The resistance has extended into the farthest reaches of the nation, even to deep red Idaho where most of the news lately has been about embarrassing and alarming anti-abortion measures and the illegal and embarrassing push by Gov. Butch Otter to allow health insurance policies that don't comply with the Affordable Care Act. Along with various other embarrassing national stories. Let's face it, most of what the nation hears about my home state is just embarrassing. Not quite Florida-level of embarrassing, but pretty damned disheartening.
But the resistance is present here, and has been since January 2017 when thousands showed up, in a heavy snowfall, for the Women's March in Boise and all over the state. Progressives, though outnumbered, are powering up in Idaho, like they are all over the county, and are taking it to doorsteps all over the state with the aim of getting Medicaid expansion on the state's ballot in November.
"My entire life, I've been watching the lack of care for people," said [Amy] Pratt, a 47-year-old bus driver. In her view, the state's political leaders put money "in their own pockets for everything, and I have been waiting for a revolution, of a sort."
She spent the cold winter weekends knocking on doors in her conservative hometown of Idaho Falls trying to persuade her neighbors to play a small part in that revolution. […]
The very fact that this campaign exists is evidence that Idaho's government isn't working the way it should, said Pat Tucker, who is trying her hand at elected politics by running for a local state House seat. "People are frustrated," she said. "People are feeling personally the consequences of not being represented, of not being heard, in their own lives." […]
This is my favorite: Boise's Kenneth Freeman, 68, who was working to get signatures at a polling place in last week's school bond election. "Freeman had never been active in politics before, but his anger at Trump―especially over net neutrality―drove him to get active. 'Trump made a lefist out of me,' he said." Paula Schuelke, 71, was there at Lake Hazel Middle School helping Freeman gather signatures. "We are so out of balance," she told HuffPost. "If you are in the middle or you are a Democrat, you have no voice."
There are about 78,000 people in the Medicaid gap in Idaho—those who make too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford subsidies in the Obamacare market. Despite three consecutive years of blue ribbon panels telling Otter that the solution to the gap for the state was accepting Medicaid expansion, and despite three years of efforts by Democrats and a few Republicans in the legislature to do something—anything—for at least a portion of those people another legislative session is drawing to a close without action.
The Republican legislature has made it about as difficult as it could to qualify for the ballot. After two controversial education reform bills were recalled by citizen's initiative in 2012, the legislature set ridiculous hurdles for petition gatherers. This Medicaid expansion effort requires 56,000 signatures or 6 percent of the total number of voters in the last statewide election, as required. But, they also have to get 6 percent of that vote total in 18 of the state's 35 legislative districts—meaning they have to go out into very red and very rural Idaho to meet the threshold. As of now Medicaid for Idaho has 29,000 signatures—more than half required by the May 1 deadline. They've also met the threshhold in 7 of the districts and are a few hundred signatures away in another 8.
It's going to take a sustained push in the next 6 weeks for the team of volunteers stretching out across the state, but one that promises to be successful. Because even in Idaho, there are an awful lot of people who are fed up and ready to force change.