I’ve traveled to Twin Falls and Coeur d’Alene recently and can tell you that people don’t want to see extremist politicians continue to chip away at our freedoms.
In Twin Falls, I spoke with students. Many were concerned about the direction Idaho is taking. I spoke with a nursing student who is deeply concerned about the nursing shortage in Idaho. She wants to see legislators help build her future profession by investing in education. Instead, she sees extreme politicians inventing reasons to attack higher education. She doesn’t see Republican leaders standing up to the Idaho Freedom Foundation and other groups that have vowed to defund education.
Students see what’s happening and they don’t like it.
In Coeur d’Alene, the local community college is also the talk of the town. Community members worry that extremists who took over the publicly elected board are threatening this wonderful college’s survival. The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (the accrediting body) reported that, due to a politically divisive board election and the behavior of a top board member, “… there is reason to perceive that academic freedom is vulnerable to inappropriate pressure.”
And there it is, the theme that pops up wherever I go in Idaho: our freedom is vulnerable to inappropriate pressure.
In an interview with the Coeur d’Alene Press, I addressed this sharp turn away from personal freedom among today’s elected Republican politicians:
“That’s just the exact opposite of the GOP I was born and raised in,” said the Idaho native. “It was ‘the government stays out of your business.’ It just really hit me hard this last couple of years that it’s been just the opposite, where now they’re trying to jump in and say, ‘We want to control everything because it’s for your own good.’ This isn’t the Grand Old Party that I know.”
“Terri Pickens Manweiler: Ready to Fight,” April 22, 2022
The good news is that I meet Republicans, Democrats, and non-affiliated folks everywhere I go who are no longer willing to risk our freedom and our future to unqualified and unfit political extremists.
This November, when I am elected as Idaho’s Lieutenant Governor, we will make honesty, courage, and competence basic qualifications of leadership again.