Bryan Clark: A grand hypocrisy? Labrador threat to sue Open Primaries Initiative clashes with record | Opinion

Another day, another way Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador is putting his self-interest ahead of the state’s public interest.

Labrador’s latest ongoing dereliction of duty involves the Open Primaries Initiative, a grassroots effort that is working to reform Idaho’s method of conducting elections. The contrived way he is doing that is by arguing that the initiative addresses multiple subjects, and therefore violates Idaho law.

That argument flies in the face of both his record and that of a key deputy when they were state lawmakers – and subject to an essentially identical requirement, except that it is a constitutional requirement for lawmakers while it’s just a statutory requirement for initiatives.

As attorney general, Labrador is charged with submitting short summaries of initiatives to be printed on signature-gathering sheets. It’s an administrative task that Labrador has decided to manipulate to try to sway the result of the election. And he has threatened to use his office to keep voters from getting a chance to decide whether the election system should be changed.

It has been obvious for weeks that Labrador would do all of this, not because the law is on his side but because the best way to predict Labrador’s behavior is to ask: What will benefit him politically? You can’t become a career politician if you don’t carefully protect your career.

As Idaho Public Television reported, while sending the proposed initiative title to the secretary of state, Labrador sent a letter announcing his intent to sue the initiative’s organizers if they make the ballot.

Labrador’s case is that the Open Primaries Initiative does two separable things:

1. Institute a blanket primary, where everyone can vote for who will appear on the general election ballot, regardless of party.

2. Shift to ranked-choice voting for the general election, where voters rank their top picks by preference instead of voting for only one candidate.

The case was developed in an opinion co-authored by former Sen. Jim Rice, who recently lost his seat in a primary election, only to be quickly hired as a deputy attorney general.

Given his opinion on what violates the single-subject rule, it’s quite remarkable that Rice voted for the single bill passed during the 2022 special session. That bill:

1. Provided Idahoans with a $500 million tax rebate.
2. Implemented a flat income tax.
3. Dedicated $410 million annually to additional school funding.

Those are three highly separable subjects – far more independent than the reforms in the Open Primaries Initiative. But Rice didn’t have sweeping objections about the bill then – in fact, he carried it on the Senate floor.

Neither is Labrador new to this multiple-subjects game.

For example, in 2010, when he served in the Idaho House, Labrador was a prominent promoter of the Idaho Health Freedom Act. To the degree this bill had a subject, it could only be summed up as something like: “fight Obamacare.”

Among its provisions were to bar all Idaho officials from enforcing the individual mandate and to direct the attorney general to seek an injunction against the federal health care law. Either of these easily could have been its own bill, but that’s not the way it was written.

Labrador had no “single subject” problems at that point. What’s changed between then and now? Not principles, just politics.

It’s intuitively clear that Labrador would have had a much harder time getting elected under the system envisioned by the Open Primaries Initiative. It’s laughable to think that he would be objective about a system that poses an existential threat to his greatest lifelong pursuit: his nearly two-decade political career.

For Rice and Labrador to now turn around and try to use the rule to kill a far more singular proposal is deeply hypocritical. It is yet another instance of the new Attorney General’s Office working for its own political interests and against the public interest.

Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman based in eastern Idaho.