Dorothy Moon

On the morning of July 16, 2022, Dorothy Moon stood in front of the Idaho Republican convention in Twin Falls and promised, “If I am your chairman, there will be no more dirty tricks.” Two days earlier a delegate who backed her had left fake “Pizza for the hungry” flyers at a homeless shelter, and a family with children had walked into her opponent’s event looking for dinner. She won that afternoon, fifteen months after telling a House ethics hearing, of a lawmaker and a 19-year-old unpaid intern, “if they’re both consenting adults, I guess it’s no one’s business,” and has held the gavel ever since. In June 2023, by the account of the man who had been Idaho’s Republican national committeeman since 2010, she took him outside a party meeting and told him to resign: “Make it go away.” She calls his account “an absolute lie,” and when a newspaper asked about the conversation she said, “It’s a private club.” In 2024, with reporters shut out of her state convention, she was asked whether transparency was part of the equation, and she laughed: “Yeah, not really.” In 2025 she wrote against “confrontational politics” that attacks Republican legislators as “traitors,” and in September 2026 she handed the party’s fundraising to a man who had called a former party chairman “a leftist traitor” and told a sitting Republican legislator, “Better watch yourself.” In June her own treasurer stood up at the state convention and said of her, “I will not work with her for another two years.”

Inside this dossier:

• The promise and the pizza. She promised “no more dirty tricks” two days after a delegate on her side sent homeless families to Tom Luna’s event. In April 2026 one of her loudest defenders online called the stunt “a prank I pulled.”
• “I guess it’s no one’s business.” Called in 2021 as a witness for Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, she gave that answer when asked about a lawmaker’s sexual relationship with a 19-year-old unpaid intern. A jury later convicted him of raping the intern. In 2023 she wrote that Republicans are “fighting to stop sexualization of children.”
• The finance chairman. Ryan Spoon has attacked at least 28 Republicans by name and called two former party chairmen “ABSOLUTE LIARS.” He lost a regional party race in June 2026, and ten weeks later Moon put him in charge of raising the party’s money.
• “Make it go away.” Damond Watkins, Idaho’s Republican national committeeman since 2010, says Moon told him in 2023 that if he resigned, “this report will go away.” He texted his resignation. Moon calls his account “an absolute lie.” A prominent Idaho business leader publicly condemned how she and her team treated him.
• “Confrontational politics.” She wrote against it in January 2025. That November her party’s Kootenai County committee posted an opponent’s real Social Security number, and Moon then posted a message backing the committee.
• “Yeah, not really.” Five county and regional committees wrote into formal proposals that members who asked for the party’s financial reports were told regional chairs “are not permitted to share the contents or provide copies.”
• $59,091.55. That is what the party’s federal filings show paid to Moon for travel and mileage, across fifty-two lines. Her answer to a $19,000 figure circulating in emails was “Really? That’s all?”
• A judge’s words. In January 2024, denying the party’s motion to dismiss a county committee’s lawsuit, a district judge held that “Chairwoman Moon failed to adhere to State Rules regarding the Grievance.”
• “We stand with Israel.” She wrote it in 2023. In June 2026 her convention struck a resolution supporting Israel and condemning Hamas, and Dave Reilly posted that he was “absolutely ECSTATIC.”
• Her treasurer’s letter. Steve Bender, elected on her slate in 2022, endorsed her challenger the night before the 2026 vote and took himself off the ballot.

”No more dirty tricks”

Thursday, July 14, 2022, was the first day of the Idaho Republican convention at the College of Southern Idaho. Somebody left a stack of flyers at the Valley House Homeless Shelter in Twin Falls. The heading read “Pizza for the hungry.” The address underneath belonged to “Pizza and Patriots,” Tom Luna’s meet-and-greet for delegates at a hotel across town (Idaho Capital Sun, July 15, 2022). Luna was the sitting party chairman, and Moon was running to take his job.

A shelter worker took the offer at face value and handed the flyers to residents. Tyler Hurst, the Republican staffer who organized Luna’s event, was in the hotel lobby when a child walked up to the front desk and asked whether this was where you got pizza for dinner. Hurst told the family yes, there was pizza. He explained that the event was a town hall, and Luna’s people sat the family down and fed them.

Luna had been homeless himself as a boy. He lived in a tent and went to school hungry. Hurst said Luna’s first reaction was anger at anyone who would “use people who are already in a tough spot as pawns.”

On Saturday morning, asking the delegates for their votes, Moon turned the flyers into her closing argument.

Brent Regan, who chairs the board of the Idaho Freedom Foundation and at the time chaired the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, put her name in nomination. She beat Luna that afternoon, 434 to 287, and her whole slate went with her (Idaho Reports, July 16, 2022). In her acceptance speech that afternoon she said: “We have to make sure with the Democrats coming at us with full force that we have our barriers up, our guns loaded and ready to keep this state free” (Idaho Capital Sun).

On Wednesday, July 20, four days after the vote, Valley House executive director John Spiers confirmed by email who had dropped off the flyers: Dave Reilly, a seated delegate from Kootenai County who had publicly backed Moon for chair (Idaho Capital Sun, July 20, 2022). Spiers gave him twenty-four hours to apologize. Reilly answered by posting that the story was cooked up by political operatives, along with a screenshot of a $100 donation to the shelter.

Daniel Silver chaired the Idaho Young Republicans, and he had been elected first vice chairman of the state party on the same ballot that made Moon its chairwoman. On July 22 his group expelled two members for a year, one of them in a leadership post. They put the reason in writing: “Some of the most vulnerable Idahoans (including children) were manipulated and used for the sole purpose of embarrassing an opposing candidate. As Republicans, we should never tolerate behavior like this in our own party” (Bonner County Daily Bee, July 31, 2022).

Three weeks after that, the Idaho Capital Sun ran a long story on Reilly, his delegate seat, his attendance at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, and the flyers. The paper asked the new chairwoman about him and reported, “Moon did not respond to a request for comment” (Idaho Capital Sun, August 11, 2022).

In June 2024 Reilly was back on a convention floor. He posted that he “had the HONOR of filling in as a seated Delegate, and voting on our new Republican Platform,” at the convention Moon had closed to reporters (Media Matters, citing Reilly’s own posts).

In April 2026 Lauren Walker claimed the stunt. Walker posts on X as @RogueLou18 and is one of Moon’s most vocal defenders there. On the afternoon of April 24, 2026, she tagged six people from the rival faction and accused them of having “slandered our chairwoman” (post). The next morning she wrote, “No one remembers, but I have no problem telling people about 2022 pizza gate” (post). Twelve minutes later, asked whether Reilly had ever done likewise, she replied: “I was involved in it too. Dave just got soft in the moment and got caught being apart of it” (post). That description of Reilly’s part is Walker’s own. Six minutes later she called the whole thing “a prank I pulled 4 years ago (which was hilarious btw)” and complained that her “haters are trying to blackmail me” over it (post).

Before the gavel

The Idaho Blue Book entry is short. Moon was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1958, raised near the Ozarks, and came to Idaho in 1994. She holds a bachelor’s in secondary education and a master’s in resource planning from Missouri State University, taught science and ran special education at Challis High School until 2012, and has been president of Moon & Associates, an engineering and surveying firm, since 1994. She also owns a gold mining operation in central Idaho (Idaho Blue Book 2019–2020). She lives near Stanley. She came into politics through the Tea Party in 2009 (Idaho Capital Sun). Her husband and business partner, Darr Moon, sits on the John Birch Society’s National Council, which the Society lists on its own site.

She served three terms in the Idaho House for District 8, from 2016 to 2022. In January 2018 she introduced Eric Parker, a figure from the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, on the House floor to applause (Idaho Statesman). In March 2021 she helped organize mask-burning rallies with Rep. Heather Scott (KHQ).

In her last House session she was making her first statewide run, for secretary of state, the office that runs Idaho’s elections. She brought three bills to rewrite the state’s election law. Minutes before the House voted on the third, she told the chamber why it was needed.

The Idaho Capital Sun asked the secretary of state’s office whether any of it had happened. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck answered, “In short, no,” and added: “If we’re going to say that, we should be pointing to specific cases, specific numbers” (Idaho Capital Sun, March 14, 2022). The bill passed the House 47 to 21. It struck student IDs from the list of acceptable voter identification and added the concealed-carry license (Idaho Press).

Some of her campaign money came from Bonneville County. The Bonneville County Republican Central Committee’s bylaws said it would “take no position in favor of any Republican candidate engaged in a primary election contest.” In March 2022 it wrote checks to six primary candidates anyway, Moon among them, in amounts of $1,000 and $5,000 (East Idaho News, April 1, 2022, which published the donation schedule). Mark Fuller chaired the county committee, and Bryan Smith was its state committeeman (Post Register, July 2023). Luna sued, and on May 13, 2022, Judge Jason Scott ruled the committee had overstepped and done “irreparable harm” to the state party (Idaho Capital Sun).

Four days later Phil McGrane beat her for the secretary of state nomination, 43.0 percent to 41.5, with Sen. Mary Souza third (Idaho Capital Sun, May 18, 2022). Two months after that, Regan nominated her for party chair and Fuller won second vice chair on her slate.

”Fighting to stop sexualization of children”

On February 28, 2019, the Idaho House voted on House Bill 98, Rep. Melissa Wintrow’s bill to set a minimum age for marriage in Idaho. It failed, 28 to 39. Moon voted no. Rep. Laurie Lickley, a Republican in her first term, voted yes (Idaho Legislature, H0098). Idaho Statesman columnist Bryan Clark later wrote in an opinion column that the vote ensured “there would be no minimum age for marriage in Idaho for at least another year” (Idaho Statesman, May 1, 2023). The next year Moon voted for House Bill 466, a narrower child-marriage bill that passed 55 to 2 (Idaho Legislature, H0466).

On April 28, 2021, the House Ethics Committee held its hearing on Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger. A 19-year-old legislative intern, identified in the proceedings as Jane Doe, had accused him of sexual assault. Moon took the stand as a witness called by his attorney, Edward Dindinger (Idaho Capital Sun, April 28, 2021).

She testified that she had seen the two of them together in early March, and she told the committee why she trusted her reading of the moment: “I do observe people a lot. In my profession as a special ed director, social cues are really important, and I’ve been around college students, I’ve been around high school students, and I can tell when there’s, like, flirting going on” (hearing video posted by Mary Souza).

Dindinger had her read a line from the police report in which Jane Doe said the relationship “had never been flirtatious and she had never made advances toward him.” He asked whether that matched what she had seen. “No,” Moon said. “It was a flirtatious action that I was observing.” Then: “I’m a woman. I think I know what it looks like to flirt” (Idaho Press, April 28, 2021; Idaho Reports). Asked whether von Ehlinger had ever behaved in a way that concerned her, she said, “He’s just always been a real gentleman.” Boise State Public Radio reported that she and two other witnesses said he “had been nothing but a gentleman in their interactions” (Boise State Public Radio).

Deputy Attorney General Leslie Hayes cross-examined her. Asked whether she considered herself an expert on flirting, Moon answered, “You know, I would consider myself an expert on social cues, yes.” Hayes then asked whether it was appropriate for an elected representative to have a sexual relationship with a 19-year-old unpaid intern.

The Idaho Press live blog recorded the same answer (Idaho Press).

The next day the committee voted unanimously to recommend censure and suspension without pay. Rep. Brent Crane said, “There was indeed a predatory pattern that was established.” Von Ehlinger resigned the same day (Idaho Reports, April 29, 2021). Rep. Priscilla Giddings, who also testified, was censured by the House in November, 49 to 19, for sharing a post that identified the intern (Idaho Capital Sun, November 15, 2021).

On April 29, 2022, an Ada County jury convicted von Ehlinger of rape (Idaho Reports). Eleven weeks later Moon was elected party chair, and Idaho Reports’ story that day included this line about her: “She has also voiced support for former Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, who has since been convicted of raping a legislative intern” (Idaho Reports, July 16, 2022).

On August 31, 2022, von Ehlinger was sentenced to 8 years fixed and 12 indeterminate. Judge Michael Reardon told him, “You see yourself as a victim and you see yourself as a hero… And frankly, I don’t see you as either one” (Idaho Reports, August 31, 2022). The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in February 2025 (Idaho Capital Sun, February 6, 2025).

In early September the new chairwoman went after Boise Pride. She issued three statements against the festival, listed phone numbers for 20 of its sponsors and urged supporters to call them, and alleged, in the Capital Sun’s words “without providing specifics or evidence,” that the festival promotes the sexualization of children. Sponsors began pulling out. The Capital Sun’s September 8 story on the withdrawals, published eight days after the sentencing, also reported that Moon “has yet to condemn her former Republican colleague for raping a teenage legislative intern” (Idaho Capital Sun, September 8, 2022).

Alex LaBeau, president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, answered her that week in the Idaho Press.

On April 27, 2023, the Times-News ran her column under the headline “Republicans are fighting to stop sexualization of children, not Democrats.” The subhead read: “We support punishment for sexual predators and we support the long-standing social conventions that make predators easier to spot and easier to stop” (Times-News, April 27, 2023). Four days later Clark answered in the Statesman column quoted above, headlined “Idaho GOP Chair Moon uses kids for political purposes but failed to stand up for them,” which set her 2019 vote and her 2021 testimony beside the new column.

Lickley, who served in the Idaho House from 2018 to 2022 and later chaired the District 26 Republicans, wrote a guest opinion in the Idaho Mountain Express in February 2024 under the headline “Idaho GOP leader has marred the party.”

That November Lickley was the Republican nominee for Senate District 26, a race documented in the section on Moon’s finance chairman.

”A watchful eye on every Republican member”

Opening the 2023 legislative session, Moon told Republican lawmakers the party would have people at the Capitol keeping “a watchful eye on every Republican member” (Boise State Public Radio, quoted in the Spokesman-Review).

The same month her State Central Committee took up a rule for enforcing the platform. An elected Republican accused of straying from the platform could be called before a party committee, and the penalties ran from censure up to losing party support and the use of the Republican name for five years (Idaho Capital Sun, January 5, 2023). The committee adopted it that summer in Challis (Post Register). At the same Challis meeting it voted no confidence in eleven Republican legislators and Gov. Brad Little over the library bill Little had vetoed (Spokesman-Review, August 26, 2023).

Lickley wrote about the rule in her February 2024 guest opinion: “Moon’s insistence on giving a small group of precinct committeemen the authority to bring elected officials to tribunals, censure them and strip them of party resources—with no appeal process—is nothing short of an unchecked power grab” (Idaho Mountain Express, February 21, 2024).

In Bonneville County the cases came from the Legislative District 32 committee, which Doyle Beck chaired until the county reorganized on May 30, 2024 (East Idaho News, June 4, 2024). It brought them against three of its own legislators.

Date	What happened	Source
June 2023	State Central Committee adopts the platform enforcement rule in Challis	Post Register
Dec. 5, 2023	LD32 hearing on Reps. Wendy Horman and Stephanie Mickelsen and Sen. Kevin Cook, held in the community room at Smith Chevrolet	East Idaho News
Dec. 6, 2023	The dealership’s owner apologizes to the three legislators	East Idaho News
Dec. 2023	Closed-door vote censures Mickelsen; Cook and Horman get a “Resolution of Guidance”	East Idaho News
Mar. 7, 2024	Second hearing at the Beck Fuller Law office; new censures for Mickelsen and Cook; an Article XX resolution strips Mickelsen of party support for five years	East Idaho News
May 21, 2024	Primary: Cook, Mickelsen and Horman all win; reform slate takes 38 of 50 precinct seats	East Idaho News
May 28, 2024	Outgoing committee, behind closed doors, sends $55,786 to the state party and leaves $100	East Idaho News
June 15, 2024	Moon’s convention re-elects her, re-elects Bryan Smith as national committeeman, and elects Mark Fuller her first vice chair	Idaho Reports

Sources linked in each row. Charges were 2023 session votes, including HB 138, HB 265 and HB 314.

Beck also sat on the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s board, which he said he joined “because their matrix is almost identical to the Republican platform” (East Idaho News, December 6, 2023). He told East Idaho News the hearings were about integrity: “If they want (the support of the Idaho Republican party), candidates have to read through (the platform) and commit that they will follow it” (East Idaho News, December 5, 2023). Mickelsen answered that “on every issue they came after us with, it had an Idaho Freedom Foundation index.”

One of the charges was House Bill 138, which moved Idaho’s presidential primary from March to May. Horman’s written answer to the committee put the state chairwoman in the middle of it. “The day I voted on this bill, Feb. 24, 2023, Dorothy Moon (Chair of the Idaho GOP) called me to ask about its fiscal impact,” Horman wrote. She texted Moon screenshots from the budget book at 11:07 that morning and voted that day. Six days later she learned the party opposed the bill, and the vote became one of the allegations against her (East Idaho News, December 5, 2023).

The first hearing ran about two hours in a car dealership’s community room. Ammon City Council President Russell Slack sat in the audience and said, “Everything that’s been presented makes this feel like a trial.” The next day the dealership’s owner, Cannon Smith, apologized in public: “Our Community Room is here as a free resource to the community to help build and uplift, not to divide. I want to apologize to Stephanie, Wendy and Kevin that our facility was misused” (East Idaho News, December 6, 2023).

The second hearing moved to the Beck Fuller Law office in downtown Idaho Falls. Beck told the Post Register, “They like to say this is a purity test and actually it’s an integrity test” (Post Register). The committee censured Mickelsen and Cook again and issued Mickelsen an Article XX resolution that “removes Republican party support” and bars her from calling herself a Republican in campaign material for five years. Mickelsen texted back: “I am a Republican and intend to run as a Republican.” Cook wrote, “The central committee is holding another trial because I won’t agree to send public tax dollars to private K-12 schools.” Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder told the Idaho Press, “I don’t think that’s legal. I think it’s unconstitutional” (East Idaho News, March 11, 2024).

Two months later all three won their primaries. Cook took 69 percent (East Idaho News) and Mickelsen 60 (East Idaho News). Horman won with 46 percent over Ammon Mayor Sean Coletti at 35 and Bryan Smith, the attorney and Republican national committeeman, at 19 (East Idaho News).

The county party turned over too. A slate called Empower Bonneville Voters ran on a four-point pledge that ended, “End the kangaroo courts and purity tests,” and took 38 of the 50 precinct seats. “No more purity panels,” said Steve Taggart, one of the new precinct officers (East Idaho News).

On May 28, two days before the handover, the outgoing committee met behind closed doors, asked an East Idaho News reporter to leave, and voted 29 to 22 to send about $55,786 to Moon’s state party, to fight the open-primaries initiative and pay for a $20,000 convention luncheon. It left its successors $100. “They left us $100. That’s benevolent of them,” said County Commissioner Jon Walker, one of the incoming precinct officers, “not enough to keep the lights on, by their own statement” (East Idaho News). When the new committee met, Maria Hatch replaced Beck as District 32 chair, Michael Colson became county chairman, and the committee passed a resolution asking the state party to refund the money. “We are very much in favor of having the voters decide who’s Republican enough,” Colson said (East Idaho News, June 4, 2024).

Two weeks after the county turnover, Moon’s state convention re-elected her 376 to 228. The same delegates returned Bryan Smith, less than four weeks after his third-place finish in District 32, as Republican national committeeman over Luna, 390 to 200, and made Mark Fuller, the Bonneville chairman from the 2022 checks, her first vice chair, 382 to 223 (Idaho Reports, June 15, 2024). In 2026 Colson summed up his county’s position: “We don’t support those tribunals. That’s the job of the voters” (East Idaho News, May 18, 2026).

”Make it go away”

Damond Watkins became Idaho’s Republican national committeeman in January 2010 on a unanimous vote of the state party. He helped raise $60 million for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, President Trump appointed him to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, and he had once chaired the Bonneville County Republicans himself (Post Register, July 2023).

In July 2022 Watkins bought a second home in North Carolina, near his wife’s family and the doctors treating the back he broke in a 2013 plane crash. On August 3, Mark Fuller, then chairman of the Bonneville County GOP, called him about his residency. A challenge to his voter registration followed, and it failed. Bonneville County Clerk Penny Manning said “we had no reason to believe that he was not eligible to register,” and Secretary of State Phil McGrane wrote in a January 5 letter, “I agree with your conclusion that he is currently a qualified Idaho elector” (Post Register).

In September 2022 Moon received a petition signed by 61 members of the State Central Committee from 22 counties, asking the committee to declare Watkins’s seat vacant or remove him. The Post Register reported that the petition was “written by Bonneville County GOP State Committeeman Bryan Smith.”

In December the Republican National Committee wrote to Moon: “we are deeply concerned that efforts to remove him (Watkins) might not be done in accordance with IDGOP rules.” At a special State Central Committee meeting on January 7, 2023, Al Gage, a certified professional parliamentarian hired by first vice chairman Daniel Silver, delivered a 17-page opinion. He wrote that “the National Committeeman’s rights to due process were unequivocally violated by the entire body of the Idaho State Central Committee,” and that “only the State Convention has this authority under the current rules.” Moon then hired an investigative committee led by Chris Troupis (Post Register).

The State Central Committee held its summer meeting in Challis in June 2023, the same meeting that adopted the platform enforcement rule. What happened there on June 24 is Watkins’s account, and Moon calls it a lie. Watkins told the Post Register that twenty minutes before he was due to speak, Moon and Troupis took him outside the building and told him they had a recording of him speaking at his church in North Carolina. He asked for a copy of the report. By his account she answered, “No, you can have a copy when everybody else gets a copy in 20 minutes — clock’s ticking.” He said she told him his friends had turned against him: “Everybody, when they see the truth, what’s in this report, they’re going to drop you like flies.” Then, Watkins said, she told him: “I want you to resign. Make it go away. If you resign right now, this report will go away.”

He texted “I resign.” Of the recording, Watkins said, “Churches are places of worship not to be used as places of political sabotage.”

A prominent Idaho business leader gave the Post Register a statement condemning how Moon and her team had treated Watkins (Post Register).

Two days after Challis, on June 26, the party’s news release praised Watkins for having “played a pivotal role in shaping our party’s vision and driving positive change.” On June 29 former chairmen Tom Luna and Trent Clark asked the RNC to investigate “the coerced ‘resignation.’” On July 14 the RNC called the texted resignation “dispositive” (Post Register).

Bryan Smith, who wrote the petition, was national committeeman in June 2026, when he signed a letter in that title endorsing her challenger (letter). Moon’s 2024 convention had re-elected him to the seat, as documented above.

The Post Register asked Moon for a copy of the investigative committee’s report, and she refused to provide it. Of Watkins’s account she said: “(Watkins) resigned from his position because he lives in North Carolina. Period. The evidence from this investigative committee proved that. This is all misinformation. That is an absolute lie.” The paper asked about the June 24 conversation.

”Yeah, not really”

On June 13, 2024, the first day of her state convention, reporters were barred from the committee meetings, the business meetings and the general session. Idaho Capital Sun reporter Clark Corbin asked the chairwoman whether transparency was part of the equation at all.

The press spent that day in the windowless corner of a hallway (Idaho Reports, June 14, 2024). The party had already done it once that year. Back in February it announced that news media would be kept out of the March 2024 presidential caucus, the event her party put in place of Idaho’s presidential primary (Idaho Capital Sun, February 14, 2024).

In September 2023 the Bingham County Republican Central Committee sued the state party, alleging “bully tactics” after Moon voided the county committee’s leadership election (Idaho Press). On January 16, 2024, Seventh District Judge Darren Simpson denied the party’s motion to dismiss. His April 23, 2025 order in the case, Bingham County Republican Central Committee v. Idaho Republican Party, No. CV06-23-1418, recounts that ruling in one sentence: the court held that “Chairwoman Moon failed to adhere to State Rules regarding the Grievance.” The same order says Bingham came away with “a protected right to appeal Chairwoman Moon’s decision to void the Election” (Order, April 23, 2025, published by KIFI). In December 2024 the court ruled the Bingham committee’s leadership invalid, and the county committee withdrew its appeal (KIFI, December 11, 2024).

Two of the party’s own rules deal with money. Article II, Section 5 reads: “No member of the State Executive Committee shall receive financial remuneration other than expenses as approved by the Executive Committee.” Article XIV requires that “once per calendar year” a Financial Review Committee of three State Central Committee members “will review the status of the budget (actual versus projected), documentation of expenses, and the general financial status of the State Party” (2026 Idaho GOP rules).

In November 2023, after the entire executive leadership of the Ada County Republican committee resigned, she ordered a financial review of the county party (BoiseDev, November 27, 2023).

Colson, the Bonneville County chairman, went looking for the state party’s own review in 2025. The watchdog site Party Watch published his account: “I have been asking the State GOP since January if they had a Financial Review Committee (FRC) in place… They would not answer me. State GOP Treasurer Steve Bender finally admitted to me at our Lincoln Day Dinner on May 2nd they have not had a Financial Review Committee in place for two years!” (Party Watch, quoting Colson).

In the spring of 2025, the Jerome, Jefferson and Madison county committees, the District 32 committee and Region 10 all passed Proposed Rule 2025-26 and sent it to the state party. Its findings read:

The rule called for the treasurer to hand counties the budget, profit-and-loss statements, balance sheets, cash-flow statements and the Financial Review Committee’s reports. Gem, Bonneville, Jefferson and Jerome sent it back for the January 2026 winter meeting as Proposed Rule 2026-12 (winter 2026 proposals). The Rules Committee’s report that January forwarded six proposals to the floor, numbered 2026-01, -02, -03, -04, -06 and -08 (Rules Committee report). Two that passed are in the January 2026 rules. Rule 2026-01 limits who may submit rules and resolutions to county, legislative-district, regional and executive-committee bodies and the chairman. Rule 2026-03 lets executive sessions, “at the discretion of the chair, be limited to voting members only” (2026 Idaho GOP rules).

Rep. Ben Fuhriman of Idaho Falls summed up the two years in an Idaho State Journal opinion piece after the 2026 convention: “The party went two full years without convening its required financial review committee. When members asked to see the books, they hit a brick wall. And when inconvenient questions arose, new rules were quietly pushed through at the next meeting to limit accountability” (Idaho State Journal, June 23, 2026).

Trent Clark, who led the state party before Luna, sat on its executive committee under Moon and later co-founded Gem State Conservatives to oppose her, wrote an opinion column that ran June 12, 2026, in the Post Register and the Idaho State Journal.

Clark wrote that as an executive committee member he was required by rule to ratify those hirings and firings, and that when he asked why the agreements existed he “was told it was ‘none of my business.’” He wrote that each agreement came with a payment, “but that amount was always withheld from the executive committee.” Those are his allegations, made under his own name in two newspapers.

Seven days later the party’s sitting treasurer, Steve Bender, spoke to a room of delegates at the convention. “And there’s at least one other person here that can’t say what I’m saying because of the non-disparagement agreement,” he said. “But I can” (recording posted to X, June 20, 2026).

In July 2025 an attorney for Anthony Tirino, then two months into the job as the party’s fourth executive director under Moon, sent the party a letter demanding a special executive committee meeting. It imposed a litigation hold on records covering “the hiring, employment and the end of employment of each of the prior executive directors in your time as the Chairwoman.” Idaho Dispatch published the letter and reported that Moon did not respond to its request for comment (Idaho Dispatch, July 16, 2025, archived).

”Really? That’s all?”

On March 19, 2025, Moon spoke for thirty-five minutes to about thirty members of the Magic Valley Republican Women at a golf course bar near Filer. A group calling itself GOP Party Watch had been emailing Republicans about her travel spending, and she took up the subject.

She explained that the figure included the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which alone ran about $6,000 in flights and hotel rooms at $500 a night for herself and her staff. The chairmanship is unpaid, she said (Twin Falls Times-News, March 22, 2025).

Federal law requires the party to report part of its finances to the Federal Election Commission. In those filings, fifteen lines between December 5, 2023, and November 7, 2024, list the filed purpose “mileage reimbursement Chair travel,” with Dorothy Moon as the payee, and total $19,481.26 (FEC filings 1744346, 1758333, 1795729, 1812315, 1859077). From her first reimbursement as chair on August 11, 2022, through February 27, 2025, the travel and mileage lines number thirty and total $38,778.21. Party Watch published both totals. Through August 26, 2026, the total is $59,091.55 across fifty-two lines. The largest single payment is $2,821.03, dated June 25, 2025 (filing 1905028).

In January and February 2023, party funds paid Bank of Idaho Visa balances that included $2,329.69 in charges itemized to the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach in Dana Point, California (filings 1690026 and 1694600).

The first four months of 2025 were lean. The federal account took in $25,146.80 and spent $85,004.83, and cash on hand fell from $104,378.04 to $44,520.01. Travel-coded lines made up $18,166.16 of the $84,916.58 in itemized spending, or 21.4 percent (filings 1878256, 1882147, 1889269, 1893674).

By the 2026 convention the treasurer was telling delegates the party had a budget of more than $750,000 for the year and had raised about $161,000 of it by May 31 (recording posted to X, June 20, 2026). His figure covers every account the party holds, state and federal. The two pieces of it that belong on the federal side, his own $5,000 sponsorship on May 27 and a $10,000 Republican National Committee contribution, are in the May 2026 report he signed (FEC filing 1985818).

Her side answered by asking who was behind the questions. Moon told the Magic Valley women the group was “very anonymous,” sent “nasty emails” and “seems to have obtained the email list for the Idaho GOP” (Times-News). Brian Almon, the party’s paid communications consultant, reported on his site Gem State Chronicle that Ada County chairman Thad Butterworth had presented a county meeting with the mail server behind the emails and three names, and asked: “Who is personally responsible for sending these emails and running the Twitter account? … What are they trying to hide?” (Gem State Chronicle, March 7, 2025). That July, on the same site, Brent Regan wrote the spending defense under his own byline and described the critics as “losers, often cowering and afraid behind anonymous screen names… When you spot these losers, do the one thing they hate the most. Ignore them” (Gem State Chronicle, July 12, 2025).

Bryan Smith represented the state party against Bingham County. At the party’s winter meeting, Bender told members, in a clip Party Watch published, “Bryan mentioned he spent 250 hours of his time defending that lawsuit; that was a donation to the party. He is not billing us for his time” (Party Watch). A sworn declaration filed by Bingham County from precinct committeeman Josh Sorenson recorded Smith telling a meeting he had “donated” roughly 250 hours (East Idaho News, April 29, 2025).

In February 2025 the party asked Bingham County Republicans to pay its attorney fees. “I believe it’s $82,000 for attorney’s fees,” Smith told KIFI (KIFI, February 4, 2025). Bingham’s committee answered in a statement: “Party leadership had repeatedly affirmed that Mr. Smith was not charging for his services. It was therefore concerning to see sworn affidavits submitted to the court asserting the opposite” (KIFI, April 24, 2025). Judge Simpson ruled on April 23, 2025, that “neither party prevailed and each shall bear its own attorney fees and costs” (Order). Smith told KIFI that the Bingham committee thinking “it won something after avoiding an award of attorney’s fees shows precisely how distorted their view of reality is.”

The man she chose to raise the money

The press release went up on idgop.org on September 2, 2026, under the author name “admin” (archived).

The rest of the release is about 150 words of biography. Ryan Spoon is a former first vice chairman of the Ada County Republicans, a West Point graduate, and a father of five in Meridian whose “extensive grassroots experience includes volunteering on campaigns, knocking doors, organizing events, and recruiting precinct committee members.” The release says he “will be responsible for developing and executing fundraising programs,” and the party’s executive board page lists the finance chair among the executive committee’s “ex-officio, non-voting members” (idgop.org).

Spoon has a long public record, most of it on X, where he posts as @SpoonForIdaho. Since late 2023 he has attacked at least 28 Republicans by name there, among them the governor, the lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, the Senate president pro tem, a former governor, a former speaker, a former attorney general, two former party chairmen, and a long list of sitting legislators. A sample:

Date	Target	What he wrote
Dec. 4, 2023	Trent Clark, former party chairman	”the RINOs like Trent are NOT Republicans.”
June 17, 2024	Tom Luna and Trent Clark, former party chairmen	”Never forget what ABSOLUTE LIARS these two creatures are!!”
June 17, 2024	Trent Clark	”STOP trying to USE your passed wife’s memory as a moral shield … you are a leftist traitor to conservative Republican values.”
May 13, 2024	Gov. Little, Speaker Bedke, Supt. Critchfield and others	”You’re just like them: RINO to the core.”
Apr. 15, 2025	Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen	”Rep. Stephanie ‘Plantation Mistress’ Mikkkelsen (@sjwmick), justice is coming for you.”
Aug. 29, 2025	Rep. Lori McCann	”Send far-left RINO Lori McCann into retirement!”
Nov. 18, 2025	Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen	”Better watch yourself, Rep. Stephanie ‘Plantation Mistress’ Mikkkelsen!”
Feb. 20, 2026	Maria Nate, former Idaho Freedom Foundation president	”She’s a net negative for the conservative movement”
Feb. 25, 2026	Sen. Jim Guthrie, Reps. Walton, Cheatum, Fuhriman and Mickelsen	Under the heading “For donors and door-knockers:” he called them “terrible RINO opponents that have got to go.”
Apr. 8, 2026	Sen. Jim Guthrie	”the single worst RINO in the Idaho Legislature”

Verbatim from @SpoonForIdaho. Each date links to the post.

He spells Mickelsen’s name with three k’s in at least eight posts. In January 2025, days into the new Trump administration, he tagged border czar Tom Homan asking for “illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelson,” and posted, “You can report her, too!” Three days later, Mickelsen said, ICE agents came to Mickelsen Farms, and by January 27 one of its employees had been arrested. InvestigateWest’s Daniel Walters wrote that Spoon had “turned the force of the federal government against a political enemy” and “has taken a scorched earth approach.” Mickelsen told him she had “heard from a lot of legislators who were ‘completely disgusted’ by his tactics” (InvestigateWest, March 25, 2025). In March 2026 he posted that an American Falls employer had “confessed that both he AND Sen. Jim Guthrie have profited from illegal alien labor,” followed by “Lock them both up!” and the ICE tip line (post).

In 2023 Boise mayoral candidate Mike Masterson returned a $100 donation from Spoon after Spoon called Boise Pride “Filth Fest,” saying he “can’t accept support that violates my personal values” (BoiseDev, September 13, 2023).

In 2024 Spoon chaired the Idaho Freedom PAC (Idaho Capital Sun, March 27, 2025). That November Lickley, whose op-ed is quoted above, was the Republican nominee for Senate District 26. The Idaho Secretary of State’s canvass has Democrat Ron Taylor at 10,319 votes, Lickley at 9,952 and independent Kala Tate at 2,380, a margin of 367 (Idaho SOS canvass). Between October 22 and Election Day, the Idaho Freedom PAC reported $2,734.37 in independent expenditures applied in support of Tate (Idaho Sunshine).

Three days after the election Tate told the Times-News what her campaign had been for: “We stole several thousand votes from (Lickley’s) race so she didn’t get in. That was ultimately all we were supposed to do and it worked, so praise God” (Idaho EdNews, citing the Times-News; Political Potatoes, “Spoiler Alert”). On November 20 a user on X shared that story, tagged Spoon and Dustin Hurst, and asked, “Did conservatives work to help elect a democrat who will vote to mutilate kids and murder babies??”

In 2023 and 2024 her party’s district committees tried sitting Republicans for votes that broke with the platform, as documented above. In 2026 she made the man who chaired the Idaho Freedom PAC in 2024 her finance chairman.

Republican officers in his own region voted on him in June 2026. On June 1 he announced a run for Region V chair of the state party and claimed “verbal commitments from an overwhelming majority” (post). The party’s executive board page later that month listed Greg Ferch as Region V chair (archived idgop.org, June 26, 2026). Spoon explained the loss on June 21: “when alpha males step up as fighters, the beta males and beta females find that ‘mean’ and ‘ugly’ and ‘divisive’” (post).

Ten weeks later Moon made him the party’s finance chairman. Accepting, he wrote that he “strongly believe[s] in the leadership and values held by our @IdahoGOP Chair Dorothy @moonforidaho” (post).

”Confrontational politics”

Moon’s January 31, 2025 column in the Idaho State Journal was headlined “Confrontational politics.”

Spoon had posted on June 17, 2024 that Trent Clark was “a leftist traitor to conservative Republican values.” On November 18, 2025, he posted “Better watch yourself” to Mickelsen.

Three weeks after the column ran, on February 22, 2025, the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee held a town hall in the Coeur d’Alene High School auditorium. When Teresa Borrenpohl heckled from her seat, men from a private security firm, Lear Asset Management, pulled her out of her chair and carried her from the room while Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris told them, “Guys, get her” (Idaho Capital Sun, February 24, 2025). Regan, whose committee put on the event, told the Capital Sun, “Bob (Norris) was right there. Nothing was done without him being aware.” The state party backed the committee in a statement issued in the party’s name: “When one voice drowns out many, it’s not expression it’s a heckler’s veto, a tactic we reject outright” (idahonews.com, March 7, 2025).

On May 14, 2026, Borrenpohl filed a federal civil rights suit, Borrenpohl v. Norris et al., No. 2:26-cv-00301, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho (Coeur d’Alene Press, May 14, 2026; docket). Brent Regan is named as a defendant in his individual capacity. The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee is not a defendant. The claims in the complaint are allegations.

In November 2025 the same committee published a woman’s Social Security number. The Idaho Statesman reported on November 4, 2025, that the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee had reposted a 1992 court document to Facebook and X. Printed on it was the Social Security number of Christa Hazel, a volunteer with the rival North Idaho Republicans. The Statesman confirmed the number was hers by reviewing her Social Security card. The committee redacted it on Facebook. On X it was still up when the story ran. Regan told the paper the committee would take the records down only if a court confirmed it had released the number “against their own rules” (Idaho Statesman via Spokesman-Review, “‘Dangerous’: North Idaho Republican party shares opponent’s Social Security number”).

The same story reported what happened next: “Idaho Republican Party Chairman Dorothy Moon then shared a message of support for the committee, and accused the North Idaho Republicans of trying to ‘deceive’ voters about ‘who the Idaho GOP is and what we stand for.’” Her message was posted on the committee’s Facebook page. The Statesman noted that in June 2025 Moon had issued a news release condemning online threats against Idaho Republicans, including a message left on her home phone promising a “personal visit.” It also recorded that “Moon did not respond to a request for comment.”

The outlet the party pays

On March 17, 2026, Gem State Chronicle ran a story headlined “Who is Senator Foreman Protecting?” It reported that Chairwoman Moon had sent Sen. Dan Foreman a letter demanding a hearing on a bill, reproduced the letter, and then told readers who helped write it.

Brian Almon, the party’s paid communications consultant, publishes Gem State Chronicle. His About page says, “From March 2025 to the present, I have handled communications and social media for the Idaho Republican Party,” and that “nobody in the Idaho GOP exercises editorial control over this platform.” The same page lists his earlier work for the Idaho Freedom Foundation and the Idaho Freedom Caucus, and a stint as contributing editor of Idaho Signal, “a Citizens Alliance of Idaho production,” from January to March 2025 and again from January to March 2026.

The party’s checks to him start seventeen months before March 2025. Almon Consulting first appears in the Idaho Republican Party’s federal filings on October 11, 2023, for $250 (filing 1736156), the month after he left the Idaho Freedom Foundation, where InvestigateWest reported he had been its communications director (InvestigateWest, December 11, 2023). Through August 3, 2026, the party has paid Almon Consulting $44,250 across thirty-two payments (filing 2014617). The payments ran $150 to $750 a month through 2024, went to $1,500 in May 2025, $2,000 that August and $2,500 that December, touched $3,000 in July 2026 and settled back at $2,500 (filings 1896970, 1915573, 1934075, 2009203).

The filings call the work three different things. The first four lines read “contract labor,” the next ones “contract copy editing,” and the last twenty-one in a row “contract copy editing general work,” all of it for what his About page calls communications and social media.

Between that first check and the end of February 2025, Almon published 191 posts under his own byline that mention Moon or the Idaho Republican Party, while the party paid him $8,000. He disclosed the party contract in a June 23, 2025 meeting recap: “I’ve recently begun doing some communications work for the state party.” One of the earlier posts was “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary,” published June 7, 2024, six days before the convention where Sen. Mary Souza challenged Moon: “Dorothy Moon is the voice of the people, while Mary Souza is the voice of the same special interests who controlled our party until recently.”

Before the first payment, 13.3 percent of the posts on Gem State Chronicle’s Substack mirror mentioned her. After March 2025, the start date he gives, it was 27.9 percent, up from about one and a half Moon posts a month to about six.

On June 14, 2024, two accounts of the same convention day went up. Idaho Reports described reporters confined to that hallway corner (Idaho Reports). Almon published a detailed account from inside the rooms they were kept out of, covering the executive committee, the credentials fight, a 26-page complaint and the Gem County delegate strikes, down to the evening’s campfire: “Propane tanks were set up with emitters to allow us to toast marshmallows” (Gem State Chronicle, June 14, 2024). Three months earlier he had covered the presidential caucus while serving as one of its 210 caucus captains, and wrote that “local media figures continue to make hay out of the fact that they did not get special invites” (Gem State Chronicle, March 5, 2024).

The second-largest author account on his site belongs to Dorothy Moon, with 138 columns under her byline from December 2023 to September 2026, each identifying her as party chair. Almon has described the arrangement: “Dorothy Moon’s weekly column is republished across Idaho (including in the Gem State Chronicle), so people pay attention.” On X, where he posts as @brianalmon, he endorsed her for a third term on June 1, 2026: “In 2022, the Idaho GOP elected a fighter. Dorothy Moon has not stopped fighting for the people of Idaho, and I’m proud to continue supporting her leadership.”

He disclosed the contract in his story on the result.

The company she keeps

At the party’s January 2024 winter meeting, the party’s X account advertised Moon’s “Chairwoman’s Luncheon with delicious food provided by Old State Saloon/Stone Crossing” (@IdahoGOP, January 2024). That September the account posted, “We had a GREAT time celebrating TRUMP DAY with @ADAGOPCC at @OldStateSaloon in Eagle, Idaho, on Monday night!” (@IdahoGOP, September 2024). In January 2025 it promoted the saloon’s inauguration watch party (@IdahoGOP). In 2026 the party’s own event calendar listed the saloon’s owner, Mark Fitzpatrick, as keynote speaker at county Lincoln Day dinners (idgop.org, Boise County Lincoln Day Dinner).

In June 2024 Fitzpatrick’s bar declared “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” in answer to Pride Month (KTVB; NBC News). In November 2025 it offered free beer to customers who helped ICE (Fox News, December 7, 2025). The Idaho Freedom Foundation gave him a “Citizen Hero Award” in 2024 (Old State Saloon on X). On his 2026 Ada County Republican candidate questionnaire he wrote, “I supported Ammon Bundy in 2022” (archived adagop.org).

Between March and July 2024, for the presidential caucus it had closed to reporters, the state party paid a company called Regan Designs $17,097.43 for presidential caucus logistics: $6,268.20 for caucus kit shipping, $5,301.15 for hand stamps, $5,029.16 to ship return kits, and $498.92 in July (FEC filings 1795729 and 1812315). The payee address is 6100 E Borley Rd, Coeur d’Alene. The Idaho Secretary of State’s business registry lists REGAN DESIGNS, INC. at that address, with Brent F Regan as registered agent (Idaho SOS business search).

Thirteen days after Moon took the gavel, two Kootenai County Republicans, Sandy Patano and former Lt. Gov. Jack Riggs, published a guest column on what they found in the campaign finance report of Regan’s county committee.

”We stand with Israel”

Six days after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, Moon wrote an op-ed for the party’s website. “The Idaho Republican Party overwhelmingly passed a resolution at last year’s State Convention in support of Israel,” she wrote. “We renew that call today.” She closed: “The Idaho Republican Party stands for civilization, for a true lasting peace, and we stand with Israel” (idgop.org, October 13, 2023). Her 2024 convention passed Resolution 2024-06, “Idaho’s Unequivocal Support for Israel” (2024 Resolutions Committee report).

For 2026 the Resolutions Committee, chaired by Sen. Scott Herndon, recommended Resolution 2026-11, “Supporting Israel’s Right to Exist and Condemning Hamas,” submitted by Nina Beesley of Kootenai County. It noted that “acts of anti-Semitism rose sharply across the United States after the attack by Hamas on Israel and have remained high since,” commended President Trump, and resolved that the convention “prays for peace in Israel and in the Middle East, and condemns all enemies of Israel” (2026 Resolutions Committee report).

On June 20, 2026, Sen. Brian Lenney moved to strike it. Herndon estimated that about three-quarters of the delegates stood to support the motion. The Idaho Statesman called the vote “a marked shift from the past,” noting that “at the previous two conventions, resolutions passed in support of Israel,” and reported that “Lenney did not respond to a request for comment” (Idaho Statesman via Spokesman-Review, June 24, 2026). The eighteen resolutions the convention adopted are posted on idgop.org. Lenney posted about his motion that day and explained himself: “‘America First’ can’t have an asterisk that says ‘except when it comes to Israel’” (post).

Dave Reilly, the delegate the shelter director named, backed Moon for chair in 2022 (Idaho Capital Sun, July 20, 2022) and sat as a delegate at her 2024 convention, both documented above. On June 20, 2026, the day the convention elected her to a third term, he posted this.

Two months later he went after the resolution’s author by name: “she’s the Zionist who has been leading witch hunts… ask her why she supports the Israeli baby-killers!” (post). The Idaho Capital Sun reported in 2022 that his deleted tweets “included suggestions that Iran should bomb Israel, and saying Jewish people have white privilege because they ‘pretend to be white when it’s expedient for them’” (Idaho Capital Sun, July 20, 2022).

Five days after the vote, Moon published an op-ed titled “The Idaho GOP is united and ready to work.” It warned about “socialists and radical Muslims winning Democratic primary elections” (idgop.org, June 25, 2026). The same day Bill Colley of News Radio 1310 KLIX ran an opinion piece headlined “Some Idaho Republicans Go Down the Anti-Semitic Highway,” writing that some party members “have already cozied up to some rabid anti-Semites” (KLIX, June 25, 2026).

”The Bible as their basis”

Article III of the Idaho Republican Party platform is titled “Religious Freedom in Public Schools.” Section 1.A says the United States “was founded on legal, political and economic systems based on Judeo-Christian principles.” Section 1.B says what the party wants done about it.

The party is asking the Legislature to encourage Idaho’s public schools to discuss the nation’s founding documents, “including the Bible as their basis.” The language is identical in the 2024–2026 platform and the 2026–2028 platform, both adopted with Moon as chair.

The party’s X account has promoted one Idaho pastor’s politics directly. On September 26, 2024, the verified @IdahoGOP account posted a link to a video by Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, arguing against Proposition 1, the open-primary initiative, with the comment “This is an excellent explanation of the dangers of Prop 1 and rank choice voting!” As of September 2026 the post was still live. In the blog post the video reads aloud, Wilson made his case like this: “Do the Boise Pride Fest people want this? They do. Ah. Do all the left-wing lawyers want it? They do. Ah. … This is actually all you need to know” (dougwils.com, September 25, 2024).

Wilson told CNN in 2025, “Every society is theocratic. The only question is who’s ‘Theo’? In Saudi Arabia, Theo is Allah. In a secular democracy, it would be Demos, the people. In a Christian republic, it’d be Christ” (CNN, August 7, 2025). Asked, in a question-and-answer piece he wrote and published in April 2026, whether the Nineteenth Amendment was a bad idea, he answered, “It was a terrible idea, and for all the reasons cited.” He added that he is putting other issues ahead of repeal, “because politics is the art of the possible, and we have other issues that are far more pressing,” and that the women in his family vote (dougwils.com, April 20, 2026).

Her own people

On June 15, 2026, five days before the chair vote, Bryan Smith signed a public letter endorsing Mark Fuller for party chairman (letter, as published by the Pocatello-Chubbuck Observer). Smith was the national committeeman her 2024 convention had re-elected, and Fuller the first vice chairman it had elected.

His case was money. Over two years, he wrote, Idaho Republicans had raised about 69 cents per registered Republican against $4.84 per registered Democrat. He also wrote that the party “has operated without an Executive Director for more than a year, despite party rules requiring one,” the seat Tirino’s attorney had written about the summer before.

Four years before he ran against her, Fuller’s own party profile recorded what he had promised: “Mark’s only promise during the 2022 Convention was that if elected he would work to help Dorothy Moon be the best Chairman she can be” (archived idgop.org profile).

At 10:25 p.m. on Friday, June 19, the Fuller campaign emailed its list a letter signed “Steve Bender, Idaho Republican Party Treasurer.” Bender had been elected on Moon’s slate in 2022. Heather Lauer, whose biography sits on the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s board page, posted the full text at 10:56 p.m. and later deleted it. A Wayback capture preserved it, and a screenshot of the campaign’s email posted by Almon, the party’s paid communications consultant, matches its opening word for word (X, June 20, 2026).

The letter also said, “As of May 31, our fundraising is far below where it needs to be to sustain party operations and wage major statewide battles.”

That same evening Bender spoke to a room of delegates, and a recording was posted to X the next day (X, June 20, 2026). He began: “Amongst the executive officers, I have been the most ardent supporter for the last four years.” He had chaired the Credentials Committee, whose report tied up the morning session, and he described what he said the chairwoman told him afterward.

After the non-disparagement line quoted earlier, he made his pledge: “I do not plan to run for treasurer [if] Dorothy Moon is reelected as our state chair. I will not work with her for another two years.”

Bender signed the party’s May 2026 report to the FEC on June 20, the day of the vote (FEC filing 1985818). Every report since is signed by Sandra Eaton, elected treasurer that Saturday (filing 2000926).

The break had started earlier in Ada County, where six Republican officers resigned in October 2023; members of that slate, who BoiseDev reported “left the organization in protest of decisions made by the Idaho GOP under the new leadership of Dorothy Moon,” were early donors to the Idaho Majority Club, which brought Donald Trump Jr. to the Boise Centre on February 23, 2026 (BoiseDev, November 3, 2023; KIVI, February 10, 2026; Idaho Statesman via Yahoo). Moon did not attend, according to the event’s organizers, and neither did Mark Fuller, then her first vice chairman; Bryan Smith, the national committeeman; Brian Almon, the party’s paid communications consultant; or Ryan Spoon, then first vice chairman of the Ada County Republicans. Three days later Moon published an op-ed headlined “Trump Knocked It Out of the Park Again,” declaring that “Donald Trump delivered a masterpiece on Tuesday night” (idgop.org, February 26, 2026).

Other allies stayed. Rep. Heather Scott, co-chair of the Idaho Freedom Caucus and Moon’s partner at the 2021 mask burnings, praised her after her 2024 re-election (June 16, 2024) and that October called her “our AWESOME Idaho state Republican Chairwomen Dorothy Moon working her tail off to promote freedom and liberty!” (October 22, 2024). Herndon, the Freedom Caucus director, was listed on Moon’s executive board in June 2026 as Region I chair, an elected regional post (archived idgop.org). The Idaho Freedom Foundation’s account was quoting Moon on May 12, five weeks before the vote: “Idaho Freedom Foundation has always been the Gold Standard” (@idahofreedom).

At 4:18 p.m. Mountain time on June 20, Scott posted: “Dorothy Moon crushes it for Idaho GOP Chair. 2 more years of Idaho freedom!” (post).

On January 31, 2025, the same day Moon’s “Confrontational politics” column ran, Regan wrote in a Coeur d’Alene Press opinion column: “I have served under five Idaho Party chairmen and Dorthy Moon is by far the hardest working and most dedicated” (Coeur d’Alene Press); the misspelling of her first name is his.

On May 19, 2026, Regan lost his own precinct committeeman race in Kootenai County by fourteen votes, and his faction ended up with half of the county’s 74 precinct seats (Spokesman-Review, May 20, 2026). Four days later, before the new committee was seated, the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee voted to send about $64,000, roughly half its bank account, to Moon’s state party to fight the abortion ballot initiative. Coeur d’Alene Mayor Dan Gookin had warned that “some speculate he might be planning something like spending the rest of the party’s money before the new committee can be seated.” Boise State political scientist Jaclyn Kettler told Boise State Public Radio that “current officeholders or leadership will kind of take actions potentially to reduce the power or possible influence of those that may come after them” (Boise State Public Radio, May 27, 2026; Coeur d’Alene Press). At the convention Bender told delegates the Kootenai money had arrived. Bonneville’s outgoing committee had sent the state party $55,786 two days before its handover in 2024, as documented above.

”We are not the fringe, folks”

On June 20, 2026, in Meridian, Moon won a third term with 306 votes, 51.4 percent, just enough to avoid a runoff. Former Sen. Steven Thayn took 155. Mark Fuller, her own first vice chairman, took 134 (Idaho Press; Lewiston Tribune). She is the first Idaho GOP chair to win three terms since the early 1980s, and the executive committee elected with her is the party’s first all-female slate. Two days later she told KIFI she was “absolutely thrilled that the Republican base has confidence in the work that we’ve been doing in the office over the years” (KIFI, June 22, 2026).

Two years before, after the convention she closed to the press, she told the delegates who re-elected her: “We are not the fringe, folks, for some of you in here who think we are” (Idaho Reports, June 15, 2024).

Her column against “confrontational politics” ran on January 31, 2025, and in September 2026 she made the man who had called Trent Clark “a leftist traitor” her finance chairman.

Between those two dates, her party’s Kootenai County committee posted an opponent’s Social Security number, and Moon posted a message backing the committee, accusing the North Idaho Republicans of trying to “deceive” voters.

Connected pages

• Ryan Spoon, the finance chairman she appointed in September 2026
• Brent Regan, who nominated her in 2022, whose company handled the 2024 caucus logistics, and who is named individually in the Borrenpohl lawsuit
• Bryan Smith, national committeeman, who endorsed her challenger in June 2026
• Doyle Beck, who chaired the District 32 committee that censured Mickelsen and Cook
• Dave Reilly, the delegate the shelter director named in 2022
• Mark Fitzpatrick, owner of Old State Saloon and a 2026 Lincoln Day keynote speaker on the party calendar
• Scott Herndon, Idaho Freedom Caucus director and Region I chair on her executive board
• Citizens Alliance
• Maria Nate, elected party secretary on Moon’s slate in 2022
• Christy Zito and Lucas Cayler, who nominated and seconded Fuller in 2026
• Idaho Freedom Foundation, Idaho Freedom Caucus and The Propaganda Network

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