Some Idahoans are angry at Trump, Legislature. It’s giving Democrats a boost

In 2017, the Idaho Democratic and Republican parties were neck-and-neck in fundraising, each bringing in about $500,000 a year. But within a few years, their paths had diverged. While the Republican Party’s fundraising stayed flat, the Democrats’ quadrupled, Democratic Party Chair Lauren Necochea said.

In 2024, the Democrats raised $2.3 million, said Avery Roberts, a spokesperson for the party. So far this year, the party has raised about $750,000.

It’s an unexpected result in a deep-red state. But the party’s leaders attribute the shift to some Idaho voters’ unhappiness with President Donald Trump and the Idaho Legislature.

“The moral imperative has never been stronger,” Necochea told the Idaho Statesman in an interview. She called the 2025 legislative session “a new level of extreme,” citing the passage of a curtailment to the state’s Medicaid expansion and a new tax credit for families sending their children to non-public schools.

“People are activated,” she said.

The Idaho Republican Party declined to comment on its interpretation of the fundraising disparity, saying information about its fundraising was publicly available. Jaclyn Kettler, a professor of political science at Boise State University, noted that political parties take varied approaches to fundraising, with some expecting candidates to do most of their own fundraising individually, and others raising funds centrally and then distributing them to candidates and local offices.

The uptick in fundraising reflects a greater energy in politics, with more people expressing an interest in running for office and attending rallies, said Dakota Sharette, the Democratic Party’s executive director. About 90% of Democrats’ fundraising in 2024 came from Idaho residents, Roberts told the Statesman by email.

“I’ve been working in Democratic politics for a decade,” Sharette told the Statesman. “I have not seen Democratic voters so activated” so many months ahead of an election.

Even in a state where the odds are stacked against Democrats winning elections, donating to the party can be a way of expressing political opinions in a fraught national political environment, Kettler said.

Reviewing itemized donations to the state’s Democratic and Republican parties, Kettler found that Idaho Democrats received funds from about 1,900 individual donors in the 2024 election cycle, compared with about 350 unique donors who gave to the state’s Republican Party. (Both numbers are an undercount, Kettler emphasized, since the parties also received hundreds of thousands of unitemized donations.)

But voters’ energy and mobilization cuts both ways, Democratic leaders said. Some lawmakers, including West Boise’s Democratic Rep. Steve Berch, have already been the subject of attack ads – something that usually occurs much closer to the date of the election, Sharette said.

All of Idaho’s legislative seats will be up for election again in 2026, with primaries in May.

“I think this is new,” Sharette said. “The scale of the campaigns against our incumbents is like the scale that you would see in April of the election year – so it’s like a year ahead.”

Democrats use funds to expand presence in rural areas

In recent years, Idaho Democrats have focused on expanding their reach in rural parts of the state. In 2024, they managed to recruit candidates to compete in every legislative district – but experienced little success at the ballot box. Republicans picked off a Democratic state senator in West Boise and Democratic state representatives in Central Idaho and Pocatello. All told, Democrats’ proportion of legislative seats dropped below 15%.

But party leaders say it’s a long game, and they’re using their additional funds to double down on the strategy. The party is investing in recruiting candidates and building up party infrastructure in rural parts of the state, it said in a Tuesday news release.

“The campaign builds on progress made in 2024, when Idaho Democrats ran legislative candidates in all 35 districts for the first time in decades,” Necochea said in the release. “Now the goal is to go further: contest every statewide office, expand the slate of local candidates, and make sure no community is left behind.”

Necochea acknowledged to the Statesman that there were some districts where a Democrat would be highly unlikely to win an election, and Kettler noted that repeated failures at the ballot box could discourage future donations. But Necochea said the party didn’t see winning seats as the only version of success – instead, she said, the party aims to change the conversation.

“We see the harm of a supermajority led by people who are always looking over their shoulder to the right, and never to the left,” she said. When Democrats run, it may moderate the conversation, she said, because Republican candidates are “feeling some of that pressure coming from the other direction.”