Liberty Bros, Part 1: “Origins”
The story of the bastardization of a philosophy, the perpetuation of bigotry, and the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series.
Part 1: “Origins” covers the formation of the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its controversial lobbying tactics.
Part 2: “Legacy” covers how the group uses a veil of libertarianism to perpetuate bigotry.
Part 3: “Frenzy” is still being written, and will cover the actions of the Idaho Freedom Foundation and their allies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Place of Refuge
Idahoans inherit a state-level mythology from our under-funded public school systems. Glued together textbooks, maybe missing a few presidents, chisel an identity into us from the rough granite of sunburnt flesh, barley fields, and endless forestland. Words like “libertarian,” “independence,” and “rugged individualism” nestle into our heads. People talk about doing things “the Idaho way,” as though America were a highway and Idaho were an exit, leading to a paradise of leave-me-alone-but-not-lonely and taking-care-of-my-own-but-also-others. To Scot McIntosh of the Idaho Statesman, “[The Idaho way is] pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, while at the same time helping your neighbor in need.”² Republican Idaho State Representative John Vander Woude promised to “keep fighting for an Idaho way forward on Medicaid expansion”³ before voting for the cruel, cookie-cutter Medicaid work requirements that had been part of a “South Carolina way” and “Georgia way” and “Montana way” and so on - maybe the opposite of McIntosh’s interpretation. Like “rugged individualism,” the Idaho way is in the eye of the beholder, forever sewn into their role in a not-so-distinctly Idaho fiction.
The state’s storied independent streak belies a surprisingly conventional modern political history for most of the last century - at least when it comes to partisan preference and to the extent that any political entity in the U.S. can be called “conventional.” The control of Idaho’s legislature and governorship usually followed the national winds, swinging back and forth, Republican to Democrat, in a way that seems quaint by today's standards. Like many states, ticket-splitting, the act of voting for people of both parties in a given general election (like a Republican Governor and Democratic President), was common through the post-World War Two period. As partisan polarization reached a fever pitch in the mid-90s and ticket-splitting decreased, Republicans acquired a governing trifecta, holding huge majorities in both legislative chambers and the governor’s office. That’s where we are today.
But this Republican chokehold wasn’t solely built on partisan sorting. Regardless of Democratic or Republican state politics, Idaho has been overwhelmingly white since the United States’ and Britain’s genocide of the indigenous peoples of the area. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nixon’s Southern Strategy successfully converted Southern states to the Republican Party by appealing to white racists in the South. As appeasing deeply racist white southerners became a larger and larger part of the Republican Party’s identity, so too did the idea of whiteness and white supremacy. This political realignment, like many before it, spurred geographic sorting as political identities sought like-minded communities in suburbs, other counties, or other states. Many identitarian conservatives, motivated by racial anxiety and newfound cultural horror, sought refuge in a utopia where the cultural, racial, and economic hierarchies they had benefited from could be more easily preserved. Many, many conservatives from more liberal states, like California and Washington, sought refuge in the white, conservative mecca of Idaho in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps the most symbolic inmigration during this period came in the form of the Aryan Nations, the Neo-Nazi group headquartered in Hayden Lake, Idaho from the mid-1970s until its dissolution in 2001.
This was not the first time nor, as we’ll discuss, the last time white supremacists sought out refuge in Idaho. During and after the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers moved west to the Oregon Territory, which comprised modern Washington, Oregon, most of Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming, to escape the political and economic turmoil of the South and the cultural shifts in the North. Building upon existing white supremacy in the area, the Oregon Provisional Government enacted Black Exclusion Laws between 1844 and 1857, barring African-Americans from the territory (which, again, included the land now known as Idaho). Settlers joined mining and timber operations throughout the area while white supremacists enacted nationwide bans on Chinese immigration and the government of the Idaho Territory banned interracial marriage. In Idaho City, then the largest city in the Northwest and now a small near-ghost town an hour and half Northeast of Boise, you can reportedly walk among tombstones of Confederate soldiers, and one of the bars downtown proudly displays a huge Confederate flag above the bandstage. The state has an active chapter of the Sons of the Confederacy, and their leader offered Boise State Public Radio one of the most confounding quotes I’ve ever read: “I think it’s disgusting that people hijack the Confederate flag for white racism.”⁴
With that legacy living on most explicitly in the Aryan Nations (but also throughout Idaho’s institutions) came the Ruby Ridge incident 1992, where federal agents laid siege to the Weaver family’s house south of Bonner’s Ferry in North Idaho, resulting in the deaths of a federal marshall, a mother of three, one of her sons, and the family dog. This incident, along with the race riots of the 80s, the Waco siege in 1993, and the white nationalist Oklahoma City bombing fanned the flames of rapid, paranoid, conservative flight to isolated, white states like Idaho - and it continues to this day. Conservative paranoia and fundamentalist religious beliefs also gave rise to the Patriot Movement, a loosely organized network of militia groups, Christian separatists, white nationalists, and far-right politicians and activists who are especially active in the Western U.S.
This history is critical to deciphering what exactly “rugged individualism,” “independence,” and “libertarianism,” and the “Idaho way” really mean when politically implemented. It also helps place context around the fraught, uneven, and morally bankrupt interpretations employed by Idaho’s preeminent group of “libertarians,” the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
Philoso-free
The capricious ideology of the Idaho Freedom Foundation is best understood as a now common bastardization of libertarianism, the philosophy that either lives somewhere between socialism and fascism or merely as a modifier for both. Libertarianism formed as a response to the tyrannical social hierarchies of 17th and 18th century feudal England. It laid out natural, fundamental rights imbued to all people and was naturally skeptical toward authoritarianism. The freedoms denied to feudal serfs, like religion, speech, and private property, were identified as inherent by libertarian philosophers. The musings of anarchist-libertarian thinkers like Thomas Paine and John Locke heavily influenced the drafting of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.
Nevertheless, the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution celebrated libertarian ideals while perpetuating slavery, patriarchy, and genocide. And so, a distinctly American version of libertarianism was born.
Where classical libertarianism was a philosophy of opposition to those in power, American libertarianism is wielded by those with power to maintain the social, economic, and racial hierarchies that benefit them. Promoting and institutionalizing libertarian ideals in the context of an unjust society bred failed ideas like the American Dream - the concept that hard work and rugged determination alone is what a person needs to get ahead in this country. It hardly matters that you imbue inalienable constitutional rights to all people if you institutionally and operationally deny earned outcomes via policy, legislation, and the ongoing effects of torture, bondage and segregation inflicted onto vast swathes of the American and indigenous public.
The white-dominated Tea Party movement used American libertarianism to argue for the maintenance of cultural entitlements that it perceived to have been curtailed as society became more diverse and egalitarian. Those same members of the Tea Party were the folks donning MAGA hats to celebrate Trumpian authoritarianism, chanting support for the jailing of political enemies, advocating for strict Christian theocracy, and pushing asylum seekers into hellish concentration camps - none of which John Locke probably had in mind. Ron Paul, the longtime face of modern American libertarianism, held well-documented white supremacist views and many current white supremacists and far-right sleazebags cut their political teeth during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaign. America’s most-punchable modern Nazi, Richard Spencer, supported Paul’s 2008 campaign and even hosted Paul at his fascist discussion groups.⁵ Paul’s quotes are peppered throughout this series as a testament to the straight line between white supremacy and American libertarianism.
In Idaho, our brand of American libertarianism created a congressman named Bill Sali and gave an up-and-coming political grifter the experience he would need to translate bigotry into libertarianism, then Idaho law.
A Foundation for Freedom
Republican U.S. Congressman Bill Sali represented Idaho’s First Congressional District, comprising Northern and Western Idaho, from 2006 to 2008 after spending 16 years as one of the most conservative State Representatives in the Idaho Legislature. Sali was a lightning rod for controversy. In 2007, Sali responded to a Hindu prayer being offered to open the U.S. Senate by saying, “that's a different god" and that it "creates problems for the longevity of this country."⁶ The Congressman also directed his xenophobic ire toward the first Muslim elected to Congress, asserting, “We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.”⁷ Sali believed that any diversion from strict Christian principles presented an existential threat to the country.
“We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.”
Screenshot from Bill Sali’s website.
From 2006 - 2008, Sali’s communications director and campaign spokesperson was a man named Wayne Hoffman. A former journalist who became disenchanted with journalism after spending 7 years covering the Idaho Statehouse for the Idaho Press-Tribune and Idaho Statesman, Hoffman was now charged with interpreting the vile slop spilling out of Rep. Sali and making it palatable to the public. Here’s Hoffman giving it his best try, via an article in the Idaho Press:
“"What Congressman Sali is saying is that he happens to disagree with the notion of offering a prayer to Hindu gods, plural," Hoffman said. "Are we going to start our mornings reaching out to the hand of God or spinning the wheel and choosing what god it lands on?"
Sali respects other religions and bears no ill will towards Hindus, Hoffman said. But he recognizes that the United States was built on Christian principles.
"This county ... continues to prosper because of that devotion to those principles," Hoffman said. "(Sali) believes the prayer offered at the beginning of each session of the Senate is a meaningful thing. It's not something you do to take up time. It's something you do because you truly want to reach out to God for guidance."” - Idaho Press Tribune, August 10, 2007 ⁷
Well, at least we have the assurance that Sali “bears no ill will toward Hindus,” thank you, Wayne. A similarly unconvincing assurance came in response to accusations of Islamophobia after Sali’s comments about Congressman Kieth Ellison.
"What he's saying is it's very different from what the Founding Fathers had contemplated," Hoffman said. "That's not making a positive or negative statement about it. It's just a matter of fact." - Idaho Press Tribune, August 10, 2007 ⁷
While it may seem quaint by today's standards, Sali’s behavior was costing him powerful political allies within Idaho, many of whom he’d already burned bridges with during his long tenure in the Idaho Statehouse. Hoffman had a front row seat for eight years to Sali’s right-wing outbursts within the Idaho Statehouse. Throughout his 16-year tenure in the Idaho House, Sali alienated traditional and establishment Republicans, scoring points against them at every turn, from university funding to social issues. While in Congress, Sali regularly broke with his senior colleague, Congressman Mike Simpson, leveraging protest votes against common sense, bipartisan legislation. While colleagues in the Idaho Statehouse, Simpson reportedly threatened to throw Sali out a window.⁸
The 2008 election would prove to be a wave year for Democrats. Despite Hoffman’s best efforts and the legacy of more than a decade of Republican wins in Idaho’s 1st district, Congressman Sali lost to Walt Minnick, a conservative Boise Democrat who would go on to be the sole Democrat ever endorsed by the Tea Party movement. Harking to the stories Idahoans’ tell ourselves, Minnick claimed he won because Idahoans are “independent” voters. ⁹
While Sali slunk into the depths of irrelevance, Hoffman saw an opportunity. Right-wing furor was reaching a fever pitch, no doubt invigorated by the election of the nation’s first black president, Barrack Obama. From the ashes of Sali’s far-right, xenophobic political career and riding a wave of right-wing energy, Wayne Hoffman built the Idaho Freedom Foundation in 2009.
“Are we going to start our mornings reaching out to the hand of God or spinning the wheel and choosing what god it lands on?”
The Spiderweb
Wayne Hoffman and fellow Republican activist Heather Lauer started the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) in 2009. Lauer left soon after to start a consulting career in D.C., leaving Hoffman as the figurehead for the newborn organization. A 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit, IFF has strict limits on its political activities. In exchange, it doesn’t have to pay the federal income tax, donations to the organization are tax-deductible, and it doesn’t have to disclose its donors. In contrast, most political organizations must pay taxes, receive non-tax deductible donations, and disclose their donors. Those caveats, combined with lax state oversight, have helped IFF accrue power, and injections of dark money helped it accrue power fast.
It took less than a year for IFF to start yielding results. As the state prepared to raise the pensions of Idaho government retirees by a single percent during the 2010 legislative session, Hoffman distributed pamphlets to legislators throughout the Statehouse that sought to “educate” legislators on the unfunded liability of the state’s pension fund. Subsequently, the Idaho House passed a resolution barring the state from raising the pensions of workers as the country slowly recovered from the recession. Luckily, the State Senate managed to kill the effort. In a piece by AP reporter John Miller entitled “Ex-newsman recasts himself as conservative player,” Hoffman was characterized as a “rising leader of the GOP's libertarian right. He organized a January 2010 tea party rally in Boise and helped bring libertarian-leaning Texas Congressman Ron Paul to town in March.”¹⁰ It’s not a coincidence that the Tea Party and Ron Paul, embodiments of the basely xenophobic and hierarchical American version of libertarianism, found safe harbor in IFF’s ideology.
IFF had found a market for “libertarianism” and was using techniques Hoffman learned after years of Statehouse journalism to influence policy in that direction. At the same time, several national corporate interest groups were looking for conservative political activists who could become vessels for anti-taxation and anti-regulation policies at the state-level.
The largest of those corporate head-hunters was the State Policy Network (SPN).
Screenshot from SPN’s website.
SPN coordinates activities among a network of right-wing think-tanks, one of whom is the Idaho Freedom Foundation. There is at least one version of IFF in every state in America, allowing SPN’s sphere of power to swallow the entire nation. In Nevada, they are the Nevada Policy Research Institute; in Washington and Oregon, simply the Freedom Foundation; in Montana, the Montana Policy Institute; and so on for every state. So much for “rugged individualism” and “independence.”
As the brain of this massive spider, SPN exerts control over its affiliate organizations by awarding them grant funding. These grants ensure SPN retains some level of strategic command over the actions of its member organizations. The tug and pull of grants and directives from SPN form the muscles of the spiders legs, adjusting and shifting and bending the organizations to meet certain goals. At the heart of the creature, shoving money through SPN into each of its spindly limbs, are massive corporations like Koch Industries, Phillip Morris, Kraft Foods, Facebook, and Comcast, along with a consortium of mega-rich conservative donors of the Koch, DeVos, and Searle variety. When confronted with accusations that SPN might be a soulless grift that shovels corporate money, policy, and interests into state legislatures, the President of SPN, Tracie Sharp, asserted that each of the 64 SPN-affiliated think-tank organizations are “fiercely independent.” ¹¹
SPN isn’t the only corporate group funneling resources and interests into the Idaho Freedom Foundation. The American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporately funded organization that drafts model policy to be duplicated and implemented through state legislatures, works closely with SPN affiliated groups and directly with state lawmakers. Lawmakers can become members of ALEC for a cool, crisp hundred dollar bill. In exchange, they receive trainings and attend conferences where they learn how to pass legislation that benefits ALEC’s funders, like the National Rifle Association, Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Fox News, and more. There are over 20 sitting Idaho legislators who are affiliated with ALEC, paying dues and attending conferences. ¹²
ALEC and SPN work together to ensure policies that raise the profit margins of their donors are fast-tracked through state legislatures. Those policies include things like “Stand-your-ground” gun laws, obscure occupational licensing reforms, Medicaid work requirements, the annihilation of public school budgets, union-busting laws, and environmental deregulation. As these corporate interests surveyed America in the late 2000s, Idaho became a nail and Wayne Hoffman and his new organization became a hammer.
Lobbying For Liberty
Hoffman and his team know their way around the statehouse. They are also keenly aware that their 501(c)(3) status has a hard limit on the amount of lobbying a group can do.
"Lobby" and "lobbying" each means attempting through contacts with, or causing others to make contact with, members of the legislature or legislative committees or an executive official, to influence the approval, modification or rejection of any legislation by the legislature of the state of Idaho or any committee thereof or by the governor… - Statutory Reference: Title 67, Chapter 66, Idaho Code ¹³
However, there isn’t a limit to the amount of “education and advocacy” a tax-exempt non-profit like IFF can engage in. The difference between “education and advocacy” and “lobbying” is thread-bare - so thin that an entire legal industry has developed around ensuring tax-exempt nonprofits are in compliance with the rules of their IRS status. Essentially, where “lobbying” directly attempts to influence a legislator’s votes on particular legislation, “education and advocacy” seek to argue for a particular viewpoint, divorced from the legislative and electoral implications of that viewpoint.
“We’re an education organization,” said Hoffman, who was paid $99,645 by the group in 2012. “Our biggest focus is the education of policymakers.” - Spokesman Review, September 13, 2013 ¹⁴
This is kind of like hiding a bag of drugs in the forest, telling someone that a bag of drugs might be in the forest, then claiming you didn’t distribute the drugs to the person; you merely “educated” the person on where there might be some hidden drugs. It’s a kind of middle-school level loophole that has swiss-cheesed our entire legislative and governing system.
Only twenty-percent of a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit’s expenditures can be used for lobbying activities. Meanwhile, organizations like the National Rifle Association and Sierra Club operate as 501(c)(4) organizations, whose donations are not tax-deductible, but they can conduct a greater amount of lobbying and political work. The entire theory around this tax-structure is that some charities, like churches and homeless shelters, provide a public good to society. By granting certain charities a tax-exempt status, tax-payers essentially subsidize the existence of certain charities under the theory that their presence benefits American society. This includes the American Red Cross, the American Cancer Society, the American branch of the United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF), and the Humane Society, among others. The Idaho Freedom Foundation, by lieu of its tax-exempt status, counts itself as among these groups. If you think IFF provides a public good to society that belongs in remotely the same category as UNICEF, well, all I can say is may God have mercy on your soul.
[In 2013], IFF had three registered lobbyists, was a constant presence in the Capitol and led the opposition to the governor’s biggest legislative proposal of the session, the bill creating a state-based health insurance exchange. It rated 150 bills against its agenda, assigning positive or negative scores, and tracked lawmakers’ votes. The group writes legislation, testifies to committees, sponsors lectures and tours for legislators, conducts polls, publishes reports and sends out emails, and its lawmaker scores have been prominently featured in campaign ads. - Spokesman Review, September 13, 2013 ¹⁴
In 2013, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a nationally renowned expert on nonprofit tax law and professor at the University of Notre Dame, called IFF’s activities a “serious yellow flag.” ¹⁴ Mayer contended that activities can be both educational and lobbying, and that IFF is likely underreporting the amount of lobbying they conduct. This dovetails with the observations by both legislators and lobbyists from more overtly political organizations, who report seeing IFF lobbyists in the statehouse more often than almost any group, even those that explicitly conduct lobbying.
Hoffman said in his view, even writing bills isn’t lobbying. “As I understand it, that is not lobbying because what you are doing is you are working on helping lawmakers divine good public policy, which is what we do anyway,” he said. “It’s educational.” - Spokesman Review, September 13, 2013 ¹⁴
The scrutiny of IFF’s tax status is well-documented in a 2013 article in the Spokesman Review by Idaho’s preeminent political reporter Betsy Russel headlined “Idaho Freedom Foundation’s charitable status scrutinized.”¹⁴ With the deft hand of a hardened red-state journalist, Russel presents the perspectives of both sides. The reader is left to come to their own conclusions and weigh the expert analysis of a nationally-recognized tax expert against the “feelings” and “as-I-understand-its” of a locally-recognized far-right activist.
For every dollar in taxes the Idaho Freedom Foundation doesn’t pay, taxpayer’s like me and you foot the bill instead. In lieu of contributing their fair share in taxes to support government programs, public education, or legitimate charities, IFF gets to educate against the very institutions that those taxes fund.
This feeble maneuvering by Hoffman and the IFF to defend its ability to suckle from the taxpayers’ teat seems to have worked. The IRS hasn’t publicly investigated the group for allegedly underreporting their lobbying. We are left with a well-written article, Hoffman’s flimsy interpretation of tax law, and an unchecked organization that funnels its perverse viewpoint into Idaho’s legislature at the taxpayers’ expense.
In Part 2 of this series, we’ll explore those viewpoints and how they perpetuate bigotry while hiding behind the thin veil of libertarian ideology. ■
Read Liberty Bros, Part 2: "Legacy"
footnotes
Kirkich, J. (2008, January 7). Angry White Man. The New Republic. Retrieved from https://newrepublic.com/article/61771/angry-white-man
McIntosh, S. (2020, March 20). ‘The Idaho Way’ means different things to different people. Idaho Statesman. Retrieved from https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/from-the-opinion-editor/article240977931.html
Vander Woude, J. (2019, October 5). Guest Opinion: John Vander Woude: We will keep fighting for the Idaho way on Medicaid expansion. The Spokesman-Review. Retrieved from https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/oct/05/guest-opinion-we-will-keep-fighting-for-the-idaho-/
Barnhill, F. (2017, October 3). Legacy Of Hate: Idaho's Confederate Connection. Boise State Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/legacy-hate-idahos-confederate-connection#stream/0
Wood, G. (2017, October). His Kampf. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/his-kampf/524505/
McCarter, J. (2007, August 9). ID-01: The Ugliness that is Bill Sali. Daily Kos. Retrieved from https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2007/8/9/369459/-
Butts, M. (2007, August 10). Sali concerned about Hindu prayer. Idaho Press-Tribune. Retrieved from https://www.idahopress.com/news/sali-concerned-about-hindu-prayer/article_511c63ea-2de5-5c49-9fa8-a16db595b747.html
Babits, S. (2008, October 26). Idaho Republican Faces Tough Re-Election Battle. National Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96147528
Minnick edges Sali in upset. (2008, November 6). Idaho Press-Tribune. Retrieved from https://www.idahopress.com/news/minnick-edges-sali-in-upset/article_812aff31-f827-5b11-80f0-1ea9ce41054d.html
Miller, J. (2010, April 19). Ex-newsman recasts himself as conservative player. The Spokesman-Review. Retrieved from https://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2010/apr/19/hoffman-rising-leader/
Blumenthal, P. (2013, November 14). Meet The Little-Known Network Pushing Ideas For Kochs, ALEC. HuffPost. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-policy-network-kochs_n_4275899
Idaho ALEC Politicians. (n.d.). Retrieved April 14, 2020, from https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Idaho_ALEC_Politicians
Lobbyist Information: Idaho Code, Title 67, Chapter 66. Retrieved April 14, 2020, from https://sos.idaho.gov/elect/lobbyist/lobbydef.htm
Russel, B. (2013, September 15). Idaho Freedom Foundation’s charitable status scrutinized. The Spokesman-Review. Retrieved from https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/sep/15/idaho-freedom-foundations-charitable-status/
Louis Herber was born and raised in rural Idaho and currently works in the nonprofit sector. They reside in Meridian, hate fascism, and work too closely with political leaders to safely share their identity while retaining a professional paycheck.
