Former senator challenges Mountain Home incumbent in primary

District 8 Senate incumbent Geoff Schroeder will face former legislator Christy Zito in the May Republican Primary.

The candidates have opposing views about recent Idaho GOP politics and how to vote to best represent their district.

Schroeder, 58, completed one term in the Idaho Senate, and believes his experience as an attorney and city prosecutor help him evaluate bills and their consequences. The Mountain Home resident said he’s a member of the majority Republican caucus, but differentiated himself from the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus members.

Zito, 63, lives in Hammett and previously served two terms in the House from 2016 to 2020 and one term in the Senate until she stepped away in 2022 to focus on her work at the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance.

She said she decided to try to return to the Legislature because she was asked to because of her “proven conservative voting record.”

She said she didn’t believe Schroeder’s record reflected the district, and pointed to his votes in favor of Idaho Launch, the grant program for graduating high school seniors for higher education and some workforce training. Zito called the bill a “redistribution of wealth.”

Schroeder, however, pointed to Launch as the kind of bill he feels would benefit his district that his opponent wouldn’t support.

“You have someone who clearly votes in lockstep with this group (The Idaho Freedom Caucus) to the detriment of District 8,” Schroeder said. “This person would reject all federal funding, this person would reject all Idaho Launch funding.

She also highlighted Schroeder’s vote against the 2023 bill HB 71, the controversial bill to ban all transgender health care for minors that is being challenged in court. Schroeder said he received letters of reprimand for that vote from all four county central committees after the end of that session.

He said he opposed the bill because he thinks the Legislature, which contains no doctors, “shouldn’t interfere in doctors’ medical therapy.”

He said he opposed sex-change surgery for minors, but otherwise thought the treatments, which are recommended for gender dysphoria by most major medical organizations, should be left alone.

The county Republican central committees’ move to censure Schroeder is also part of a trend that the two candidates view differently.

Recently adopted Idaho GOP rules allow local central committees to call into question lawmakers’ votes for alleged “platform violations” and vote to censure the lawmaker. According to the rules, the party may prohibit that person from running as a Republican again for five years after two censures.

Zito, who has served as a precinct committee woman, said she supports bringing in lawmakers whom committees don’t believe are properly upholding the platform. Republican candidates usually sign on that they agree to the platform, and have the ability to oppose certain aspects of it.

“I believe that if a county central committee is dismayed enough with the voting record of their legislator, especially with items that do appear in the state platform, then I think it’s a good thing for them bring that to the legislator’s attention and to discuss that with them,” Zito said. “If the legislator doesn’t respond or if they have no defense of it, then I think that the central committees are well within their bounds to make a public statement about that.”

Schroeder has a different point of view; he doesn’t think any one bill can be determined to either uphold or violate the planks of the platform.

“The notion that the person who ultimately decides to vote against the bill because the bill is fraught with errors or fraught with peril ... is therefore denying the underlying premise in the plank, is utterly false,” he said.

He said the consequences for elected officials’ votes should be carried out through elections, not by party.

“The existence of central committee is to support Republican candidates in the general election, and to get out and get people to become Republicans and to vote for Republicans, and it’s not to control us,” he said. “We’re accountable to the voters.”

If Zito wins the primary, she said her next step would be spending more time asking what her constituents’ priorities would be. So far, the issues she’s been hearing about are taxes, access to public lands, and the U.S. southern border.

She said she supports the H2A temporary agricultural worker visa program, “but if we bring people in here illegally, we are really just approving basically slave labor.”

She also wants to enhance Idaho’s “Stand Your Ground Laws,” which offer legal protection for those who use force to defend themselves or others if they appear to be in danger. Zito said she wants to add to the law that those who are found to be justified under the laws can recoup their attorney costs and fees. She also wants to see the laws add “criminal immunity” which would allow someone who believes they acted in self defense and were arrested to call a pre-trial hearing to force the government to show evidence a crime has been committed.

“We don’t want to have a Kyle Rittenhouse-type situation in Idaho,” Zito said.

Rittenhouse was arrested for shooting and killing two people and injuring another during racial justice protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020; he was later acquitted of all the charges.

Schroeder said he wants to continue supporting a proposed rework of the state emergency medical services (EMS) funding model. He also wants to continue working on funding school facility maintenance in an effort to ease the property tax burden, and work on advocating for more water storage and protecting groundwater.

When it comes to education funding and the recent proposal to allow state dollars to be used for private school tuition, Zito thinks “the money should follow the child.”

“I think that if there’s competition in any given area, that makes us work harder to be better,” she said. “... and I’m not saying that our teachers don’t do a good job now, we have so many very very good teachers in our state … I think that charter schools, and private schools and home school, I don’t think it’s a bad thing because not every child learns the same.”

Schroder said he is opposed to proposals that take away funding from public schools, because he views that as a violation of the Legislature’s constitutional requirement to maintain a public school system. He’s not opposed to all kinds of “school choice.”

“I think there are ways and there are approaches to dial in specific learning needs for certain students that are outside the established public system that maybe don’t fit that model that can alleviate some of the burden of that student faced with time constraints,” he said. “I don’t think it’s outside our ability to provide funding for additional innovative educational approaches that don’t undermine or lessen the support for existing public schools.”

He said a proposal would have to have “proper guidelines and limitations” for him to support it.

For example, he opposed a proposal this year to create a tax credit that could go toward private school tuition because the funds would come out of state revenue before the lawmakers set the budget.

Zito said she believes she is set apart from her opponent because of her conservative track record. She is endorsed by the advocacy arm of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, known as the Idaho Freedom PAC. The IFF rated Schroeder poorly on its “Freedom Index.”

“I think our voting record is what people should look at,” she said.

Schroeder also highlighted how the two lawmakers have voted in the past; he indicated he thought Zito would vote in-line with members of the Freedom Caucus, who often have high scores from the IFF.

“This person I don’t believe has the skillset to evaluate legislation the way I do, to determine whether it will or won’t be a true benefit to Idahoans, or whether it’s just a performative stunt,” he said.

As of Thursday, Zito had raised $50,270, including $8,500 from political action committees such as the Rhino Pac and Think Liberty Idaho. She also received $1,000 from the Custer County Republican Central Committee.

Schroeder has garnered $29,151 total contributions, including $17,750 from industry groups and companies such as JR Simplot Company, Health Care Business Ventures, and Idaho Cable Broadband Association.