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Idaho Extremism
Dossier ·Operative ·Las Vegas, Nevada ·Republican
Rory K. McShane — Founder, McShane LLC / RMC Strategy · Las Vegas — Idaho Extremism dossier portrait

Rory K. McShane

Founder, McShane LLC / RMC Strategy · Las Vegas

The Vegas shop the far right keeps hiring: Gosar, Biggs, Good, Stewart, Marchant, plus the Idaho Gang of 8. Same firm whose VP texted 'we need to get the Proud Boys out' on election night 2020.

Published June 30, 2026

Rory McShane runs the Las Vegas campaign shop the American far right keeps hiring. RMC Strategy’s own client page advertises Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Bob Good, Corey Stewart, Jim Marchant, Chuck Gray, Diego Morales, Anthony Kern, Liz Harris, Austin Smith, Dennis Hof, Christi Jacobsen, Cresent Hardy, Club for Growth, House Freedom Action, Gun Owners of America, and the Republican parties of Nevada, North Carolina, and Maryland. On election night 2020, the firm’s own vice president texted a political contact: “we need to get the Proud Boys out.” Two years later a Nashville mayoral client fired the firm within hours of learning that story. In Idaho, the same shop bills $1.65 million across a single cycle, running the mail for the Gang of 8 and for the county Republican central committees running independent expenditures against sitting Republican incumbents.

Inside this dossier:

  • The Proud Boys receipt. McShane LLC vice president Woodrow Johnston, on election night 2020, in a Facebook Messenger chat obtained by the Nevada Current and confirmed by the Washington Post: “We might need to do the same here in Nevada. Which means we need to get the Proud Boys out.”
  • The Rolli firing. In August 2023, Republican Nashville mayoral candidate Alice Rolli fired McShane’s firm within hours of the Proud Boys story reaching her. She had spent two-thirds of her campaign money there. Johnston resigned that weekend.
  • The election-denier franchise. Issue One’s post-cycle audit tracked $696,000 from three 2022 secretary-of-state candidates: Marchant (56% of his campaign spend), Gray (28%), and Morales.
  • $1.65 million in Idaho across six billing aliases. State-side spending: $1,246,038 across 414 records from 36 unique Idaho filers. Federal payments add $403,281. Aliases in use: McShane LLC, RMC, RMC LLC, RMC Strategy, RMC Strategies, and Revolutionizing Microtargeted Campaigns.
  • The Handeen contradiction. McShane’s Idaho on-the-ground employee, Bjorn Handeen, is simultaneously the sitting Chair of the Idaho Republican Party Platform Committee. Idaho’s state Republican platform is drafted by a paid Las Vegas campaign-firm strategist.
  • The Regan money bridge. IFF Board Chair Brent Regan wrote a $1,000 personal check to Debbie Loffman’s Coeur d’Alene mayoral campaign and a $1,030 personal check to Julie Hensley’s Kootenai commissioner primary campaign. Regan chairs the county party (KCRCC) that paid McShane’s firm $190,990 out of the same account.

Who he is

Rory K. McShane is a Republican political strategist based in Las Vegas. Per his firm’s own founder biography, he grew up in Maryland, worked briefly at an Austin advertising firm, and launched what he then called McShane LLC in 2017 from a thrift-store desk in his newborn son’s nursery. He moved into a garage. By 2019 he had an office. The American Association of Political Consultants named him one of its “40 Under 40” in 2020. Per the Nashville Banner, the firm is “an all-in-one consultancy that provided media buying, production, digital and direct mail services” offering candidates a full-service pipeline of media, mail, digital, and opposition research from one Las Vegas roof.

The firm’s business address on Idaho Sunshine campaign-finance filings and on its own contact page is 6950 O’Bannon Drive, Suite 100, Las Vegas, Nevada 89117. Additional offices in Washington, D.C. and Austin. Rory’s personal X account is @rkmcshane; the firm operates @RMCStrategy and @McShaneLLC. McShane LLC formally rebranded to RMC Strategy on October 2, 2025, per the firm’s own news post.

The Proud Boys receipt

Election night, November 4, 2020. Woodrow Johnston, then vice president of McShane LLC, was working out of a rented room at the Venetian casino, where the firm had been retained by the Nevada Republican Party to help count ballots. He opened a Facebook Messenger chat with Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, a Las Vegas-based political operative. The Nevada Current posted the full chat.

Gosar is Paul Gosar, McShane’s headline U.S. House client. The Brooks Brothers Riot was the 2000 Republican protest that stopped the Bush-Gore recount. Johnston followed up minutes later, per the Washington Post: “Stand back and standby Lol.” A direct echo of Trump’s line to the Proud Boys from the September 2020 debate stage.

Ashton-Cirillo went on the record with both the Post and the Nevada Current on May 27, 2021. She said she began contacting far-right activists including one who publicly identified as a Proud Boys member. The protests that followed at the North Las Vegas election center drew attendees in Proud Boys attire, chanting “Don’t steal my vote” and “Stop the cheating.”

McShane’s response to the Nevada Current:

To the Post: “I was unaware of these texts, but I know Mr. Johnston was not working on behalf of any client or organization.” Johnston himself told the Post: “I was waiting to see if an event was occurring, and I was not working at the direction of my boss or any other entity.” Neither the firm nor Johnston contested the authenticity of the messages.

McShane did not fire Johnston. Per the Post: “Our management team has met with Mr. Johnston. I’m confident he sees the error of what he did.” Johnston stayed on as vice president for two more years.

The reckoning came from a client. In August 2023, per the Nashville Banner’s reporting by Steve Cavendish, Republican Nashville mayoral candidate Alice Rolli learned about the 2021 Post story from a supporter. She severed ties with the firm within hours. She had spent two-thirds of her campaign budget there. Johnston resigned that same weekend, per a resignation letter he provided to Axios.

Rory McShane, cigar and 'MCSHANE' forearm tattoo, at a backyard pool

Rory K. McShane

Ran campaigns and strategy for Maria Nate’s Gang of 8. Five lost in 2026.

Photo: Instagram

Every name below is on RMC Strategy’s own client page. The firm sells the association as a credential.

Paul Gosar (R-AZ, U.S. House)

Gosar is the Arizona congressman Johnston named in the Proud Boys text.

AFPAC keynote, February 2021. Per Newsweek and The Hill, Gosar became the first sitting member of Congress to keynote Nick Fuentes’s America First Political Action Conference, the white-nationalist gathering held immediately outside CPAC. Fuentes, immediately following Gosar’s remarks, told the crowd: “White people are done being bullied!” Fuentes has mocked the Holocaust on the record, comparing the slaughter of Jews in gas chambers to “cookies baking in an oven.” The FBI has referred to him as a white supremacist. Gosar posed for photos with Fuentes the following day. Gosar defended the appearance to the Washington Post on the ground that he was reaching “a wider audience” of young conservatives.

July 2021 fundraiser with Fuentes. Per StopAntisemitism and The Hill, Gosar scheduled a personal fundraiser with Fuentes at Uptown Event Center in Orlando and kept it on the calendar after weeks of public objection from Jewish organizations.

November 2021 U.S. House censure. The House voted 223-207 to censure Gosar for posting an animated video depicting himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging swords at President Biden. The censure stripped his committee assignments.

Fuentes-follower staffer, 2023. Per Talking Points Memo and the follow-up Magaziner-Goldman-Balint-Moskowitz-Landsman letter to Speaker McCarthy, Gosar’s digital director since 2021, Wade Searle, was reported to be a prominent follower of Nick Fuentes and a member of the neo-Nazi “Groyper Army.” Five Jewish House members called for a fresh censure. Gosar did not remove him.

Gosar’s chief of staff on McShane, per the Washington Post: “Rory McShane is an incredibly effective strategist. It doesn’t surprise me to see people trying to take him down.”

Andy Biggs (R-AZ, U.S. House)

Biggs served as Chair of the House Freedom Caucus from October 2019 to January 2022.

Per NBC News, Biggs was named by a “Stop the Steal” organizer as one of three House members who helped hatch the January 6 rally plan, alongside Reps. Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar. Per the January 6 Select Committee’s evidence release, Biggs exchanged text messages with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows starting November 6, 2020, three days after Election Day, proposing that Republican state legislatures appoint their own electors.

Per Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers’s June 2022 sworn testimony, Biggs called Bowers on the morning of January 6 asking whether Bowers would support decertifying Arizona’s Biden electors. Bowers refused.

Per NBC News, Biggs was among 34 Republican members of Congress documented exchanging election-overturn planning messages with Meadows between Election Day and the inauguration. Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony named Biggs among at least ten House members who met with Meadows to plan the effort.

Bob Good (R-VA, U.S. House)

A former Liberty University athletics official. Good ran to Denver Riggleman’s right in 2020 explicitly on Riggleman’s officiation of a same-sex wedding.

The wedding-officiation primary, 2020. Per NPR, NBC News, and VPM, Good defeated Riggleman at a drive-through convention on the ground that Riggleman was, per Good’s campaign line, “out of step with the base of the party” on marriage. The disqualifying offense: Riggleman had officiated a same-sex wedding for two campaign volunteers in 2019.

Freedom Caucus Chair. Per Axios, Good took the gavel in January 2024. He voted to overturn the 2020 election. He led the eight-vote block against Kevin McCarthy’s speakership. Per Axios, Good then lost his own 2024 Republican primary to Trump-backed state Sen. John McGuire by 0.6 percent.

Anti-LGBTQ policy record. Per the Human Rights Campaign compilation and Good’s own Equality Act statement, Good characterized the federal civil-rights bill as “weakening long-standing civil rights law by equating biological sex with ‘sexual orientation and gender identity.’” He aligned with the House Freedom Caucus demand for restrictions on gender-affirming care and transgender athletes as an appropriations condition, per Truthout.

Anthony Kern (Arizona State Senator)

Fake-elector indictment, April 2024. Per Copper Courier, 12 News Phoenix, and Courthouse News, Kern was indicted by an Arizona grand jury on April 24, 2024 on nine felony counts each of forgery, fraud, and conspiracy in Arizona’s fake-elector case. Eighteen defendants were charged. Kern entered a not-guilty plea.

Kern was photographed on the U.S. Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. Per Arizona Mirror, he sat as an Arizona delegate at the July 2024 Republican National Convention while under indictment. Per KOLD News 13, Arizona Senate leadership let him keep his committee assignments.

The election-denier franchise

Per Issue One’s January 2023 analysis, McShane LLC billed $696,000 across three 2022 secretary-of-state candidates running on false claims about the 2020 election.

Jim Marchant (Nevada). Nearly $500,000, 56 percent of his total campaign spend. McShane was his top vendor. Per Wikipedia, Marchant was the founding president of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, a national slate of election deniers running for the offices that oversee elections. Headquartered in Las Vegas. Per Media Matters and the Las Vegas Sun, Marchant used Bannon’s War Room to solicit volunteers to hand-count ballots and told a QAnon conference he had been recruited to run by a QAnon influencer using the pseudonym “Juan O Savin,” with whom he had worked to recruit like-minded SoS candidates in other states. Per NBC News, Marchant backed the Nevada slate of fake electors who signed certifying documents purporting to cast Nevada’s votes for Trump. He lost the 2022 general. His 2024 U.S. Senate run drew documented criticism for antisemitic content promoted from his campaign channels, per National Memo.

Chuck Gray (Wyoming). Nearly $200,000, 28 percent of his campaign spend. Per Bolts Magazine and ABC News, Gray campaigned on the claim that the 2020 election was “clearly rigged.” Per Bolts and Newsweek, Gray traveled to Arizona to observe the Cyber Ninjas audit and praised the effort. He then proposed Wyoming legislation to have the state’s Department of Audit review election results. His own Republican colleagues rejected it. Per Cowboy State Daily, after taking office Gray skipped the National Association of Secretaries of State conference and instead attended a gathering run by election deniers.

Diego Morales (Indiana). Roughly $7,000 plus prior engagement. Per WFYI, Morales wrote an online column calling the 2020 election a “scam” and told the Indiana GOP convention “the 2020 election was flawed and the outcome is questionable.” WFYI also documented that Morales voted in one Indiana county while claiming a property-tax credit for living in another, and that he had left staff jobs in the Indiana Secretary of State’s office in 2009 and 2011 after being written up for poor work performance.

Per the same Issue One report, McShane LLC also created the Take Back the West PAC in 2020, which raised roughly $80,000 and paid essentially all of it back to McShane LLC for services. A federal super PAC by the same name, per FEC filings, paid McShane roughly $570,000 more during the 2020 cycle for TV ads and mailers supporting Trump and opposing Biden. Per Campaigns & Elections, McShane later hired Sam Peters, an unsuccessful 2022 Nevada congressional candidate and former McShane client, as CEO. Per The Nevada Independent, Peters has publicly promoted conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines. (RMC’s team page as of mid-2026 lists Jeff McGowan as CEO.)

Liz Harris (formerly Arizona State Representative)

Expelled from the Arizona House, April 2023. Per NPR, MSNBC, and Arizona Mirror, the Republican-controlled Arizona House voted 46-13 to expel Harris, only the second Arizona representative expelled in modern memory, after she orchestrated a joint hearing at which an outside witness accused sitting officials of taking bribes from a Mexican drug cartel and the LDS Church. The House Ethics Committee found she had lied about her role and had “damaged the institutional integrity of the House.” Per Media Matters and Vice, Harris then used QAnon-affiliated Rumble channels to solicit viewer pressure to reinstate her.

Corey Stewart

McShane worked Stewart’s 2017 Virginia gubernatorial primary while at Harris Media, per Harris Media’s own Breitbart-syndicated write-up. The campaign centered on defending Confederate monuments against removal.

Per CNN, Stewart endorsed antisemitic congressional candidate Paul Nehlen in January 2017, calling Nehlen “one of my personal heroes” and saying he was “so honored” to have Nehlen’s endorsement. Nehlen later publicly identified himself as “pro-white” and promoted a book by white-nationalist Kevin MacDonald. Per PolitiFact, Stewart also accepted an endorsement from Jason Kessler, organizer of the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that ended in the vehicular homicide of Heather Heyer, after joining Kessler at a February 2017 event. Stewart’s 2018 primary rival Nick Freitas told the Washington Post, per WRAL: “I’m getting a little tired of the Republican Party getting slammed with these sort of accusations because someone like Corey Stewart can’t figure out who he should not be associating with.” Of Nehlen, Stewart later told the Post: “That was before he went nuts and started spewing a bunch of stupid stuff.”

Dennis Hof

Elected posthumously after dying in his brothel. Per NBC News, CNBC, and CBS News, Hof (the brothel owner behind HBO’s Cathouse franchise and author of a self-published book titled The Art of the Pimp) was found dead in his Love Ranch brothel on October 16, 2018, three weeks before Election Day. He stayed on the ballot and defeated Democratic educator Lesia Romanov for Nevada’s 36th Assembly District. Self-branded, per NBC News, “The Trump of Pahrump.”

The rest of the roster

Christi Jacobsen (Montana Secretary of State), Winsome Sears (Virginia Lieutenant Governor, elected 2021 with more than $90,000 in McShane payments through the nominating convention per Virginia Public Access Project records tracked in Virginia Scope; Sears parted ways with McShane before the Proud Boys story broke publicly), Austin Smith (Arizona State Representative and Turning Point Action regional director), and Cresent Hardy (former U.S. Rep. NV-04) all sit on the same public roster. So do the federal PACs House Freedom Action and Gun Owners of America. So do the state Republican parties of Nevada, North Carolina, and Maryland. The Nevada GOP account is the party operation retained during the 2020 Proud Boys episode.

The pattern

When a Republican candidate somewhere in America is looking for the shop that will produce the mail for a hardline primary challenge, RMC’s public client page says: we run campaigns for the guy who keynoted a white-nationalist conference, the chair who voted to overturn the 2020 election, the state senator indicted on nine fake-elector felony counts, the operative who called an antisemite “one of my personal heroes,” the representative expelled from her state house, and the pimp who won posthumously. If that is where you are running toward, this is the shop.

The full published client list

RMC’s own clients page lists close to a hundred current and former political clients. The reference table below captures top named clients across every tier. Idaho clients are broken out further below.

RMC Strategy client roster and public record
Client Office Notable public record
Paul Gosar U.S. House, AZ-04 AFPAC keynote, U.S. House censure 223-207, Fuentes-follower digital director
Andy Biggs U.S. House, AZ-05 Fmr Freedom Caucus Chair; Bowers-testimony pressure call Jan 6; Meadows-text tranche
Bob Good U.S. House, VA-05 Freedom Caucus Chair; won 2020 primary on same-sex-wedding attack; voted to overturn 2020; lost 2024 primary
Corey Stewart 2017 VA Governor; 2018 U.S. Senate nominee Called Paul Nehlen 'one of my personal heroes'; accepted Jason Kessler endorsement
Jim Marchant 2022 NV SecState nominee America First SoS Coalition chair; QAnon-recruited; NV fake elector
Chuck Gray WY SecState (elected 2022) 2020 'clearly rigged'; Cyber Ninjas pilgrimage; election-denier conference over NASS
Diego Morales IN SecState (elected 2022) Called 2020 election a 'scam'; voter-registration issues
Christi Jacobsen MT Secretary of State RMC client
Winsome Sears VA Lt. Governor 2021 (elected) $90K+ through 2021 convention; parted with McShane before Proud Boys story broke
Alice Rolli 2023 Nashville mayoral Fired McShane within hours of learning about Proud Boys story
Anthony Kern AZ State Senator April 2024 fake-elector indictment (9 felony counts); Jan 6 Capitol-grounds presence
Liz Harris AZ State Rep. Expelled from AZ House 46-13 in April 2023 over QAnon-adjacent conspiracy hearing
Austin Smith AZ State Rep. Turning Point Action regional director
Dennis Hof NV State Assembly-Elect 2018 Elected posthumously after dying in his brothel three weeks before Election Day
Cresent Hardy Former U.S. Rep. NV-04 RMC client
Scott Herndon ID State Senator (LD-1) 2022 campaign ran the McShane-produced mailer photoshopping Sen. Jim Woodward in a face mask Woodward never wore
Chad Christensen Fmr Idaho State Rep., 2026 candidate Documented Oath Keepers member per AP/Post Register; paid McShane $30,917 for 2026 D35A; lost primary 44-56
David Worley 2026 Idaho Senate D28 candidate Challenger to Sen. Jim Guthrie; paid RMC $50,118 across 32 records; lost 47-53
House Freedom Action Federal super PAC RMC client
Gun Owners of America Federal gun-rights PAC RMC client
Club for Growth Federal super PAC RMC client. Andy Roth (fmr Club VP Government Affairs) now runs the State Freedom Caucus Network; Maria Nate is his Idaho director
Nevada / NC / Maryland GOP State Republican parties All three named on RMC's client page. NV GOP is the state party whose 2020 engagement produced the Proud Boys episode
Sources: RMC Strategy public client page; named third-party reporting cited in the narrative sections above.

How Idaho got on the invoice

Club for Growth is a McShane client. Its logo has sat on RMC’s public client page since 2022. Club for Growth’s former VP of Government Affairs, Andy Roth, left in December 2021 to found the State Freedom Caucus Network, which stood up state-level Freedom Caucus chapters in Idaho, Wyoming, Missouri, Montana, and beyond on a farm-team model. SFCN’s Idaho director is Maria Nate, wife of IFF President Ron Nate and the whip behind the Gang of 8. McShane’s shop produces the mail for the slate she moves.

The shared vendor also cuts across a public feud. The IFF and the chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus feud publicly. What they share is McShane. His firm produces the mail for the Bonner County GOP central committee on the IFF axis AND for Blaine County’s Common Sense PAC on the chamber axis. Cross-attacks in public. Same invoicing pad in private.

The Idaho operation: $1.65 million across six aliases

The full breakdown of the Idaho engagement is published in the Following the Money 2026 investigation, Section 4. Across the 2025-2026 cycle, per Idaho Secretary of State Sunshine bulk-export records and per federal filings at FEC.gov:

  • Idaho state expenditures to McShane / RMC across all six aliases: $1,246,038 across 414 records from 36 unique Idaho filing entities. Aliases used: McShane LLC, RMC, RMC LLC, RMC Strategy, RMC Strategies, Revolutionizing Microtargeted Campaigns, and one variant spelled “rmcstrategy.com.”
  • Federal payments coded to the firm across the cycle: $403,281 across 25 payments. Twenty-four coded to “RMC LLC,” one to “McShane LLC.”
  • Combined 2025-2026 Idaho-relevant billing: $1,649,319.

The state-side filer breakdown, top of the list:

McShane / RMC — Idaho state expenditures 2025-2026 (top 24 filers)
Filer Total Alias used
Bonner County Republican Central Committee $476,867 RMC
Blaine County Common Sense PAC $241,354 McShane LLC
Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC) $190,990 McShane LLC
David Worley (candidate committee) $50,118 RMC
Randy Westlund (candidate committee) $31,025 RMC Strategy
Chad Christensen (candidate committee) $30,917 McShane LLC
Elaine Price (candidate committee) $28,310 McShane LLC + RMC
Cornel Rasor (candidate committee) $26,774 RMC
James Lamborn (candidate committee) $23,807 McShane LLC
Idaho Freedom Caucus PAC $22,792 McShane LLC + RMC
Colton Bennett (candidate committee) $21,753 RMC Strategies
Teresa Mallery (candidate committee) $18,148 Revolutionizing Microtargeted Campaigns
Blaine County Accountability PAC $15,663 McShane LLC
Debbie Loffman (candidate committee) $9,309 McShane LLC + RMC + RMC Strategy
Heidi Smith-Takatori (candidate committee) $8,253 McShane LLC + RMC
Karey Hanks (candidate committee) $5,553 McShane LLC
Kootenai Freedom Caucus $5,271 rmcstrategy.com
Victoria Bauman (candidate committee) $4,608 RMC
Steven Tanner (candidate committee) $4,203 McShane LLC
Vito Barbieri (candidate committee) $3,000 McShane LLC
Christy Zito (candidate committee) $2,560 McShane LLC
Carl Bjerke (candidate committee) $2,315 McShane LLC / McShane, LLC
Julie Hensley (candidate committee) $1,921 McShane LLC
Marc Eberlein (candidate committee) $1,550 RMC
Source: Idaho SOS Sunshine bulk export, cycle 2025-2026, all six McShane / RMC aliases combined.

The big money is on the county committees. Bonner County RCC’s $476,867 is the single largest McShane/RMC engagement on the Idaho ledger. KCRCC’s $190,990 is not far behind. Blaine County Common Sense PAC’s $241,354 rounds it out. In each county, the local Republican central committee (or a party-adjacent PAC) is running independent expenditures against sitting Republican legislators from within the same party. McShane’s shop produces the mail, the digital, and the sample-ballot text messages. The primary sample ballot KCRCC distributed on May 6, 2026 covered roughly 24 state and county candidates plus one measure, was produced by McShane LLC, and cost the county party $3,324, matched by a second $3,324 line the same day.

The biggest candidate invoices went to losers. The four largest McShane candidate invoices in the 2026 Idaho primary cycle went to campaigns that lost by wide margins to sitting Republican incumbents. One added a fifth loss the same cycle:

Five losing McShane / RMC candidate campaigns, 2025-2026
Candidate Race Paid to McShane / RMC Result
David Worley Senate D28 vs Sen. Jim Guthrie $50,118 Lost 47-53
Chad Christensen House D35A $30,917 Lost 44-56
James Lamborn vs Rep. Richard Cheatum $23,807 Lost
Teresa Mallery Kootenai County Treasurer vs Carlos Zamora $18,148 Lost 43-57
Debbie Loffman Coeur d'Alene Mayor vs Dan Gookin (Nov 2025) $9,309 Lost
Sources: Idaho SOS Sunshine bulk export; certified 2026 Idaho Republican primary results; November 2025 Coeur d'Alene municipal results.

The Worley invoice is the one to sit on. Per the Idaho Army National Guard Assistant Adjutant General’s relief documentation (Exhibit 7A, Tab 6.1, p.7), Maj. Worley said of his First Sergeant, verbatim: “well, its not like I raped [First Sergeant redacted] well, not yet.” The AAG characterized the remark as “an extreme lapse of judgment” in the same finding that relieved Worley of command for “demonstrated counterproductive leadership that reduced morale, eroded trust and showed little respect for others.” Six months later McShane’s firm ran his Senate campaign. See the David Worley dossier for the full record.

Where the shop did produce wins, they were down-ballot with low vote thresholds: Randy Westlund won Post Falls Mayor with a 39 percent plurality in a four-way race; Julie Hensley won a Kootenai County Commissioner primary 55-44; Victoria Bauman won a Community Library Network Board of Trustees seat. Scott Herndon’s 2022 Senate LD-1 primary win against Sen. Jim Woodward ran on a McShane-produced mailer photoshopping Woodward in a face mask he had never worn.

The Idaho on-the-ground employee running these campaigns is Bjorn Handeen. Per Handeen’s own website, he is “RMC Strategy Strategist” and the current Idaho Republican Party Platform Committee Chair. Per his verified X account, @BjornJHandeen, his profile bio reads word-for-word: “GOP strategist with @RMCStrategy | Platform Committee Chair @IdahoGOP | Proud Paleoconservative.” Handeen was the press contact on David Worley’s February 10, 2026 Senate D28 campaign launch, publishing under his RMC email address [email protected]. He is a former North Idaho Region Chairman of KCRCC.

The undisclosed conflict — property tax on the platform. Handeen’s Platform Committee wrote the “eliminate the property tax” plank onto the 2026 Idaho Republican platform at the state convention. Handeen’s campaign client Scott Herndon is running the same slogan as his headline campaign issue. Per Political Potatoes, Herndon’s pitch — “Idaho can be the first state in the nation to eliminate the property tax entirely” — pairs a $1.2 billion figure with a $2.3 billion figure, glosses the $1.1 billion gap as “over time,” and misdescribes the mechanism: property taxes are collected locally by counties, school districts, fire districts, and cities, not by the state legislature Herndon sits in. The Idaho Republican Party’s official platform now carries the same policy pitch that Handeen’s paying client is running on. The disclosure of that conflict, from the Platform Committee Chair to the Idaho Republican delegates who voted on the plank, does not appear on the public record.

The money bridge back into the network runs through Brent Regan, Idaho Freedom Foundation Board Chair and KCRCC Chairman. Per the Idaho Sunshine record, Regan wrote a $1,000 personal check to Debbie Loffman’s Coeur d’Alene mayoral campaign and a $1,030 personal check to Julie Hensley’s Kootenai commissioner primary campaign. Both candidates are RMC clients. KCRCC, the county party Regan chairs, then paid McShane’s firm $190,990 out of the county party’s account for IE work on the same slate. The IFF Board Chair’s county party wrote the institutional checks. Regan wrote the personal ones. See the Brent Regan dossier for the full network position.

The 2024 picture, for context. McShane billed at least $136,000 across ten Idaho candidate committees during the 2023-2024 primary window. Scott Herndon accounted for $76,000 of that total on his losing D1 senate campaign against Jim Woodward. The rest went to a slate: Skidmore, Shippy, Zito, Rasor, Bjerke, Cayler, Ehardt, Trakel, plus a small payment from Wendy Horman’s committee that predated her 2024 run. Two of those clients faced each other in the D8 senate primary; McShane cashed checks from both Zito and Trakel and worked opposite sides of the same race. The county-committee IE billing that later exceeded $700,000 combined at Bonner and Kootenai came after. That expansion arrived in 2025.

The client that lands the case

One name on the Idaho client list carries more documented extremism than the rest of the roster combined. Dave Reilly.

Per Political Potatoes, April 16, 2024, Reilly is a McShane campaign client. Per federal-court discovery in Sines v. Kessler (3:17-cv-00072, W.D. Va.), he is the Identity Evropa member operating under the Discord handle “Davey Crockett” at the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Rally organizer Jason Kessler named him under oath at the November 15, 2021 trial. Identity Evropa is a white-supremacist organization per the Anti-Defamation League. The Sines jury returned a $25 million verdict against the Charlottesville defendants.

Reilly’s own X account, December 11, 2025, verbatim: “Nick Fuentes is right about the Jews.” He hosts The Backlash, a Holocaust-minimization podcast. He appeared twice on Press TV in March 2025, eighteen months after the U.S. Treasury designated the Iranian state outlet under OFAC sanctions. He publishes the Idaho Tribune under pseudonymous bylines. The Idaho Freedom Foundation quietly retained him as a messaging contractor in December 2023, per InvestigateWest and Idaho Capital Sun.

The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, the same county party paying McShane’s firm $190,990, endorsed Reilly’s 2021 Post Falls School Board run after Charlottesville was already public. McShane’s shop produces the mail for the same county party. See the Dave Reilly dossier for the 5,470-tweet deletion archive, the three Wyoming LLCs, the $41,000-plus in documented network revenue, and the coordination pattern.

The extremism standard applied

Belief is not extremism; abusive enforcement of belief is. Summoning the Proud Boys to a vote-counting facility, keeping the vice president who tried to do it on payroll for two years, running the mail for a fake-elector indictee and for candidates challenging their own party’s sitting incumbents is the abusive-enforcement threshold, transacted through invoices.

According to FEC records, Sen. Jim Risch hired Rory McShane and has paid him $403,281.

Connected pages

  • Following the Money 2026 investigation. Section 4 contains the extended Idaho breakdown that this dossier summarizes; the investigation is the source.
  • Maria Nate dossier. SFCN Idaho director; the whip end of the Club for Growth → Roth → SFCN → Gang of 8 pipeline.
  • Ron Nate dossier. IFF President; the policy end of the same pipeline.
  • David Worley dossier. RMC’s largest 2025-2026 Idaho legislative candidate invoice; challenger to Sen. Jim Guthrie.
  • Chad Christensen dossier. Sitting Oath Keeper, McShane LLC’s second-largest 2026 Idaho legislative candidate spend.
  • Brent Regan dossier. IFF Board Chair and KCRCC Chair; wrote personal checks to McShane-managed candidates while chairing the county party that paid McShane $190,990.
  • Doyle Beck dossier. East Idaho IFF fixture; institutional context for the funding chain that produces McShane’s Idaho revenue.
  • Dave Reilly dossier. North Idaho Charlottesville alum whose Wyoming-registered LLC received $11,000 from KCRCC in the same institutional relationship that flows to McShane.
  • Greg Pruett dossier. Idaho propaganda-network operator; parallel-lane role in the same Idaho far-right political network.
  • Dustin Hurst dossier. IFF strategist whose network overlaps in practice with McShane’s Idaho slate.
  • Christy Zito dossier. Sitting Idaho state senator, McShane LLC client, cross-referenced in both the Pruett Honor Idaho five-channel infrastructure and the McShane vendor cluster.
  • Scott Herndon dossier. Idaho state senator whose 2022 win used the photoshopped face-mask mailer produced by the McShane shop against Sen. Jim Woodward.
  • State Freedom Caucus Network organization page. Andy Roth’s national outfit; the bridge from Club for Growth to the Idaho Gang of 8.
  • Idaho Freedom Foundation organization page. The institutional funder upstream of the McShane Idaho ledger.
  • The Propaganda Network organization page. The amplification network that runs on top of the McShane-produced ground campaign.

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