Sherri Ybarra, the Republican candidate for Idaho superintendent of public instruction, is clarifying her marital history after she told an Idaho Statesman reporter she and her husband came to Mountain Home in 1996; it’s the same story she told me in an interview in August. But Statesman reporter Bill Roberts writes today that Ybarra now acknowledges that she and her husband, Matthew Ybarra, were married in 1999 after she and her previous husband were divorced following their move to Mountain Home in 1996.

Roberts said he contacted Roberts after receiving a call from a reader about the history laid out in his published story. Ybarra told Roberts she wasn’t trying to cover up her divorce; she said she does not consider her first husband family and didn’t make the distinction about her divorce when recounting her history. “My brain doesn’t operate in the past,” she said. Roberts’ full post is online here.

Roberts reports that Ybarra was vague about her first marriage, saying she doesn’t recall exactly how long she was married and doesn’t know precisely when she was divorced. “It’s been so long,” she said. In my August interview with her, Ybarra told me she and her husband had been together, “Oh, gosh, 16 years,” and said the couple arrived in Mountain Home in 1996 when her husband was in the military. “He did his time and that was the end of it,” she said, saying he’s now employed as a federal police officer for the Veterans Administration in Boise. She initially told Roberts she and her husband had been married “nearly 20 years;” she now says they will have been married 16 years in March. Her bio on her campaign website includes a photo of her with her husband "of 15 years" and their son. It says she “moved to Idaho in 1996 with the military,” but Ybarra told me in August that she never served in the military; only her husband did.

Roberts reports that Ybarra’s vagueness follows several other miscues during her campaign. She has failed to vote in most of the primary and general elections since coming to Idaho and she was accused of plagiarism by her Democratic opponent, Jana Jones, after portions of Jones’ website were copied onto Ybarra’s website; Ybarra later apologized.