David Worley

David Worley is the IFF network’s 2026 Senate D28 challenger to nine-term incumbent Sen. Jim Guthrie. The campaign credential is a religious-discrimination lawsuit U.S. District Court Judge David Nye dismissed on February 12, 2025, after the State of Idaho’s filing called the alleged “No Christians in Command” policy “a non-existent policy concocted by” Worley. The Idaho Army National Guard relieved him of command in September 2024 for “demonstrated counterproductive leadership.” He announced for Senate one month after dismissal.

Inside this dossier:

• The Army Guard relief findings. Per the Idaho Army National Guard Assistant Adjutant General’s relief documentation (Exhibit 7A, Tab 6.1, p.7), Maj. Worley said of his First Sergeant: “well, its not like I raped [First Sergeant redacted] well, not yet.” The AAG: “an extreme lapse of judgment.”
• The Liberty Counsel lawsuit dismissed in federal court. 138-page complaint claiming a “No Christians in Command” policy. Judge David Nye dismissed it February 12, 2025. The state’s brief: the policy was “concocted by” Worley.
• The five-year cultivation arc. Lost 2021 Pocatello mayoral; lost 2022 Senate D29; relieved September 2024; lawsuit dismissed February 2025; announced for D28 thirty days later. Two IFF board members (Doyle Beck $1,000, Brent Regan $500) personally bankrolled the 2022 try.
• The Marshall Public Library protest, February 11, 2023. Worley organized the sit-in against the LGBTQ-affirming children’s program five months before taking command. Ron Nate stood beside him. Six days into command, an SFC filed an EEO complaint citing hostile work environment.
• The IFF byline pre-installing the Guthrie attack 22 months early. Ron Nate’s 2024 op-ed seeded the 2026 attack frame two cycles ahead of the candidate launch. Documented in the Manufacturing a Martyr investigation.
• AG Raul Labrador endorsement timed to the second day of the launch cycle. Re-amplification five days later from the same Pruett-network operator family. February 2026 launch coverage distributed by Bjorn Handeen at McShane LLC across the Idaho State Journal and Gem State Chronicle on the same day.

Who he is

David Worley is the IFF network’s pick to flip Senate District 28 from incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Guthrie. He is a major in the Idaho Army National Guard. In September 2024, the Idaho Army National Guard’s Assistant Adjutant General relieved him of command. His own military employer found Worley had “demonstrated counterproductive leadership that reduced morale, eroded trust and showed little respect for others.”

That language is the Army Guard’s own on-the-record assessment of his command behavior after an internal review of his actual conduct, not opposition framing.

Worley sued. Liberty Counsel, a Florida Christian nationalist legal group, filed a 138-page federal complaint claiming the Idaho Army National Guard ran a “No Christians in Command” policy and used it against him.

On February 12, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge David Nye dismissed the lawsuit. The state’s filing called the alleged policy “a non-existent policy concocted by” Worley. The court agreed. The policy did not exist.

One month after the judge threw out his religious-discrimination case, Worley announced for Idaho State Senate. The dismissed lawsuit became the campaign credential.

The Army Guard sequence

The full chronology, assembled from the federal court record and contemporaneous reporting:

July 1, 2023. Worley’s orders to command the Idaho Army National Guard’s Recruiting and Retention Battalion begin.

February 11, 2023 (five months before he took command). Worley organized a sit-in at the Marshall Public Library against an LGBTQ-affirming children’s program. Ron Nate stood beside him. Nate became Idaho Freedom Foundation President in January 2024. Worley said the protest was “to protect children from being exposed to sexual deviancy.” He called the program “part of a series that seeks to normalize transgenderism, a flawed and immoral combination of radical sex ideology and pseudoscience, which causes irreparable harm.” Anyone could read that, including the soldiers about to serve under him.

July 7, 2023. Worley meets the Sergeant First Class who would file an EEO complaint six days later.

July 13, 2023. Eight days into Worley’s command, the SFC filed a federally-protected EEO complaint citing sexual-orientation discrimination and a hostile work environment under Worley’s command. The complainant said he felt “threatened and unsafe” “merely due to Worley’s beliefs.” Liberty Counsel later pointed to the 13-day timing as proof of persecution. The simpler reading: a soldier reacted to a brand-new commander whose anti-LGBTQ activism, including the Marshall Library protest five months earlier, was one Google search away.

The EEO investigation. Investigators found the complaints against Worley “unsubstantiated.” There was “no evidence Worley did anything wrong in the workplace” up to that point.

The follow-on policy recommendation. The National Guard branch then recommended that future candidates for command be investigated, including their private social media, to make sure they do not adhere to “toxic or concerning ideologies.” That recommendation is the document Liberty Counsel would later twist into an existing “No Christians in Command” policy.

September 2024. The Assistant Adjutant General relieves Worley of command. The basis was a separate assessment of his actual command behavior, not the EEO complaint. The finding: “counterproductive leadership that reduced morale, eroded trust and showed little respect for others.”

What the relief order actually documents

The relief order is a public-record document. It contains specific, named conduct findings against Worley. Liberty Counsel’s religious-persecution story does not touch any of them. The most damaging item, finding (8), is Worley’s own statement to his commander about his First Sergeant:

Per the Idaho Army National Guard Assistant Adjutant General’s relief documentation (Exhibit 7A, Tab 6.1, p.7), Maj. Worley downplayed the EO complaint and said of his First Sergeant: ‘well, its not like I raped [First Sergeant redacted] well, not yet.’ The AAG’s finding: ‘I find this comment to be completely inappropriate and a gross deviation from the behavior I would expect of any commander within the IDARNG. I find that Worley demonstrated an extreme lapse of judgment by making this statement.’

— Idaho Army National Guard Assistant Adjutant General · Worley relief documentation, Exhibit 7A, Tab 6.1, p.7, 2024-09

The AAG’s formal counseling to Worley reads, in part: “As an officer, you are to lead by example, take care of your fellow Soldiers, and help ensure the good order and discipline of all Soldiers. Not only have you failed to maintain the Army’s core values and standards, your misconduct also compromised your ability to lead.” And: “Your actions are inexcusable and are a departure from the standards of behavior I expect of all Soldiers within the Idaho Army National Guard to maintain. I now have no choice but to question your judgment, professionalism, and potential for future service as an Officer.”

That is what the relief order says Worley said, what his own command counseled him about, and the conduct record Sen. Jim Guthrie’s primary opponent is asking Idaho voters to send to the state senate. The Liberty Counsel lawsuit, the conservative-media echo, and the AG endorsement that followed all need this finding to vanish. It sits on the record.

January 2025. Worley files a 138-page federal lawsuit through Liberty Counsel. Central claim: the Idaho Army National Guard maintained a policy excluding Christians from command and applied it against him.

February 12, 2025. U.S. District Court Judge David Nye dismisses the lawsuit. The state’s filing said the “No Christians in Command” policy Worley sued over did not exist. The state called it “concocted” by Worley. The court agreed.

March 2025. Worley said publicly he still wanted to litigate. He had no live federal vehicle.

Early 2026. Worley filed to run against Sen. Jim Guthrie in the May 2026 Republican primary.

Conservative-media outlets ran the “Christian officer persecuted for his faith” frame. The federal court ruled the policy he sued over did not exist. Both rulings are on the public record. Worley is campaigning on the first.

On February 12, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge David Nye dismissed Worley v. Little, the Liberty Counsel lawsuit alleging a ‘No Christians in Command’ policy at the Idaho Army National Guard. The state’s response characterized the alleged policy as ‘a non-existent policy concocted by’ Worley. The court agreed. The lawsuit was Worley’s response to being relieved of command in September 2024 for ‘counterproductive leadership that reduced morale, eroded trust and showed little respect for others.’

— U.S. District Court · Worley v. Little dismissal order, February 12, 2025, 2025-02-12

The losing-candidate pattern, fully funded

Three races, three losses, and the IFF network put more money in every cycle.

2021 Pocatello mayoral race. Per the Idaho State Journal, Worley raised $28,162 from September 2 through end of October 2021. About 43 percent came from out-of-city donors, mostly on the East Coast. That included $1,000 from Morton Blackwell, founder of the Arlington, VA Leadership Institute, where Worley worked at the time. City officials said publicly Worley held “fringe beliefs regarding firearms and the sovereignty of local governments.” Worley pointed to the Floyd County Militia in Virginia as his organizing model and said he would not follow court rulings or state and federal edicts that local leaders judged to violate “the rights of people.” He lost.

2022 Idaho Senate race. Worley’s campaign-finance record shows the IFF apparatus wired in early. Per the Idaho SOS Sunshine database, donations of $500 or more to the 2022 Worley Senate campaign from named IFF leadership and affiliated entities:

Amount	Donor
$1,000	Idaho Freedom PAC
$1,000	Idaho Freedom Coalition PAC (two contributions, $2,000 total)
$1,000	Doyle Beck (IFF Board, personal)
$500	Brent Regan (IFF Board Chairman, personal)
$1,000	Bryan Smith’s law firm — Smith, Driscoll & Associates, PLLC
$1,000	Stefan Gleason
$500	RHINO PAC (two contributions, $1,000 total)
$1,000	Scott Herndon For Idaho Senate (Herndon’s own committee)

Eight IFF-network funding streams pointed at one first-time state-legislative candidate. Two IFF board members, Beck and Regan, wrote personal checks. The IFF Vice Chair’s law firm wrote one too. So did the chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus director’s own committee. Three IFF-aligned PACs piled on. Worley still lost. He lost to Democratic Sen. James Ruchti, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army military-intelligence officer, in a district a normal conservative Republican should have been able to win.

2026 Idaho Senate race against incumbent Sen. Jim Guthrie. AG Raul Labrador’s April 8, 2026 endorsement is the new institutional layer. The dismissed federal lawsuit is the campaign-launch credential. Pruett’s Honor Idaho byline-attack on Guthrie (“One Man Continues to Block the Best Gun Bills for Idaho,” April 3, 2026) is the propaganda-side operation feeding the race.

This is the Marmon arc with a different geography. Marmon was recalled in 1987, lost four primaries 2010-2022, then won in 2024 with three times the prior cycle’s money against an incumbent Republican. Worley lost mayoral 2021 and Senate 2022. Now he runs in 2026 with the AG endorsement and a propaganda-network publication stack running unpaid earned media for him — the same template at a different altitude.

The Pruett network as Worley’s campaign media operation

Greg Pruett runs Idaho Dispatch, where Worley gets friendly coverage. Pruett also runs Honor Idaho and Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, where Worley’s primary opponent Guthrie gets attacked. Neither outlet discloses the overlap.

April 3, 2026, six weeks before the May 19 Republican primary, Pruett personally bylined “One Man Continues to Block the Best Gun Bills for Idaho” on the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance / Honor Idaho platform. The piece attacks Sen. Jim Guthrie. Pruett wrote: “Without fail, Idaho State Senate Chairman Jim Guthrie (R - Inkom) has blocked more critical pro-gun legislation” and “Guthrie shoved it in the chairman’s drawer and refused to give it a public hearing.” The article cites SB 1430, HB 621, and SB 1298 (sponsored by Sen. Christy Zito, I2AA’s Political Director and Board Member) as Guthrie’s blocking record. The closing call to action: “send some better fighters to the Capitol.”

Worley does not have to buy that coverage. It arrives free because Pruett operates the friendly outlet, the attack outlet on Worley’s opponent, the candidate pipeline, and the propaganda amplification stack. After Liberty Counsel’s 2025 lawsuit was dismissed, the network rebranded the dismissal into a Christian-persecution credential and pushed it through Idaho Dispatch and the national conservative-media echo (CBN, Washington Stand, PJ Media, WND).

The southeast Idaho version of the earned-media operation runs through the Pocatello-Chubbuck Observer, run by John Crowder, a former Bannock County Commissioner (Jan 2023 – Jan 2025). The Observer published 77 Worley-focused articles between September 2021 and February 2025. The 2021 Pocatello mayoral run got near-daily Crowder-bylined coverage. The 2022 Senate run kicked off with a Crowder-bylined launch piece and ran through the campaign. Worley joined the Observer’s companion “Idaho Speaks Podcast” as co-host in January 2022. He interviewed Raul Labrador, Priscilla Giddings, Bryan Smith (whose law firm gave $1,000 to Worley’s 2022 Senate campaign), Janice McGeachin, Ammon Bundy, Branden Durst, Chad Christensen, and Crowder himself when Crowder was running for Bannock County Commissioner. Worley wrote two guest columns published in the Observer in May and June 2022. None of the pieces disclosed the operator overlap or the donor-to-interview-subject relationship. After the Liberty Counsel filing in January 2025, the Observer ran the persecution framing as fact within 19 days and pre-promoted a Capitol Clarity event built around Worley’s lawsuit narrative the next week.

What Pruett does statewide (friendly outlet + attack outlet on the opponent + candidate pipeline), Crowder does locally at the Pocatello-Chubbuck Observer. The two operations are linked: the Observer’s homepage right now (April 2026) carries a Greg-Pruett-bylined Idaho Second Amendment Alliance membership column with a mycampaignedge.com tracked CTA pushing Crowder’s audience straight into Pruett’s I2AA membership funnel.

On April 3, 2026, Greg Pruett personally bylined ‘One Man Continues to Block the Best Gun Bills for Idaho’ on the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance / Honor Idaho platform, attacking Sen. Jim Guthrie. The article enumerates SB 1430, HB 621, and SB 1298 (sponsored by I2AA’s Political Director Christy Zito) as evidence of Guthrie’s blocking, with the implicit call to action ‘send some better fighters to the Capitol.’ Six weeks before the May 19, 2026 primary in which Worley challenges Guthrie. Disclosure of the overlap between the friendly-Worley publication (Idaho Dispatch) and the attack-Guthrie publication (I2AA / Honor Idaho), both Pruett-operated, appears nowhere on either platform.

— Idaho Second Amendment Alliance / Honor Idaho · Greg Pruett byline, 2026-04-03

The Labrador endorsement

Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador formally endorsed Worley for Senate D28 on April 8, 2026. Coverage in Idaho Press, Idaho State Journal, East Idaho News, Local News 8, and Idaho Education News.

A sitting Idaho AG endorsing a primary challenger against a sitting Republican senator is not routine. Labrador picked this race on purpose. The endorsement places Worley inside the IFF-aligned faction of the Idaho Republican coalition.

Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador formally endorsed David Worley for Idaho State Senate in District 28 on April 8, 2026. Coverage in Idaho Press, Idaho State Journal, East Idaho News, Local News 8, and Idaho Education News.

— Idaho Press · Idaho State Journal · East Idaho News · Local News 8 · Idaho Education News, 2026-04-08

The funding chain behind the IFC bloc he would join

Citizens Alliance of Idaho PAC funds the Idaho Freedom Caucus candidates Worley would sit with in the Senate. Per Steve Taggart’s April 7, 2026 Political Potatoes piece, CAI is the Idaho state affiliate of national Citizens Alliance of America (CAA). The full CAI funding map, donor profile across cycles, and out-of-state pipeline live on the Citizens Alliance organization page and the Follow the Money investigation.

Where he sits in the network

Worley is the network’s pick to flip District 28. The pieces in play:

• AG Raul Labrador’s congressional voting record matches the IFF policy stack. The endorsement is a faction signal.
• The chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus, run by Sen. Scott Herndon, is the Senate bloc Worley would join on day one.
• The State Freedom Caucus Network, run by Maria Nate (wife of IFF President Ron Nate), would whip his contested votes.
• Citizens Alliance of Idaho PAC is the disbursement arm. The 2022 Worley Senate cycle had six IFF-network funding streams on the books.
• Doyle Beck wrote a $1,000 personal check to the 2022 Worley campaign. Brent Regan wrote one for $500-$750. Two IFF board members on the personal-giving line.
• Greg Pruett runs the propaganda-network outlets pushing unpaid earned media for Worley while attacking Guthrie. Pruett’s I2AA Political Director Christy Zito’s bills are cited in the April 3 anti-Guthrie piece as proof Guthrie has blocked the IFC agenda.
• Ron Nate, IFF President, stood next to Worley at the February 11, 2023 Marshall Public Library drag-protest sit-in five months before Worley took command of his Army Guard battalion.

Connected pages

• Scott Herndon dossier, chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus director Worley would caucus with
• Greg Pruett dossier, the propaganda-network operator running unpaid earned-media for Worley
• Doyle Beck dossier, $1,000 personal donor to the 2022 Worley campaign
• Ron Nate dossier, IFF President, alongside Worley at the 2023 Marshall Library protest
• Christy Zito dossier, I2AA Political Director whose bills the Pruett-bylined Guthrie attack cited as evidence
• Idaho Freedom Caucus organization page
• Citizens Alliance organization page
• Cliff Maloney dossier
• The Propaganda Network organization page
• Manufacturing a Martyr investigation
• Follow the Money investigation

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