‘Flat-out broken’: Independent candidates bet Idaho is fed up with party politics

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — Todd Achilles said he was gassing up his Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van at a convenience store in southeast Idaho when he met the manager: a woman about his own age who’d been running similar stores for about 10 years.

She told him she earned $19 an hour, in a part of the state where the living hourly wage is $23, and had no health insurance plan. It was clear, he said, that she hadn’t had access to dental care, either.

Achilles said he looked up the convenience store company’s financial statements and saw it had earned about $1 billion in net income in 2024 but had spent all of that on share buybacks, giving none of that profit to its employees.

The episode encapsulated for Achilles, 58, the reason he was out in his van — his home while he’s on the campaign trail — in the first place. All over the country, companies are able to pay their workers an unlivable wage, while taxpayers foot the bill for Medicaid, SNAP and other safety net programs as health care costs climb, he said.

“It just speaks to so many issues that are wrong right now,” he told reporters Thursday, after he filed to run as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate against Republican Sen. Jim Risch.

Risch, 82, has served in the Senate since 2009. He served as lieutenant governor for about six years in the early 2000s and briefly served as Idaho’s governor from 2006 to 2007, after then-President George W. Bush appointed Gov. Dirk Kempthorne to be interior secretary.

Achilles, who served as a Democratic state representative from Boise until 2025, used to hold senior roles at two large companies. He said the concentration of wealth — and the role of corporate money in politics — has worsened in recent years. He compared American politics today with those of the country’s Gilded Age in the late 1800s.

He cited multimillion-dollar political campaigns nationwide, which he called evidence of a “flat-out broken” system. “I’m disgusted by what I see,” he said.

He’s betting that Idahoans see the same thing. At dozens of town halls and campaign events around the state, Achilles said he’s seen an even mix of Democrats, Republicans and independents — even supporters of President Donald Trump — come out in support.

“Two-thirds of Idahoans voted for President Trump because they’re struggling, and President Trump represented that outsider that was going to break up this broken system,” Achilles said. “I think people are looking at this thing now, a year into it, and the shine is kind of coming off of that.”

But few see the Democratic Party as an answer, he’s found.

“People are beginning to realize that the issue is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom,” he said. “It’s who’s got the power, and who doesn’t.”

Gallup found that in 2025, a record-high 45% of Americans identified as independents. Achilles changed his own voter registration from Democratic to independent in June, he said.

Voters who register as independents are not always able to vote in primary elections. In Idaho, they can vote in the Democratic primary — but haven’t been able to vote in the Republican Primary since 2012. In 2025, more political independents told Gallup that they lean toward the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

But Achilles’ candidacy is a long shot. Idaho has never elected an independent to any congressional or partisan statewide office, Randy Stapilus, a longtime Idaho reporter, wrote in the Idaho State Journal. No independent has won election to the Idaho Legislature, either, in about 100 years.

And Risch won his third term in 2020 with 63% of the vote. The independent candidate that year, Natalie Fleming, got 3%.

On Thursday, Sarah Zabel also filed to run as an independent, against Republican Rep. Russ Fulcher.

The former Air Force major general said she was moved to run after she retired from 31 years in the military, where she was used to an apolitical environment, and “realized how destructive our party identity politics has become.”

Hailing from Bonner County — an area that’s “supposed to be solid red” — the former Republican said she felt her community was being misrepresented. There’s a “vocal and active MAGA minority,” she said, referring to supporters of Trump and his “Make America Great Again” ideology.

“But there’s also a whole lot of people who just want the country to work well,” she said. “We’re not understood.”