Millions in donations have flowed into fight over Idaho’s Prop 1 on abortion
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Sarah Cutler, Idaho Statesman
BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — Opponents of abortion have pounced on a recent influx of out-of-state donations to a campaign to expand access to the procedure in Idaho.
In late September, Idahoans United for Women and Families — the political committee leading the campaign for Proposition 1, a citizens initiative to expand abortion access — received nearly $2 million in donations.
Much of the money came from prominent progressive donors and political action committees outside of Idaho, including $650,000 from the Washington, D.C.-based Government That Works PAC and $250,000 from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“When New York billionaires and Washington political committees are writing six-figure checks to change Idaho’s abortion laws, that’s not a grassroots movement,” Dee Sarton, a spokesperson for the political committee opposing Prop 1, said in a news release. “This is what it looks like when outside interests try to import California and New York policy into our state.”
Melanie Folwell, the executive director of Idaho United for Women and Families, challenged that characterization. Those out-of-state donations were a new phenomenon for her campaign, which — until last week — had relied almost entirely on small, in-state donations, she said.
About $3 million of the campaign’s nearly $5 million in donations has come from in-state donors, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Sunshine website. The campaign has received over 6,000 donations, “gathered pretty slowly and deliberately over time,” Folwell told the Idaho Statesman. “It was a ton of work.”
Proposition 1 has been a homegrown campaign, Folwell said. Some national progressive groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, actually declined to support Prop 1 because it limits abortion access after fetal viability and precludes public funding for abortion.
“ACLU national basically said: ‘We don’t like your policy. It’s not ambitious enough,’” Folwell recalled. “We’re like: ‘OK, no problem. We’ll just figure this out ourselves.’”
A spokesperson for the ACLU did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After the campaign for Prop 1 in July qualified for the November ballot, a committee called Too Extreme For Idaho got to work opposing it, seeking to uphold Idaho’s near-total abortion ban.
In just a few weeks, that group raised about $2 million — about as much as Prop 1 supporters had at the time — from about 100 donors.
Top donors included Angela and James Harrison, a Garden City couple connected with several Catholic charities, who gave $1 million to oppose Prop 1. In addition, Dorothy Rebholtz, the widow of the founder of Agri Beef, donated $300,000 to oppose Prop 1, according to the Sunshine website.
In late August, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador issued an official opinion that a “nonbusiness entity” church that spends more than $1,000 on a ballot initiative as an exercise of its religious beliefs does not have to disclose its donors’ identity.
That was “rough news” for Prop 1 supporters, Folwell said, because it “was basically the green light for undisclosed money to flow in” from religious institutions that opposed the initiative. Then, in September, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints announced its opposition to Prop. 1.
At that point, “we put up the bat signal” and sought support from national organizations, Folwell said.
“I think people were like, ‘Hey, they did a great job raising money and building a grassroots campaign in Idaho, and I think they were impressed with what they saw,’” Folwell said. “And I think they also felt like, ‘They could probably use the extra firepower.’”
Joe Parris, a spokesperson for the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office, said it was too soon to say what effect Labrador’s opinion has had on donations.
Bloomberg and the Government That Works PAC did not respond to emails from the Statesman asking why they chose to support the Prop 1 campaign.