North Idaho senator yells ‘go back to where you came from’ at Native American candidate

At a small-town candidate forum this week, a North Idaho Republican senator left the event early after making a disparaging remark about the Native American heritage of a Democratic candidate, people in attendance said.

Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Viola, was one of six House and Senate candidates for District 6 who attended a moderated forum in Kendrick, a town southeast of Moscow.

Roughly an hour into the discussion, candidates were asked whether they thought there was discrimination in the state. Rep. Brandon Mitchell, R-Moscow, answered first, saying he thought there wasn’t any discrimination in Idaho, according to Julia Parker, Foreman’s Democratic opponent.

After Mitchell spoke, Trish Carter-Goodheart, a Democratic House candidate who is a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, responded that she thought racism and discrimination were real problems in the state, and referenced the history of white supremacist enclaves in North Idaho, according to a statement she released after the forum.

After she spoke, Foreman stood up and began to yell, saying: “I’m so sick and tired of this liberal bulls—-! Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” according to Carter-Goodheart’s statement.

The Idaho Statesman was unable to obtain a recording of Tuesday’s forum. Two of the event’s organizers, Parker and Kendrick Mayor Rose Norris, corroborated Carter-Goodheart’s account via phone.

Carter-Goodheart is from Lapwai, on the Nez Perce Reservation. Indigenous Nez Perce people have lived in Central Idaho and the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years.

“Racist comments like this one that were directed at me have no place in our community,” Carter-Goodheart told the Statesman. “Intolerance is unacceptable.”

“This is our land,” she added. “We’re never planning on leaving; this is where our ancestors are buried.”

Parker, Foreman’s opponent, told the Statesman that after he left early, the remaining candidates finished their discussion of discrimination, presented their closing statements and ended the forum. Earlier in the evening, after Parker had criticized Foreman’s record as a senator, she said he told her she’d “better not” do it again. Asking if he meant to threaten her, she said he replied: “You heard me.”

“He was clearly already agitated and making these kinds of aggressive statements,” she told the Statesman, noting that there was another candidate forum on Wednesday night that she reluctantly went to after the experience on Tuesday. “It really hurts democracy when somebody is threatening” at a political discussion, she said.

Norris, the Kendrick mayor, said she hopes future forums will be more civil. “People should be able to have differences and come together at a table or in a room and not have to fear that their opinions or their thoughts are going to be belittled,” she told the Statesman.

Foreman did not respond to a request for comment, but said he had been “race-baited” in a Thursday post on Facebook. In his post, Foreman called abortion “murder,” gender-affirming care for transgender people “sick and demonically influenced,” and homosexuality an “abomination.”

“Does the democrat party challenge the Word of God?” Foreman wrote. “Yes, every person in our state and nation has equal rights under the constitution. That is a good thing. But there are no designer or special rights associated with one’s sexual behavior — sorry democrats and other lefties.”

In his eight years in the Legislature, Foreman has become known for outbursts of anger.

In 2018, he yelled at a group of University of Idaho students seeking to meet with him to discuss birth control and sex education, according to previous Statesman reporting. He refused to meet with the students.

A few months earlier, Foreman was caught on camera yelling at a man while at the Latah County Fair, telling him to “go straight to hell,” according to previous reporting.

Born in Illinois, Foreman is a retired Moscow police officer.