John Heida
His PAC fabricated a Playboy cover with the face of a sitting Republican legislator who chaired the House Education Committee. Distributed it at primary scale. She lost.
John Heida runs Stop Idaho RINOs PAC. In the 2024 Republican primary, his PAC distributed an AI-generated and Photoshop-fabricated Playboy magazine cover with the face of sitting Rep. Julie Yamamoto — a retired educator and the House Education Committee Chair — and paired it with the false accusation that she was “promoting pornography in schools.” Yamamoto lost the primary to Kent Marmon, also endorsed by Heida’s PAC. Heida is a Canyon County committeeman and California transplant.
Inside this dossier:
- The Playboy fabrication of a sitting Republican legislator. AI and Photoshop manipulation, paired with a false “promoting pornography” caption, distributed at primary scale. Yamamoto, a retired educator and House Education Committee Chair, lost. Marmon — endorsed by Stop Idaho RINOs — won.
- Family-targeting attacks. The 2024 Canyon County prosecutor race saw Stop Idaho RINOs distribute content targeting Greg Chaney’s family, with distorted personal-incident retellings.
- The voteswithdems.com dashboard is his. Footer disclosure: “Paid for by Stop Idaho RINOs · John Heida Treasurer.” Source of the manufactured “80% votes with Democrats” attack documented in The 80% Lie investigation.
- The Mickelsen ICE-targeting amplification. Heida’s Stop Idaho RINOs amplified Ryan Spoon’s January 21, 2025 ICE-tip post against Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen and solicited additional tips through the PAC’s distribution channels. ICE arrived at Mickelsen Farms three days later.
- IFF-scorecard alignment for target selection. The PAC imports the IFF Freedom Index score and runs fabrication content against the bottom of the list. Targeting output is identical, with no disclosed coordination required.
- voteswithdems.com is Heida. Per the footer, the dashboard publishes the manufactured percentages while the same PAC’s @stopidahorinos X account republishes its own ranking position as if it were independent corroboration.
The Playboy fabrication that defines the operation
In the 2024 Idaho Republican primary cycle, Stop Idaho RINOs PAC, run by Canyon County committeeman and California transplant John Heida, distributed a fabricated image. Heida’s PAC put the face of sitting Idaho Rep. Julie Yamamoto (R-Caldwell, House Education Committee Chair, retired educator) onto a fake Playboy magazine cover. The image was paired with the false claim that Yamamoto was “promoting pornography in schools.”
Every word of that is documentable. Per the coverage, the PAC used image-manipulation software, AI tools and Photoshop, to fabricate a magazine cover that does not exist, put a sitting Republican state legislator’s face on it, and distributed the fabrication with a false accusation attached.
The target was a former teacher who had served as House Education Committee Chair. She had helped open a charter school and sat on its board. Her “offense” was opposing the IFF-backed voucher program and voting her conscience on library legislation.
Yamamoto lost the 2024 Republican primary to Kent Marmon. IFF-endorsed. Idaho Freedom PAC-backed. Also endorsed by Heida’s Stop Idaho RINOs.
That is the anchor fact about Stop Idaho RINOs and what John Heida runs. Everything else in this dossier sits around that one incident.
In the 2024 Republican primary cycle, Stop Idaho RINOs PAC, operated by John Heida, distributed an AI-generated and Photoshop-fabricated Playboy magazine cover image with sitting Rep. Julie Yamamoto’s face superimposed, paired with the false accusation that she was ‘promoting pornography in schools.’ Yamamoto, a retired educator and House Education Committee Chair, lost the primary to Kent Marmon, who was endorsed by Stop Idaho RINOs.
— Stop Idaho RINOs historical PAC content · multi-outlet 2024 cycle coverage, 2024 primary cycle
The operating model
The Stop Idaho RINOs template repeats across cycles:
1. AI and Photoshop image fabrication. In 2022 and 2024, the PAC produced AI-generated and Photoshop-manipulated images of opposing legislators. The Yamamoto Playboy cover is the best-known among several. These images show the target doing or being something the target is not and has not — fabricated photographic evidence of invented conduct, distributed through social media to audiences primed not to verify.
2. Family-targeting attacks. The 2024 Canyon County Prosecutor race (Chris Boyd vs. former Rep. Greg Chaney) saw Stop Idaho RINOs distribute content targeting Chaney’s family. Distorted retellings of personal incidents from Chaney’s past, deployed to boost the Boyd campaign. The PAC’s targeting goes past the candidate and reaches family members who never entered politics.
3. False accusation paired with plausible-deniability text. The Yamamoto Playboy cover did not say “Yamamoto is in Playboy.” It paired a fabricated Playboy image with the accusation “Yamamoto promotes pornography in schools.” The image carried the emotional payload while the caption provided plausible-deniability cover, and the structure is repeatable. At primary-election scale, it floods social-media feeds in Republican audiences with fabricated imagery before the target can respond.
4. IFF-scorecard alignment for target selection. Stop Idaho RINOs targets the legislators who score low on the Idaho Freedom Foundation Freedom Index. The PAC does not produce its own ideological assessment — it imports the IFF score and runs fabrication content against the bottom of that list. IFF’s scorecard drives PAC attack-ad targeting with no disclosed coordination between the two, and the targeting output is identical.
5. Endorsement machinery. The PAC issues formal endorsements in Republican primaries. The endorsement list overlaps heavily with IFF endorsements and Idaho Freedom Caucus alignment. When a candidate lands on the Stop Idaho RINOs endorsement list, as Sen. Scott Herndon did and Rep. Kent Marmon did, they are publicly accepting cover from an operation that fabricated a Playboy cover of a sitting Republican legislator. Accepting that endorsement is a choice legislators make knowingly.
The Mickelsen ICE-targeting amplification
In January 2025, Ada County GOP Vice Chair Ryan Spoon tagged Tom Homan on X to call for ICE raids on Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen’s farms. Heida’s Stop Idaho RINOs amplified Spoon’s call and solicited additional ICE tips against Mickelsen through the PAC’s distribution channels. ICE arrived at Mickelsen Farms three days after Spoon’s post. One employee was detained.
The Spoon to Stop Idaho RINOs to Fitzpatrick sequence is the cleanest documented case of network coordination on weaponizing federal immigration enforcement against a sitting Republican legislator.
Two PACs, one operator
Heida runs two Idaho-registered PACs out of Canyon County:
- Stop Idaho RINOs
- Liberty Idaho PAC
Both are based in Canyon County. Both run as one-man operations. The financials of either, the donor base, and the overlap with IFF endorsement and IFC-aligned candidate funding would all surface under a formal examination.
Heida’s role in the IFF-network propaganda chain
Stop Idaho RINOs does not just publish attack content. It also publishes its own evidence. The PAC built and runs voteswithdems.com, a single-page dashboard ranking sitting Idaho Republican legislators by a fabricated “VOTES WITH DEMOCRATS [X]% OF THE TIME” percentage. The site’s footer carries the legally-required disclosure: “Paid for by Stop Idaho RINOs · John Heida Treasurer.”
Sen. Jim Guthrie tops the dashboard’s published list at 80.8%. Behind him sit the same Idaho Republican incumbents the IFF Index targets. The same incumbents @stopidahorinos targets. The same incumbents network-funded primary challengers run against. The percentages get produced by treating routine bipartisan votes (tax-code reference updates, anti-fraud lottery prohibition, education funding, parental-rights provisions) as “voting with Democrats” whenever the Democratic caucus voted the same way as the targeted Republican. The full methodology breakdown lives in the 80% Lie investigation.
Here is how Heida’s PAC infrastructure fits inside the broader IFF playbook chain:
| Step | Function | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Build the “evidence” | voteswithdems.com publishes percentages | Stop Idaho RINOs / Heida |
| 2. Cite the evidence as fact | @stopidahorinos posts the percentages | Stop Idaho RINOs / Heida |
| 3. Amplify the citation | @redrangetv video clip uses the same number | Pruett |
| 4. Restate in candidate voice | Worley campaign content repeats the line | Worley campaign |
| 5. Endorse the candidate | Stop Idaho RINOs PAC endorses Worley | Heida |
By the time a District 28 voter sees the “Sen. Guthrie votes with Democrats 80% of the time” line, they have seen it cited from four sources. All four trace to the same office. Heida runs step 1, step 2, and step 5: the construction, the amplification, and the endorsement of the candidate the manufactured number was built to elect.
The full methodology breakdown, including the bills voteswithdems.com cites as “crossover” evidence (most of them at 100% Democratic-caucus unity), lives in The 80% Lie. The operational application of the same number against the District 28 incumbent is documented in Manufacturing a Martyr.
Dorothy Moon’s selective omission
A December 2025 Idaho State Journal opinion piece by Randy Stapilus cited Stop Idaho RINOs as a standing far-right PAC active in Idaho elections for years. Stapilus specifically noted the PAC’s absence from Idaho Republican Chair Dorothy Moon’s public criticism of outside political spending groups.
Moon, the state party chair, has criticized generic “outside money” while declining to name the in-state PAC fabricating Playboy covers of sitting Republican legislators. The omission is its own data point.
Idaho State Journal opinion column by Randy Stapilus noted Idaho Republican Chair Dorothy Moon’s public criticism of outside political spending groups conspicuously omitted Stop Idaho RINOs, the in-state PAC fabricating images of opposing Republican legislators.
— Idaho State Journal · Randy Stapilus opinion column, December 2025
The Aryan Bros amplifier overlap
Stop Idaho RINOs’s image-fabrication and faction-mapping work runs in the same political-media circuit as the David Pettinger / Casey Whalen / Dave Reilly operator cluster. Political Potatoes documents the trio as the social-media revival of Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations project under a “Christian-nationalist” rebrand. Reilly’s anti-Semitic posting record is archived publicly at davereillysdeletedtweets.com by Take Back Idaho. Whalen, who published a November 2025 interview with Holocaust denier Gurmar Rudolph and fawned over a Nick Fuentes “Mussolini” speech at Turning Point USA’s Detroit conference, is the “investigative journalist” cover layer for the same operator class.
Per PP’s “The Groypers of Idaho”, IFF, Citizens Alliance of Idaho, the new chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus, and Dorothy Moon’s Idaho GOP “welcomed them in.” That builds on former Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin’s 2022 appearance at Nick Fuentes’s AFPAC. Heida’s PAC infrastructure (Stop Idaho RINOs, Liberty Idaho PAC) is one node inside that welcome. Heida endorses the candidates the IFF Index targets, fabricates images of opposing Republicans, and provides the down-ballot media cover for the Aryan Bros / Groyper content cluster.
The California-to-Idaho move
Heida moved from California to Idaho about five years before the 2024 cycle. He operates from Canyon County. He chairs PACs that smear Republican legislators who do not vote the IFF position. The “Stop Idaho RINOs” branding tells new arrivals which Idaho Republicans the network considers insufficiently loyal. Heida himself writes the list.
What this means for any candidate Heida endorses
Idaho is a one-party state in most districts. The GOP primary is the election. Once a PAC proves that fabricated magazine covers of sitting Republican legislators can be deployed at primary-election scale without consequence — no Idaho GOP chair denunciation, no IFF disavowal, no legal action, no loss of endorsement value — the technique scales. 2024 produced the Yamamoto Playboy cover. Every successful deployment raises the ceiling on what image fabrication at scale can do inside Idaho Republican primaries.
Voters weighing any Stop Idaho RINOs endorsed candidate are weighing whether they want this PAC’s methods to keep deciding Idaho’s Republican primaries. Accepting the endorsement is a choice candidates make. Sen. Scott Herndon and Rep. Kent Marmon both made it.
Connected pages
- The 80% Lie investigation, full breakdown of the voteswithdems.com Stop Idaho RINOs / Heida-treasurer methodology
- Manufacturing a Martyr investigation, where the Heida-built voteswithdems.com number anchors @redrangetv’s attack on Sen. Guthrie
- Kent Marmon dossier, 2024 D11A primary winner over Yamamoto, endorsed by Stop Idaho RINOs
- Scott Herndon dossier, returning IFC chair candidate, endorsed by Stop Idaho RINOs
- Greg Pruett dossier, Honor Idaho / Idaho Dispatch propaganda counterpart
- Dustin Hurst dossier, IFF-side operative, civil stalking injunction respondent
- The Propaganda Network organization page
- Idaho Freedom Foundation organization page
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The Connections