You could go a long way before you’d find anyone who has tried more diligently to erase the ability of ordinary Idahoans to make their own laws at the voting booth than Dorothy Moon.
As a member of the Idaho House, Moon voted in 2021 to make it all but impossible for initiative organizers to collect the signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot. The measure — requiring initiative drives to collect 6% of registered voters from all 35 legislative districts rather than from 18 — was so extreme that the Idaho Supreme Court declared it an “unconstitutional infringement on the peoples’ right to legislate independent of the legislature.”
Moon was not deterred.
As chairperson of the Idaho Republican Party, she promoted:
A plan the GOP State Central Committee approved at its winter meeting in January calling for more stringent rules. Rather than 6% of the registered vote, petition gatherers would need 10%. And the requirement would stretch from 18 to 23 legislative districts.
House Bill 2, which would have required a supermajority of 60% rather than a simple majority of voters to enact initiatives into law.
House Bill 85, which would give the governor a veto over any initiative approved by the voters.
Senate Joint Resolution 101, a proposed constitutional amendment that would invalidate the 2021 Supreme Court ruling and reimpose a requirement for rounding up 6% of the registered voters in all 35 legislative districts.
None of the bills emerged from committee.
“Critics may claim these efforts aim to stifle the will of the people, but nothing could be further from the truth,” Moon wrote. “The intent is simple — to strengthen the foundational principles of our state’s governance. An initiative process that truly reflects the will of the people of Idaho is a stronger initiative process, period.”
Engineered by the Progressives of the early 1900s, Idaho’s initiative was meant as a safety valve, allowing voters to bypass special interests dominating the Legislature. As a rule, that empowered causes opposed by the Republican legislative majority, such as the Sunshine Law’s mandatory disclosure of campaign finances, the Homestead Exemption’s protection of homeowners from excessive property taxation, repeal (through the referendum process) of the anti-teacher Luna laws and expansion of Medicaid coverage to low-income workers.
But those on the right also turned to the initiative to promote restrictions on property taxes through the 1 Percent Initiative and turnover in public office via term limits.
Now the ranks of those who see merit in this safety valve have grown to include none other than the populist wing of the GOP.
The same GOP State Central Committee that endorsed weakening the initiative process earlier this year also called for repeal of the 6% sales tax on groceries.
Two decades after Idahoans were promised that the tax would be lifted, it remains in place. Lawmakers almost repealed it in 2017, only to have it vetoed by then-Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, who said it was too expensive.
Since then, the leading power broker in the Legislature — House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star — has frustrated repeal attempts. In part, that’s because he’d rather cut income taxes, which wealthy people pay, and then provide a once-a-year tax credit compensating working class Idahoans for part of the sales taxes they pay 52 weeks a year on groceries.
And in part, it’s because repeal is about $200 million to $230 million more expensive than the credit. Only Idaho residents get the credit. Visitors from out of state do not. Repeal the grocery tax and you wind up either cutting budgets, including public schools, or repealing some of Moyle’s cherished income tax cuts.
To get around Moyle and the legislative leadership, the GOP State Central Committee called for an initiative to repeal the grocery tax. The author of that resolution, Payette County GOP Central Committee Chairperson Howard Rynearson, is out collecting signatures to get the initiative on the 2026 election ballot.
“I thought we were such a red state, we didn’t need it (the initiative process), but then came the option that we really needed it,” Rynearson told the Idaho Capital Sun’s Laura Guido.
Guess who is among the people cheering on Rynearson’s campaign?
That’s right. Dorothy Moon.
“It’s time to end the grocery tax,” she wrote. “If the Legislature won’t act, it’s time for the people of Idaho to get it done.”
How’s that again?
The woman who was so peeved at voters overruling the Legislature’s refusal to expand Medicaid coverage that she wanted to neuter the initiative process is now a fan of the initiative process.
“I know what you might be thinking: ‘Aren’t ballot initiatives tools of the left?’ ” Moon wrote. “Sometimes, yes. But there’s an important difference here. This initiative is bottom-up and driven entirely by the grassroots.”
Translation: The enemy of my enemy is now my friend.
Call that blatant hypocrisy if you want.
But one person’s hypocrisy is another’s enlightenment. — M.T.
OPINION: The day Idaho GOP’s Dorothy Moon got religion – The Lewiston Tribune
