Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin has performed one notable public service: she showed us why an extremist should not be lieutenant governor. Let’s not thank her just yet.
Plenty of lieutenant governors have used the seat as a personal political springboard. Think of U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, former Gov. Butch Otter, and current Gov. Brad Little. But McGeachin’s political abuse of the public trust has been uniquely awful. Here’s how former Idaho Chief Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones put it, “this is the only Lt. Governor … that has acted like an idiot.”
Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin made herself–and the office she holds–a household name for conspiracy, extremism, and national embarrassment. How did she accomplish so much in such little time? She shows audacious disregard for most standards of truth and decency.
Take a look at the farce she called “The Education Task Force (to) Examine Indoctrination in Idaho Education.” The task force was formed to hunt folks suspected of brewing caldrons full of critical race theory–aka Idaho teachers. For the record, despite McGeachin’s work, critical race theory still doesn’t exist in Idaho classrooms and Idaho teachers still do not perform witchcraft.
When the Idaho Press Club requested a peek at the progress of McGeachin’s inquisitors, Idaho’s attorney general office advised her to comply. McGeachin ignored the good advice and shopped for an attorney who would give her advice that matched her political agenda. Now, McGeachin wants taxpayers to pay her $29,000 in legal fees for her losing battle to make Idaho’s government opaque.
For all that expensive work, McGeachin still didn’t have the decency to declare Idaho schools “sorcerer-free.”
Understand, McGeachin’s extremism has taken the office of lieutenant governor to a new low. Because of that, the GOP now has extremists vying to replace McGeachin. One person, Rep. Priscilla Giddings, is an ally of McGeachin and has shamed herself with behavior that a legislative ethics committee declared “unbecoming of a legislator and detrimental to the legislative body.” The other leading candidate, House Speaker Scott Bedke, has led the work to privatize public lands and has backed education goals that would devastate rural public schools, according to a recent opinion from three prominent former Idaho public school superintendents.
Extremism creates more extremists. That’s the legacy of Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin.
So, no thank you, Lt. Gov. McGeachin.