Kent Marmon
Lost 4 elections (2010, 2012, 2014, 2022). Won in 2024 vs incumbent Yamamoto, 3x more money raised. Now scores 94.8% on IFF's 2026 loyalty index. Playbook in action.
Kent Marmon is what the IFF playbook looks like when every step works. Caldwell voters recalled him from city council in 1987, 71-29. He lost four straight Republican primaries between 2010 and 2022. Then in 2024 the network tripled his fundraising, the Stop Idaho RINOs PAC ran a fabricated Playboy magazine cover of incumbent Rep. Julie Yamamoto, and Marmon won by 13.6 points. He now scores 95.5% lifetime on the IFF Freedom Index. The case study runs end-to-end on the public record.
Inside this dossier:
- The 1987 Caldwell City Council recall, 71-29. Per the official Caldwell City Council minutes Book 28, Pages 62-63, the April 28, 1987 special recall election produced 2,101 yes / 858 no on Marmon. Council members Carter and Marcus went down the same day.
- Four lost Republican primaries between 2010 and 2022 before the 2024 placement.
- Tripled his fundraising in 2024 to beat incumbent Rep. Julie Yamamoto 56.8% to 43.2%. Stop Idaho RINOs distributed a fabricated AI/Photoshop Playboy magazine cover with Yamamoto’s face during the cycle.
- 94.8% IFF Freedom Score and 95.5% lifetime. 94.2% Spending Score and 97.1% lifetime. Among the most reliable IFF-position votes in the chamber.
- Paired with Rep. Lucas Cayler in District 11. The same network placed both men in the same cycle. The District 11 paired-vote signature is one of the cleanest in the Idaho House.
Who he is
Kent A. Marmon represents Idaho House District 11A in Caldwell as a Republican. He assumed office on December 1, 2024, after defeating sitting Rep. Julie Yamamoto in the May 21, 2024 Republican primary 56.8%–43.2%, then beating Anthony Porto in the November 5, 2024 general 65.9%–34.1%.
Per his Idaho State Legislature official biography, Marmon is a second-generation Caldwellite, born April 23, 1956, a graduate of Caldwell High School and Northwest Nazarene University (B.S. business administration). He is retired, married to Sylvia for 48 years, with three children, fifteen grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He served on the Caldwell City Council in the mid-1980s and on the Caldwell School Board, is a Kiwanis governor, an Eagle Scout, and a Silver Beaver Award recipient. Committee assignments: Business, Education.
Marmon is what the IFF playbook looks like when every step works. Caldwell voters recalled him from city council in 1987, 71-29. He lost four straight Republican primaries between 2010 and 2022. In 2024 he tripled his fundraising, beat the incumbent, and now posts a 94.8% on the IFF Freedom Index for 2026 and a lifetime 95.5%. He is among the most reliable IFF-position votes in the chamber.
He votes the way the IFF tracks. The receipts are on IFF’s own scorecard.
IFF grades its own loyalty
The Idaho Freedom Foundation runs a public Freedom Index. It grades every legislator’s vote against the IFF’s preferred position on every bill IFF tracks. Closer to 100 means the legislator votes the IFF line more reliably.
Marmon’s scores are near-perfect.
Idaho Freedom Foundation’s 2026 legislator-profile page lists Kent Marmon’s 2026 Freedom Score at 94.8% and his 2026 Spending Score at 94.2%. His lifetime Freedom Score is 95.5% and his lifetime Spending Score is 97.1%.
— Idaho Freedom Foundation · Freedom Index, 2026, captured 2026-04
A near-perfect score on the IFF’s own index means he votes the IFF line. The score is what it is.
Act One. The 1987 recall. 71% said remove.
Marmon was recalled from the Caldwell City Council on April 28, 1987. The recall vote is documented in the official minutes of the May 4, 1987 Caldwell City Council meeting, Book 28, Page 62.
The vote was not close. 2,101 to 858. That is 71% to 29%.
Per the official minutes of the Caldwell City Council Regular Meeting of May 4, 1987 (Book 28, Page 62-63), the Special City Recall Election held April 28, 1987 produced the following result: “Shall Kent Marmon be recalled? 2,101 Yes / 858 No.” Council members Jack Carter and Durand Marcus were also recalled in the same election. Marmon was absent from the May 4 meeting where the canvass of votes was officially accepted.
— City of Caldwell · Council Minutes Book 28, May 4, 1987, May 4, 1987
Caldwell voters did not narrowly reject Marmon. They threw him out by more than 70 points in a special election called to remove him. Two of his council colleagues, Jack Carter and Durand Marcus, went down the same day. Marmon skipped the meeting where the recall was certified. He spent the next thirty-eight years trying to get back into elected office.
Act Two. The decade-long string of losses.
Per Ballotpedia’s campaign-history tracking, Marmon’s losing-then-winning electoral arc:
| Year | Race | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Idaho House D10B (R primary) | Lost |
| 2012 | Idaho State Senate D10 (R primary) vs. Jim Rice | Lost 31.2%–68.8% |
| 2014 | Idaho House D10B (R primary, write-in) vs. Greg Chaney | Lost, 12.2% / 251 votes |
| 2022 | Idaho House D11B (R primary) vs. Chris Allgood + Mike Miller | Lost, 31.1%, 1,062 votes |
| 2024 | Idaho House D11A (R primary) vs. incumbent Julie Yamamoto | Won, 56.8%, 1,912 votes |
| 2024 | Idaho House D11A (general) vs. Anthony Porto (D) | Won, 65.9%, 10,995 votes |
Four straight losses from 2010 through 2022. Every Republican primary he entered, he lost. In 2014 he filed as a write-in after failing to qualify on the regular ballot, and pulled 12% against an established Republican.
Four losing primaries in 14 years, then a fifth race he won by 14 points. The candidate did not change — the operation behind the candidate did.
Act Three. 2024: the money triples.
Per Ballotpedia, FEC, and OpenSecrets-aggregated filings:
Kent Marmon’s campaign raised $12,037 and spent $8,905 during his unsuccessful 2022 D11B primary. In 2024, his campaign raised $39,455 and spent $35,819, more than three times the prior cycle, and he won.
— Ballotpedia / OpenSecrets / Federal Election Commission, continuously updated
A 3.3x jump in fundraising between a losing race and a winning race does not happen because the candidate suddenly got popular. Outside money entered the race.
The donor names — Sunshine receipts
Per the Idaho SOS Sunshine campaign-finance database, Marmon’s documented direct contributions across the 2022 and 2024 cycles include:
| Amount | Donor | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| $1,000 | Donald Bishop | 2024 + 2022 (paired) |
| $1,000 | William R. McCann, Jr. | 2024 + 2022 (paired) |
| $1,000 | William McCann III | 2024 + 2022 (paired) |
| $500 | Ray Horrell | 2024 |
| $500 | Idaho Chooses Life PAC | 2022 |
| $500 | Dominic Brandon | 2022 |
| $500 | Craig Sjoberg — also gave $1,000 to Cayler’s 2024 D11B campaign | 2022 |
| $500 | Scott Hoover | 2022 |
| $500 | Amanda Marmon Takagi (family) | 2022 |
| $500 | Leslie Batt Corbett | 2022 |
The IFF leadership donor names, Beck, Smith, Regan, Smith Driscoll, Stefan Gleason, do not appear on Marmon’s direct-donor list. The network funded him through the broader infrastructure. Institutional PAC giving (Idaho Chooses Life). Shared-donor giving across the D11 House delegation (Craig Sjoberg paired across both Marmon and Cayler). And the YAL / Make Liberty Win / Citizens Alliance national-PAC pipeline documented below.
Act Four. Where the outside money came from.
The principal vehicles for the outside-Idaho money are documented:
Young Americans for Liberty (YAL). National libertarian outfit spun out of the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign. Per Faculty First Responders, YAL pulled in $5,920,023 from Koch-network sources (Koch / DonorsTrust / Donors Capital Fund) between 2012 and 2019, plus support from the Charles Koch Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and FreedomWorks. YAL’s policy stack, including its Hazlitt Coalition, runs strict libertarian positions, including support for marijuana legalization.
Make Liberty Win. Federal PAC funded almost entirely by YAL. It targets state legislative races and elects Freedom Caucus candidates across the country.
Citizens Alliance of Idaho. State affiliate of Cliff Maloney’s Citizens Alliance of America. The CAI funding architecture, donor profile across cycles, and out-of-state pipeline live on the Citizens Alliance organization page and the Follow the Money investigation.
Doyle Beck writes personal checks to the parent organization.
Wyoming News documented the same pattern unfolding in Wyoming: “rising influence of libertarian PACs and dark money” transforming legislative races. Sweetwater County GOP Chair Elizabeth Bingham estimated “more than $1 million already sunk into the races by dark money alone” and stated, “We have never seen anything close to this amount of dark money being spent in Wyoming.” The article identifies the same operating-model PACs, YAL, Make Liberty Win, and Americans for Prosperity, and notes the pattern extends to Idaho, Texas, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Minnesota.
YAL’s policy stack includes positions Marmon publicly opposes. The funding chain that put him in office runs through YAL anyway. He has not disavowed any of it.
Act Five. The Yamamoto seat-clearing.
The D11A seat Marmon won in 2024 belonged to Rep. Julie Yamamoto, a Republican the IFF-aligned network had originally backed until she stopped voting their way. Yamamoto is a retired educator. She chaired the House Education Committee. She helped open a charter school and sat on its board. She opposed the IFF-backed voucher program. She voted her conscience on library legislation.
When she stopped voting the IFF position, the network turned on her.
Per the Idaho Voter Guide profile of Stop Idaho RINOs, in the 2022 election cycle the John Heida-operated Stop Idaho RINOs PAC distributed a fabricated image superimposing Yamamoto’s face onto a Playboy magazine cover, paired with false accusations about “promoting pornography in schools.” The PAC manufactured the image, and the same PAC and the same operator continued to amplify Yamamoto-targeting content into the 2024 cycle, when Marmon ran against and defeated her.
Marmon picked up the endorsement from the same Stop Idaho RINOs PAC that produced the 2022 fabrication. He picked up the IFF endorsement. He picked up the Idaho Freedom PAC endorsement. He took all three knowingly.
The 2024 Republican primary result:
| Candidate | Vote share | Vote count |
|---|---|---|
| Kent Marmon | 56.8% | 1,912 |
| Julie Yamamoto (incumbent) | 43.2% | 1,455 |
A House Education Committee chair, retired educator, and charter-school board member lost her primary by 457 votes. She lost to a man on his fifth attempt at the legislature, recalled from city council in 1987.
Act Six. The personal-record backstop.
The Canyon County recorder’s office holds a federal tax lien against him:
$17,200.05 federal tax lien recorded against Kent A. Marmon at the Canyon County, Idaho recorder’s office on June 16, 2009. Tax type 1040 (individual income tax), tax year 1993.
— Canyon County, Idaho Recorder · Tax Lien Serial 553405709, Recorded June 16, 2009
The IRS does not record liens immediately. A 2009 lien recording for a 1993 tax year is a sixteen-year unresolved obligation.
A separate 2025 fire left Marmon’s Caldwell home uninhabitable. The fire was reported by Idaho State Journal, Post Register, and KIVI TV. The dossier notes it because it is on the public record. It is not part of the editorial frame.
What he sponsors now
A snapshot of bills Marmon has sponsored or co-sponsored since taking office. The list maps one-to-one onto the IFF policy stack:
- HJR004 (2025), constitutional amendment giving the legislature exclusive authority over psychoactive substances (an anti-cannabis-legalization framework)
- HJM017 (2026), calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell v. Hodges and “restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman”
- H0238 (2025), mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools
- H0557 (2026), pre-empting local-government antidiscrimination ordinances (overrides local civil-rights protections)
- H0601 / H0745 (2026), prohibiting taxpayer funding of government unions
- HCR028 (2026), establishing a state day of fasting and prayer
- S1059 (2025), defining “embryo,” “fetus,” and “preborn child” for wrongful-death and homicide statutes
- HJM015 (2026), federal action on weather modification (a chemtrails-adjacent framing)
Marmon’s sponsorship calendar is the IFF’s legislative agenda, item by item.
Why Marmon is the playbook
The model on the public record runs in four steps:
- Pick a candidate who needs the machine. Financially stressed, politically marginal, repeatedly defeated candidates are ideal. Their continued political existence depends on the network’s continued support.
- Clear the path. When an incumbent stops voting the IFF position, the propaganda apparatus targets her. The 2022 Yamamoto Playboy-cover fabrication, distributed by John Heida’s Stop Idaho RINOs PAC, is the cleanest documented case in Idaho.
- Triple the candidate’s funding. Outside PACs (Citizens Alliance, Make Liberty Win, IFF-aligned vehicles) supply the campaign infrastructure the candidate cannot build himself. The result looks like a competitive primary.
- Collect the votes. Once seated, the candidate votes the IFF stack with near-perfect fidelity. The IFF’s own scorecard publishes the loyalty grade.
Marmon is the most thoroughly documented Idaho case of this model running end-to-end. Recognize it in Marmon’s story and you will recognize it when it runs again. It is running again, right now, in the Worley vs. Guthrie Senate D28 race, documented in Manufacturing a Martyr.
Connected pages
- Lucas Cayler dossier, D11 paired-vote partner
- John Heida dossier, Stop Idaho RINOs operator who ran the 2022 Yamamoto-targeting fabrication
- State Freedom Caucus Network organization page, Maria Nate’s whip apparatus
- Citizens Alliance organization page, the funding pipeline
- Idaho Freedom Foundation organization page, the policy shop publishing the loyalty index
- The Propaganda Network organization page, Pruett / Hurst / Heida amplifier stack
- Doyle Beck dossier, CAA donor and IFF board
- Cliff Maloney dossier, CAA founder and CEO
- Manufacturing a Martyr investigation
- Follow the Money investigation
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The Connections