Here’s an oddity: North Idaho legislative candidate Alan Littlejohn’s pre-primary campaign finance report says his campaign got a $100 contribution from “Lordship Church” in Athol. Typically, churches don’t contribute to partisan political campaigns, as it would endanger their tax-free status. But Lordship Church, according to a 2014 report in the Coeur d’Alene Press, was established that year by a California pastor who moved to the area as part of the Rev. Chuck Baldwin’s “Liberty Church” project, which seeks to “restore the patriot-pulpit” in America by establishing churches that eschew both federal 501c3 tax-free status and state incorporation status. That would leave them free to be involved in politics.

Baldwin is the former pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., and was the presidential candidate of the Constitution Party in 2008; he moved his extended family to Montana in late 2010, where he established his new church, Liberty Fellowship, warning of an imminent and violent confrontation with government forces and writing in a letter to followers, “The Mountain States just might become the Alamo of the twenty-first century, with, hopefully, much better results.” 

Lordship Church Pastor Warren Luke Campbell told the Press in 2014 that he and his father moved their church from southern California to North Idaho at Baldwin’s recommendation.

Littlejohn, a retired fire captain from California who’s challenging Rep. Eric Redman, R-Athol, in the GOP primary, reported raising a total of $2,371 for his campaign, and spending all but $341 of that, mostly on literature, printing, postage and advertising. His largest source of donations was himself and his immediate family, which accounted for more than $1,400 of his fundraising.

Redman hasn't yet filed his pre-primary report; the deadline is tomorrow.