Betsy Z. Russell

An open seat in Congress, as current Rep. Raul Labrador steps down to run for governor, has drawn a whopping 10 candidates to the primary election ballot – and poses a big challenge for Idaho voters to sort through as they prepare to make their picks on May 15.

When six GOP candidates for Idaho’s open 1st District congressional seat faced off in the “Idaho Debates” last week, much of the fireworks – and the humor – came at the end, in the closing statements.

Luke Mayville was a junior at Sandpoint High School when the 9/11 attacks happened in September of 2001, and his English teacher, Marianne Love, encouraged the quiet, high-performing student to read his essay on the attacks in front of a school assembly just a few days later.

After years of gathering annually at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise to decry “fire borrowing” – the situation in which the Forest Service, each year, shifts millions from other programs when the costs to fight the West’s escalating wildfires balloons, thereby cutting prevention efforts meant to reduce that trend – a bipartisan group of congressmen and top agency officials had a different tone when they gathered at NIFC on Wednesday: celebration.

Former Idaho Rep. Kathy Sims is vowing to fight her removal from the ballot for failing to be a registered voter in her new district for a year before the election; but for now, she's off – unless she gets a judge to rule otherwise.

Tommy Ahlquist, a GOP candidate for governor of Idaho, was endorsed by two prominent millennial Trump supporters on Monday – Charlie Kirk, who was the millennial director of the Trump campaign, and Candace Owens, a conservative commentator and YouTube star who rails against the Black Lives Matter movement.

Former state Rep. Kathy Sims, R-Coeur d’Alene, is being removed from the ballot in her bid for a comeback in a Post Falls district, after the Idaho Secretary of State’s office determined that she had just registered in her new district in February.

Backers of the Medicaid expansion initiative announced Monday that they have more than enough signatures to get the measure on the November ballot in Idaho.