider was that Idaho’s two-term Democratic U.S. Senator Frank Church quietly supported Andrus behind the scenes. Church believed that Andrus would be the strongest candidate against Samuelson.

Church had his politically savvy chief of staff Verda Barnes help round up Central Committee votes for Andrus. With support from Church and Barnes, Andrus eked out a victory by two votes.

In November, Swisher and Andrus split the vote and Samuelson won re-election by a narrow margin over Andrus. If Swisher, the less electable candidate, had gotten out of the race Andrus stood a good chance of becoming the first Democratic governor in 25 years.

But the Central Committee’s decision to back Andrus, the strongest candidate, set the party up for success in the decades to come.

Four years later Andrus beat Samuelson and went on to get elected governor three more times, twice in landslides. He did it by attracting a coalition of Republican, Democrat, and independent voters – a fusion of voters.

Thanks to his popularity with voters of all stripes, Andrus changed the course of Idaho history, giving Democrats control of the governor’s office for the next 24 years. That control was broken when Andrus’ friend, Republican Phil Batt was elected governor, and he strengthened the party which gave the GOP control of the governor’s office for the last 32 years.

There are two things we can learn from the 1966 election.

First, politics is about winning, not running for office. To win an election, you must have the strongest candidate in the race. That candidate can be a Democrat or Republican turned independent as we have seen in the case of Achilles, Stegner, and Zabel.

But it must be candidate who can attract Republicans, Democrats, and Independents and create a “fusion movement.”

If Frank Church and the Democratic Central Committee did not have the wisdom to replace Herndon with Andrus, clearly the strongest candidate, the trajectory of Idaho politics would have turned out much different. And a once-in-a-generation leader would not have had a chance to serve his state and nation.

The second lesson from 1966 is that the weakest of the two challengers must drop out so that the strongest candidate can have a clear pathway to victory. Otherwise, they will split the vote, and the incumbent will sleepwalk towards re-election.

It takes a strong ego to run for political office, and there is nothing wrong with that. But to serve the best interest of one’s fellow citizens sometimes it is necessary to set one’s ego aside, drop out of a race, and back the strongest candidate who can win.