The divided board of North Idaho College looks to become more unified after Tuesday's election. Plus, Idaho voters said 'no' to a measure that would have changed the state's elections. SPR's Brandon Hollingsworth and Owen Henderson broke it down for listeners.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: Brandon, let's start with something that was quite far down on most Kootenai County voters' ballots, the trustee elections for North Idaho College.
And some listeners might be wondering why we're talking about this, so can you give me some context about why this election was a big deal for the college?
BRANDON HOLLINGSWORTH: Sure. For the past three years, the board has had a three-person voting majority that's been backed by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee. That's a strong conservative political group there in North Idaho.
Those three trustees, Todd Banducci, Greg McKenzie, and initially Michael Barnes, started picking fights with the college's president, then fired him without cause, then hired the school's wrestling coach as the interim president. Then Barnes had to resign over residency concerns. He was succeeded by Mike Waggoner.
They hired a political donor to their campaigns, a guy named Art Macomber to be the school's attorney. Banducci and McKenzie fought hiring a new president, then tried to fire or otherwise neutralize him, which prompted lawsuits and court hearings and rulings, all the while reducing confidence in the school, alienating faculty and staff, and ultimately leading to sanctions from NIC's accreditor. And that is the short version.
Now, it's never been clear why those three trustees made the choices they made or what they were seeking to achieve. A group called Save NIC formed to raise awareness and document the board majority's behavior, and then that spawned a political action committee this year called Save NIC Now, which backed actual candidates in this year's election to change the board's direction.
OH: So speaking of that election, voters got to weigh in on three of the five seats. How are the results looking as we record on Wednesday afternoon?
BH: Well, two of the majority trio, Banducci and Wagner, decided not to run for reelection this year, which left Greg McKenzie. He did want to hold on to his seat on Zone 4. And as of unofficial returns, he was trailing Eve Knudtsen. She was leading 56% to his 44%.
The other two, therefore, were open seats. And in each case, Rick Durbin in Zone 3 and Mary Havercroft in Zone 5, which are both the Save NIC Now candidates, are leading the KCRCC-backed candidates, William Lyons and Michael Angelitta.
So what the Save NIC folks needed was for one seat to flip to obtain a voting majority. Based on these unofficial and preliminary results, all three may flip.
OH: So drill down a little bit on those results for me. Why does it matter?
BH: Well, Owen, as goes the board, so goes the school. As I mentioned, NIC is under great scrutiny from its accreditor. And if the school loses accreditation, that's it for having a community college in North Idaho, at least for now.
And because attention was so focused on that three-person board majority, the outcome of this election was seen as a clue as to whether NIC could get through it and emerge into a more stable, beneficial period.
OH: So a different question on Idahoans' ballots did get a lot of attention this year, Proposition 1. What were voters deciding?
BH: This one would have altered the state's primary elections to look more like Washington's. The top four candidates would go on to a general election, regardless of party. And the measure would have instituted ranked-choice voting for general elections.
That's where voters would mark multiple choices on the ballot in order of their preference. Then, as votes would be tallied, candidates would be eliminated until a winner was determined. That's an oversimplification, but that's basically what they were looking for.
OH: And so once again, how are things shaking out? Once again, knowing that results could change after we record this.
BH: It looks like Idaho is just not ready for such a big change in its election system. So unofficial returns show the proposition losing pretty handily, about 30% in favor, 70% against.
OH: Talk to me a little bit more about who backed each side of that proposition.
BH: Yeah. The backers of Proposition 1 was a group called the Coalition for Open Primaries. It was a bipartisan group. It included a lot of ex-state lawmakers and other people in the community.
And was kind of, sort of led by a guy named Luke Mayville, who many of our listeners will know was the guy who helped get Medicaid expansion approved in Idaho through the exact same means, through a voter initiative several years ago.
And so he was trying again here to get voters to do something that the legislature was really not that keen on. That leads, of course, into the second part.
Who was against it? Most lawmakers. It's a heavily Republican state. They have no incentive to give up even a skosh of power or anything that makes it look like they might have to share the stage with somebody else.
And so Brad Little, the governor, was against it. The state House leaders were against it. They even hinted that if voters approved Proposition 1, all they could do as a legislature is go in and either change it or abolish it, which they were legally empowered to do.
