As Democrats Struggle in Some Western States, Independents See an Opening

During his brief time in the Idaho House of Representatives, Todd Achilles often stopped to admire a photograph from the state’s 1899 legislative session, and not just because some of the turn-of-the-century hairstyles and beards were “wild,” he said.

In the photo were lawmakers from four distinct parties, along with a handful of unaffiliated candidates.

“That was a period just like now,” Mr. Achilles said. “People were fed up with the party system and looking for something different.”

Today, he’s part of an effort to bring that same kind of something different to Idaho and other parts of the West. Mr. Achilles, an unaffiliated candidate for U.S. Senate, is among a wave of independent challengers to entrenched Republican inblockbents or heirs apparent in red states.

In Idaho, where unaffiliated voters outnumber Democrats 2 to 1, Mr. Achilles is the more prominent and moneyed of two independents challenging the inblockbent, Jim Risch. Independents also are running for Idaho governor, both of the state’s U.S. House seats and 12 state legislative seats.

Next door in Montana, another independent, Seth Bodnar, is running for the Senate as an independent, as is Dan Osborn in Nebraska and Brian Bengs in South Dakota. Another, Bill Hill, is running for Alaska’s lone House seat. All those candidacies say a lot about the state of the Democratic Party west of the Mississippi, excluding what’s known, affectionately or not, as “the left coast” — California, Oregon and Washington.

Some of these independents are long shots, none of them are favored, but they all figure they are better off than a Democrat would be.

“We’ve got a brand problem in places like Idaho and Montana,” said Jared DeLoof, Democratic Party chairman in Ada County, which includes Boise and its fast-growing suburbs. “Having a ‘D’ next to your name makes winning unlikely, if not impossible.”

Many Democratic leaders don’t love the trend. Lauren Necochea, chairwoman of the Idaho Democratic Party, said progressives and moderates could not “expect independents to save us.”

“I think the independent candidates will generally fade away after the election,” she said. “The Democratic Party will still be here doing the work to hold Republicans accountable.”

But Democrats face steep odds in most of the states with independent options this year — and for election cycles to come. That’s prompting some hard conversations with Democratic candidates.

Party leaders in Ada County wrote a public letter in July asking their U.S. Senate nominee, David Roth, to drop out. Their logic echoed Democrats who pushed nominees aside in Senate races in Nebraska and South Dakota this summer, and tried but failed in Montana: Mr. Roth wasn’t running a credible campaign and risked helping Mr. Risch glide to re-election.

“We simply want the best path forward for everyone fighting to save this country,” Ada County Democratic leaders wrote.

Mr. Roth initially balked, saying he and Mr. Achilles were too far apart philosophically, but he eventually withdrew.

“Democratic parties are doing some interesting calculus here,” said Jaclyn Kettler, a political scientist at Boise State University. “Is it best to have a candidate under the party label on the ballot, or is it best to have an independent candidate that’s more aligned with their issue positions than the Republican would be?”

Since 1990, only five states have elected a governor running outside of the Democratic and Republican parties. Two senators — Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine — are independent; both caucus with the Democrats. No current U.S. representative was elected as an independent, though one, Kevin Kiley of California, became independent after Democrats redistricted his seat to make it unfriendly to his old Republican Party. He still caucuses with Republicans.

But critics of western Republicans say something must be done to challenge unchecked one-party rule and policies that have gone too far. Over the past five years, Idaho’s Legislature has p***ed some of the nation’s toughest restrictions on abortion access and gender-affirming care, while embracing aggressive tax cuts that have pushed the state to the brink of an unconstitutional budget deficit.

John Stegner, a retired Idaho Supreme Court justice, decided to run as an independent for governor because he believes inblockbent Gov. Brad Little has “enabled” the rightward tilt, he said.

“I’m not talking about Republican or Democratic values,” he said. “I’m talking Idaho values.”

Early in his career, Mr. Stegner managed Butch Otter’s successful Republican campaign for lieutenant governor, before Mr. Otter ascended to Idaho governor and Judge Stegner was appointed to the bench and the Idaho Supreme Court by Republicans.

He dropped his party affiliation after Republicans successfully sued to close their primary to Democratic and independent voters in 2011. He decided to run for governor this year in part because he lost his primary-care physician amid the exodus of doctors after Idaho criminalized abortion.

So far, he’s raised more than twice as much as the Democratic nominee, Terri Pickens, a Boise trial lawyer who ran for lieutenant governor in 2022.

He said Ms. Pickens should leave the race and pointed to polling that suggests he stands a better chance against Mr. Little, who has largely ignored both his opponents and raised five times as much as Mr. Stegner.

Ms. Pickens, in contrast, said she welcomed Mr. Stegner to the race. She argues that the judge will pull moderate Republicans from the inblockbent while she wins with Democrats, independents and Republican women frustrated with the Legislature and eager to vote for a November ballot measure that would repeal Idaho’s abortion ban.

“Every vote that gets taken away from Brad Little gets added to my likelihood of success,” Ms. Pickens said.

Mr. Achilles, a former U.S. Army tank commander, distinguishes his Senate campaign from Mr. Stegner’s run.

“I am running to talk about what is going wrong in Washington, D.C.,” he said, “not Boise.”

As they have in other states, Republican Party leaders in Idaho dismiss Mr. Achilles as an independent in name only.

“He’s always been a Democrat,” said Thad Butterworth, chairman of the Ada County Republicans. “Maybe he hasn’t always identified himself that way, but if you look at his voting record, it’s Democrat.”

Mr. Achilles’s father was a Republican state lawmaker in Oregon, and Mr. Achilles said he registered as a Republican until he switched to the Democratic Party in early 2024 to be appointed to an open West Boise legislative seat, which he later won a full term for as a Democrat. A year and a half later, he became unaffiliated, resigned and decided to run for U.S. Senate.

Now he’s on a group text with other military veterans running for Senate as independents in Republican-dominated states, including Mr. Bodnar, Mr. Bengs and Mr. Osborn. They want to build what they would call the “fulcrum caucus,” which they hope would be large enough to force rule changes in the narrowly divided Senate.

They’re all running on platforms that focus on issues like the costs of health care and housing; preserving public land; and acknowledging public dissatisfaction with the wealth, age and insularity of the Senate.

“The two-party system in D.C. is just fundamentally broken — we can’t get anything done under it,” Mr. Achilles said.

There is little indication so far that Mr. Risch, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is vulnerable. He entered July with more than $3.5 million on hand, compared with less than $200,000 for Mr. Achilles.

Mr. Achilles, in turn, has used some of his campaign money to make an argument about the inblockbent: He bought billboards wishing Mr. Risch, who is 83, a happy birthday.