Faye Thompson
First-term Republican who defeated sitting House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma by 221 votes in the May 2024 primary. Scores 94.7% on IFF's 2026 loyalty index. Christy Zito's D8 House counterpart.
Rep. Faye Thompson took out sitting House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma by 221 votes in the May 21, 2024 D8B Republican primary — one of the biggest network kills of the 2024 cycle. The seat-clearing is the story: the IFF replaced the second-ranking member of Idaho House leadership with a 51.3% first-term backbencher who now scores 94.7% on the IFF Freedom Index. Her D8 Senate counterpart is Sen. Christy Zito, Pruett’s I2AA Political Director, which makes the District 8 paired-vote signature one of the cleanest in the legislature.
Inside this dossier:
- 221-vote primary defeat of sitting House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma. 51.3% / 4,361 to 48.7% / 4,140. Blanksma had been in the House since 2014 — the highest-ranking leadership member the network removed in 2024.
- 94.7% IFF Freedom Score and 97.9% Spending Score in 2026. A-grade and A+ grade on the IFF’s own loyalty index.
- Paired with Sen. Christy Zito in District 8. The cleanest paired-vote signature in the chamber. Pruett’s I2AA Political Director on the Senate side, IFF top-quintile loyalist on the House side.
- The seat-clearing was the operation, not the policy. A chamber Majority Leader was replaced with a first-term legislator. The vacated leadership seat reorganized the chamber. The replacement votes the IFF position.
- Chair of the Valley County Republican Central Committee. Network institutional control of the local party apparatus paired with the legislative seat.
Who she is
Faye Thompson is the Republican representative for Idaho House District 8B, a four-county west-central Idaho district centered on McCall and Valley County. She took office December 1, 2024, after one of the biggest upsets of the 2024 Idaho Republican primary: a 221-vote defeat of sitting House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma.
Per her Idaho State Legislature official biography, Thompson has lived in McCall and Valley County for 50+ years. Retired. Married 32 years to Neal Thompson. Four children and eleven grandchildren. Current chair of the Valley County Republican Central Committee. Committee assignments: Business; Environment, Energy & Technology; Health & Welfare.
Her D8 Senate counterpart is Sen. Christy Zito, Pruett’s I2AA Political Director and Board Member. That makes the District 8 paired-vote signature one of the cleanest in the legislature.
(Note: more than one public figure named Faye Thompson exists in the United States. This page is about the sitting Idaho state representative, not other figures by the same name.)
The Blanksma kill
Sitting House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma was the highest-ranking member of Idaho House Republican leadership going into the 2024 cycle. She had been in the chamber since 2014. She voted the establishment Republican position. She did not vote the IFF position reliably. The IFF network targeted her for primary defeat.
The 2024 Republican primary result for D8B:
| Candidate | Vote share | Vote count |
|---|---|---|
| Faye Thompson | 51.3% | 4,361 |
| Megan Blanksma (incumbent · House Majority Leader) | 48.7% | 4,140 |
A 221-vote margin to take out the sitting House Majority Leader. Per the Idaho Capital Sun’s May 21, 2024 coverage, Thompson was among the 15 incumbent Republican legislators (or candidates against incumbent leadership) who broke the chamber on primary night.
In the November 5, 2024 general, Thompson beat Democrat Jared Dawson 67.9% to 27.5% (with Constitution Party candidate Tony Ullrich at 4.6%), 16,546 votes to 6,702.
The network removed a chamber Majority Leader and replaced her with a 51.3% first-term backbencher. The seat-clearing is the story: the replacement votes the IFF position, and the vacated leadership seat reorganizes the chamber.
IFF grades its own loyalty
The Idaho Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Index grades every legislator’s vote against the IFF’s preferred position on every bill IFF tracks.
Idaho Freedom Foundation’s 2026 legislator-profile page lists Rep. Faye Thompson’s 2026 Freedom Score at 94.7% (A grade) and her 2026 Spending Score at 97.9% (A+ grade).
— Idaho Freedom Foundation · Freedom Index, 2026, captured 2026-04
A 97.9% Spending Score and an A+ on IFF’s own scorecard puts Thompson at the top of the chamber’s IFF-position-voting reliability range — the opposite of the establishment-leadership voting profile she replaced.
Same district, same script
District 8 runs a paired-vote signature. Sen. Christy Zito and Rep. Faye Thompson represent the same Idaho geography, vote the same legislative bloc, and draw on the same Citizens Alliance and out-of-state funding sources. The pairing is structural.
Zito anchors the District 8 operation. Her dossier documents the deepest Pruett-network entanglement of any legislator in the Idaho legislature: Political Director and Board Member of Pruett’s flagship, a dedicated GregPruett.com archive tag, a dedicated ThankChristyZito.com domain, six Pruett-operated content surfaces all promoting her, and the I2AA TV ad that required state enforcement to surface in campaign-finance disclosure. Read the Zito dossier for the Pruett-network anchor of the District 8 operation.
Thompson’s role is to mirror the Senate-side voting on the House side. She is the House half of the paired signature.
Who funds her
Per the Idaho SOS Sunshine campaign-finance database, Thompson’s documented direct contributions in the 2024 D8B Republican primary:
| Amount | Donor |
|---|---|
| $1,000 | Monty Moore |
| $500 | Lynn Wood |
Thompson’s direct-donor stack at the candidate-committee level is short. Network money came through the institutional pipeline below.
Thompson is also on the cross-fund record. She gave $500 to Sen. Christy Zito’s 2024 Senate D8 campaign — the kind of intra-cluster cross-funding that signals a coordinated paired-vote operation rather than two independent District 8 candidacies.
The funding pipeline
Citizens Alliance of Idaho PAC backs the bloc Thompson votes with. Per Steve Taggart’s April 7, 2026 Political Potatoes piece and verifiable in the Idaho SOS Sunshine database, CAI is the Idaho state PAC affiliate of Citizens Alliance of America (CAA). The CAI donor profile and out-of-state money trail are documented on the Citizens Alliance organization page and in the Follow the Money investigation.
Young Americans for Liberty’s Make Liberty Win PAC operates the same out-of-state pipeline that funds the Magic Valley Miracle Four (Hostetler / Leavitt / Kohl / Zuiderveld) and the D11 delegation pair (Marmon / Cayler). Per Faculty First Responders, YAL took $5,920,023 from Koch-network sources between 2012 and 2019 alone.
Where she sits in the network
Thompson coordinates her contested-bill voting with the broader IFF bloc, alongside the Magic Valley Miracle Four (Hostetler / Leavitt / Kohl / Zuiderveld), the D11 pair (Marmon / Cayler), and the chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus. Pruett’s propaganda network (Honor Idaho, Idaho Dispatch, Keep Idaho Free, GregPruett.com) supplies the bill-by-bill framing the bloc votes with. The Idaho Freedom Foundation publishes the Freedom Index that grades the votes.
Her personal contribution to the network agenda:
- Removing the sitting Idaho House Majority Leader (Blanksma) from the chamber, by 221 votes, and replacing the leadership voice with a 94.7% IFF-Index-aligned backbencher
- A 97.9% IFF Spending Score (A+), at the top of the chamber’s IFF-position-voting reliability range
- The District 8 paired-vote signature with Sen. Christy Zito, the deepest Pruett-network entangled legislator in the Senate
- A $500 cross-fund into the Zito campaign — same-district, same-script intra-cluster signature
Connected pages
- Christy Zito dossier, D8 Senate counterpart and Pruett-network anchor
- Clinton Hostetler dossier, Magic Valley House counterpart on contested-bill voting
- Greg Pruett dossier, propaganda-network operator running framing on the bloc’s bills
- Scott Herndon dossier, chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus director
- Citizens Alliance organization page, funding pipeline behind the bloc’s primaries
- Cliff Maloney dossier, CAA founder and CEO
- Idaho Freedom Foundation organization page
- Follow the Money investigation
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The Connections