Democratic candidates for governor answer community questions at Idaho Falls forum
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IDAHO FALLS — East Idaho residents heard from some of this year’s Democratic candidates for governor Wednesday evening at a forum hosted by nonprofit Stand Up For Idaho.
The group describes itself as a “nonpartisan, nondenominational, nonprofit organization striving to inform and educate the public.”
While not all candidates running for the Democratic nomination attended the event, voters in attendance heard from Maxine Durand and Terri Pickens. Stand Up For Idaho organizers said two other candidates either couldn’t attend or didn’t respond. Pickens attended remotely.
Each candidate gave a brief introduction on who they were and why they were running, and then answered questions from community members. Questions ranged from their thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict to whether they believed in God.
Questions focused on Idaho included transgender rights, marijuana legalization, and water issues.
RELATED | Republican candidates for Idaho governor answer questions at Idaho Falls forum
Maxine Durand
Why she is running
Durand is originally from Richfield, Idaho. She said she’s been in public service in one way or another for about 12 years. She’s worked for three universities, Idaho Medicaid and a handful of nonprofits. She also ran a public transportation system in Twin Falls.
Durand said she has a platform with three main focuses: healthcare, education and housing.
She would like to implement an Idaho-based Medicare-for-all plan. She’d also like to expand public education to include a universal childcare program and set it up so that all high school graduates in Idaho can automatically earn an associate’s degree from an Idaho college or university of their choice.
She is also running to expand the inventory of mixed-income public housing in the state and to create a universal tenants’ rights program, so that if someone has a dispute with their landlord, they have the right to an attorney, similar to a public defender.
Durand said she is running because elected officials aren’t focusing on making Idaho more prosperous, but rather making it harder.
“I realized that the last few years have been pretty rough for all of us on the administrative side,” Durand said. “Our elected officials are not doing enough to make our lives any easier.”
As Durand is transgender, she said the legislature has particularly singled her out with recent laws, such as one that criminalizes transgender individuals using their preferred bathrooms.
RELATED: Idaho Legislature passes bill to criminalize trans people using preferred bathrooms
“On July 1, I’ll be breaking the law just by getting up and peeing every morning,” she said. “I don’t want to be talking about those things, but I am in a position where I have to because people are getting hurt. I want to be talking about Medicare for all. I want to be talking about raising the minimum wage.”
Transgender rights
One audience member asked what each candidate would do to protect transgender individuals’ rights, as the legislature has made laws targeting them. Durand said she agreed with Pickens’ response to do work on the administrative side — like an executive order — and she would also lead Idaho constituents in pushing back against their legislators.
“The reason they support these bills is that they’re more afraid of groups like the Idaho Freedom Foundation than they are of their own constituents,” Durand said.
Marijuana legalization
Several audience members asked candidates if they would support marijuana legalization and whether they were concerned about health risks.
Durand said legalization is part of her broader platform. She said Idaho is currently losing money from people crossing state lines to purchase marijuana. She said she’s also seen firsthand how marijuana can help people with certain health conditions, as a friend of hers had glaucoma and it helped.
Water issues
An organizer of the event asked candidates how they would handle issues with water shortages, drought and water curtailments.
Durand said she’s currently taking over her family’s farm in southern Idaho, and water has been a real concern. She said it’s tricky to find a solution.
“You either expand the existing supply, which we may not have a lot of control over — especially in places where we’re totally reliant on snowpack, like where I’m from,” Durand said. “The other angle is, how do we adapt to the very real resource limitations that we have?”
Durand said Idaho will likely have less water in the future than in the past, and farmers will need to adapt by exploring water-conserving methods such as hydroponics.
Terri Pickens
Why she is running
Pickens was born and raised in Pocatello. She went away to college and returned to study law at the University of Idaho. She was a public defender in Lewiston. She later went into civil practice in Boise and started her own firm. She also previously ran for lieutenant governor.
“Having lived in all three corners of Idaho, I do understand the differences in the dynamics between each area of the state, and I’m uniquely qualified to address those issues as they go across the spectrum of beliefs, ideology, and needs of the different communities in the state.”
Her platform has three priorities. She said it included fixing Idaho’s budget problems, supporting education, and restoring freedoms that she believes the current GOP-led legislature has taken away for bodily autonomy and the LGBTQ+ community.
She said one of her goals after this year’s budget cuts from the legislature would be to restore funding to all those necessary programs.
Pickens said public schools across Idaho need maintenance, but don’t receive state funds to fix them. One way she hopes to get them more funding is by eliminating a school voucher program that originally allowed tax credits for private school or homeschooling expenses.
RELATED: Idaho Supreme Court upholds private education tax credit
One audience member asked Pickens why they should vote for her in the primary, given that she had previously registered as a Republican. Durand also noted that Pickens had previously donated to Brad Little’s campaign.
Pickens responded by saying she has always been progressive on social issues, even when she was registered as a Republican. She said when she supported Brad Little’s campaign, he was running against Raul Labrador, and she didn’t want Labrador to win the Republican nomination. She then supported Democrat Paulette Jordan in the general election.
Transgender rights
One audience member asked what each candidate would do to protect transgender individuals’ rights, as the legislature has made laws targeting them. Pickens said she would issue an executive order with a moratorium on any prosecutions under these laws. She would also work with legislators to understand the impact of their actions.
“There should be absolutely no prosecutions for someone needing to use a facility,” Pickens said. “It is immoral — what they’ve done. And an executive order to refuse to prosecute is going to be top of my priority list.”
Marijuana legalization
Several audience members asked candidates if they would support marijuana legalization and whether they were concerned about health risks.
Pickens said she fully supports legalization and wants it to be treated like state liquor sales. She said that by doing this, it would generate extra revenue for the state, and people would no longer be getting illegal marijuana that is potentially laced with something harmful.
“I’ve seen studies, and I have seen first-hand how medical marijuana literally saved lives,” Pickens said. “I’ve seen it in an epileptic kid from having seizures that would have ended their life.”
Water issues
Responding to a question about how candidates would deal with water shortages, curtailments and droughts, Pickens said leaders will need to think outside the box.
“I’ll give you one example of how we can do that,” she said. “We have the best land grant university for research and development and agriculture up in Moscow, Idaho — University of Idaho. And there is an unlimited amount of intellect going in and out of that institution every day.”
Pickens said she is also personally working on a water storage project in Elmore County, one of the largest in the country, and that projects like that will be vital to managing the water we have and conserving it once we have it.