Ryan Spoon

Ryan Spoon moved to Boise from San Francisco in 2019. Idaho voters declined him three times — his own ACRCC precinct passed on him, his 2022 Idaho Senate D20 bid failed to make the ballot, and his 2022 College of Western Idaho trustee race ended in a general-election loss. Today he sits as Ada County Republican Central Committee Vice Chair through internal-party appointment, has chaired the Idaho Freedom PAC, and has used the unelected institutional title to run a documented multi-cycle campaign against Republican legislators — including the January 2025 X post that triggered an ICE visit to a sitting Republican state representative’s family farm.

Inside this dossier:

• January 21, 2025 — ICE call against a Republican state representative. Spoon publicly tagged Trump border czar Tom Homan demanding ICE raid Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen’s farms. ICE arrived three days later. One employee was detained on January 27. Coverage in HuffPost, Idaho Capital Sun, KTVB, Fox News, National Memo, and Alternet.
• 2024 — IFPAC engineered a Democrat win over a Republican. As Idaho Freedom PAC director, Spoon and IFF strategist Dustin Hurst helped run an “independent” candidacy in District 26 that peeled votes from Republican Laurie Lickley and elected Democrat Ron Taylor.
• Endorsed a Constitution Party candidate against the Republican nominee for Ada County Sheriff. Republican nominee Matt Clifford won 80-20 anyway.
• Three documented voter rejections. 2022 Idaho Senate District 20 (failed to make the ballot), 2022 College of Western Idaho Trustee Zone 2 (lost the general), and his own ACRCC precinct declined to elect him to anything.
• California transplant since 2019. Per Idaho Capital Sun, Spoon moved to Boise from San Francisco that year and works remotely as a corporate loss-prevention specialist.
• Three Republican legislators publicly targeted from the ACRCC chair. Mickelsen (D32), Petzke (D21), and Bernt (D21) — all named in contemporaneous Ada County reporting as targets of Spoon-led ACRCC operations.

Who he is

Ryan Spoon sits as the First Vice Chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee. Per the Idaho Capital Sun’s March 27, 2025 reporting by Audrey Dutton and InvestigateWest’s Daniel Walters, Spoon moved to Boise from San Francisco in 2019 and works remotely as a corporate loss-prevention specialist. Per the Republican Party of Idaho candidate page and his Ballotpedia profile, Spoon ran for Idaho Senate District 20 in the 2022 Republican primary but did not appear on the ballot. He ran for College of Western Idaho Trustee Zone 2 in November 2022 and lost the general election. His ACRCC vice-chair role was not earned through a county-wide vote of Republican precinct committeemen — he holds it through internal-party appointment after the prior ACRCC executive leadership resigned in protest of state-party leadership conduct.

He has also chaired the Idaho Freedom PAC (IFPAC), the electoral arm of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. The IFF and IFPAC are documented as institutionally interchangeable — same board figures, same staff, same operating model — separated only by the federal-tax filing structure that distinguishes a 501(c)(3) think-tank from a campaign-spending PAC.

His handle on X is @SpoonForIdaho.

The Mickelsen ICE-weaponization (January 2025)

The chapter that broke into national press. Documented timeline, multiple primary sources.

The post

On January 21, 2025, Spoon posted on X tagging Trump border czar Tom Homan with the message: “Could you please send some illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen?” — followed by “Here is a list of Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen’s businesses for @ICEgov to raid.” Per Idaho Capital Sun reporting, the posts were made within days of President Trump’s second-term inauguration.

Mickelsen — a Republican state representative from Idaho Falls (District 32) — had cast votes on the Idaho House floor that the IFF network’s scoring system flagged as insufficiently aligned with the foundation’s positions.

The ICE arrival

ICE agents arrived at Mickelsen Farms three days later, on January 24, 2025. By January 27, one Mickelsen Farms employee — Sajid Soto — was being held at the Nevada Southern Detention Center. Federal employment law expressly prohibits employers from re-verifying immigration status after hire; the I-9 form Mickelsen Farms filed at the time of hiring was the legally required check. The ICE enforcement was driven by Spoon’s political post, not by any Mickelsen Farms hiring violation.

Coverage cluster: HuffPost, KTVB, Idaho Capital Sun / InvestigateWest, Fox News, National Memo, and Alternet.

The free-beer reward

Later in 2025 — after the Mickelsen ICE attack had already happened — Mark Fitzpatrick’s Old State Saloon in Eagle launched a promotion offering free beer to customers who provided ICE tips. Per Fox News’ coverage of the saloon promotion, the program turned ICE-targeting into a financial-reward channel. Spoon publicly claimed his free beer under the Fitzpatrick promotion as reward for the earlier Mickelsen attack — collecting retroactively under a network promotion that emerged after the conduct it rewarded.

Public condemnations on the record

Republican elders publicly condemned Spoon’s actions. Per the Idaho Capital Sun reporting:

Additional named on-record condemnations: Cheryl Miller, a long-time ACRCC precinct committee officer, called Spoon’s actions “beneath the dignity of a county Republican leader”; Jennifer Ellis, Take Back Idaho Chair, called the ICE-tip campaign “unacceptable” and “an insult to Idaho’s agricultural industry”; former Idaho Speaker Bruce Newcomb publicly warned Spoon of defamation liability risks.

The Sanchez-tragedy hijack

Per contemporaneous reporting at Political Potatoes, an unrelated fatal traffic accident in the Twin Falls area — referred to in the reporting as the Sanchez case — became the next narrative vehicle in the campaign against Mickelsen. The accident had no documented connection to Mickelsen Farms. After the original ICE attack failed to produce its desired result, Spoon, Sen. Brian Lenney, and Citizens Alliance operative Matt Edwards constructed a narrative tying the unrelated tragedy to Mickelsen anyway. A different incident, with no factual connection to the target, hijacked into the same campaign by the same network.

The 2024 District 26 Democrat-elect scheme

Mickelsen ICE was the moment that drew national press. The District 26 race is the receipt that explains the operating model.

In the 2024 cycle, Republican Laurie Lickley was the Republican nominee for the Idaho Senate seat in District 26. The Democrat was incumbent Ron Taylor. Per Times-News reporting — as documented in contemporaneous coverage at Political Potatoes — an “independent” candidate named Kala Tate entered the general-election race after the Republican primary was over. Tate had not run in the Republican primary against Lickley; she was unaffiliated on the general-election ballot.

After the election, Tate herself confirmed the operation was deliberate. The Times-News reported her own admission:

Per the same Political Potatoes coverage citing the Times-News reporting:

• Idaho Freedom PAC — the PAC Spoon directed at the time — funded targeted advertising supporting Tate’s candidacy.
• Dustin Hurst, the IFF strategist, co-engineered the operation.
• The Magic Valley Liberty Alliance, the Twin Falls IFF affiliate, provided local-network support.
• Campaign messaging framed Tate as a conservative voice while obscuring the strategic purpose.

The plan worked. Tate’s candidacy peeled enough votes from Lickley to swing the general election. Democrat Ron Taylor won the seat over Republican Laurie Lickley. Tate confessed the operational intent on the record.

The structural fact: as a sitting Idaho Republican Party operative — chair of the IFF’s electoral PAC and Vice Chair of Ada County’s Republican Central Committee — Spoon presided over the PAC funding that elected a Democrat over the Republican primary nominee.

The Ada County Sheriff Constitution-Party endorsement

Same operating pattern, different race. Per Political Potatoes’ Bryan Smith coverage, Spoon publicly endorsed a Constitution Party candidate against Republican nominee Matt Clifford for Ada County Sheriff in the same 2024 cycle. Clifford won 80-20 against the Constitution Party challenger. The endorsement is the receipt: a sitting Ada County GOP Vice Chair publicly supporting a non-Republican candidate against the Republican nominee in his own county.

Three documented voter rejections

Spoon’s ACRCC vice-chair role and IFPAC chairmanship are appointments within the party machinery. They are not the result of a public election. The public record of his ballot performance is the relevant context:

Year	Election	Outcome
2022	Idaho Senate District 20, Republican primary	Did not appear on the ballot
2022	College of Western Idaho Trustee Zone 2	Lost the general election
Subsequent	Local ACRCC precinct election	Per contemporaneous reporting, his own precinct declined to elect him to anything

Sources: Ballotpedia for the 2022 statewide and CWI bids; Political Potatoes “Building a Bigger Tent” for the local precinct outcome.

The combined record: Idaho voters have had three opportunities to elevate Ryan Spoon to an elected position. They have declined all three. He nonetheless sits as First Vice Chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee through internal appointment.

The April 3, 2025 ACRCC “training” presentation

On April 3, 2025, Spoon presented at the official ACRCC monthly meeting. Per contemporaneous reporting at Political Potatoes, the thirteen-minute slot was structured as a “training session” for Republican precinct committeemen. The content focused on Spoon’s effort to direct ICE to Rep. Mickelsen’s businesses.

Per the same reporting, multiple Republican precinct committeemen walked out of the meeting during the presentation. One PC’s summary as documented at the time: “Who needs enemies when you have friends like this?”

The same article documents that ACRCC member Steve Bender was overheard saying that ACRCC fundraising had collapsed because Spoon had become “too toxic” for donors to back. The fundraising deterioration is framed in the same article as direct consequence of Spoon’s public posture.

The ACRCC operating environment under Spoon

Per Political Potatoes “Idaho GOP Purge Playbook”: two additional Meridian Republican legislators — Rep. James Petzke (District 21) and Sen. Treg Bernt (District 21) — have been documented as targets of the same ACRCC operating dynamic Spoon presides over alongside ACRCC Chair Thad Butterworth. The reporting describes the ACRCC under their leadership as “a toxic and exclusionary space” in which Republicans who decline to vote the IFF script become the subject of formal committee actions and public-facing criticism.

The pattern: a Republican legislator who votes outside the IFF scoring framework finds themselves operating against the institutional headwind of an ACRCC executive whose vice chair has himself been declined by Idaho voters at the ballot box three times.

The state-convention door incident

At the 2024 Idaho Republican Party state convention, Republican credentials-challenge filer Ashley Brittain was physically blocked from entering the credentials meeting at which her own challenge was being considered. Brittain published a first-person account at Political Potatoes documenting that IDGOP Chair Dorothy Moon directed Spoon and convention sergeant-at-arms Dominic Brandon to guard the door and refuse her entry. Brittain’s account states that during the encounter, Spoon and Brandon used gendered slurs.

The reporting is Brittain’s own first-person testimony as the named witness. The episode is on the public record at the link above. The structural point: a duly-credentialed Republican woman with a procedural challenge before the state convention was physically blocked from her own credentials hearing on the IDGOP Chair’s instruction, with Spoon serving as one of two enforcers.

The Alicia Purdy investigative-committee episode

Per Political Potatoes’ “Building a Bigger Tent”: Spoon’s “operational lieutenant” Ben Chafetz drafted formal letters to Republican PCO Alicia Purdy and managed an investigative committee that, in the same article’s framing, “told a duly elected PCO to guess at her own charges.” Process abuse against a duly-elected Republican Precinct Committeeman, deploying ACRCC committee structure as a punitive instrument.

The Old State Saloon gun raffle (Idaho Code §67-7702)

Per the same Political Potatoes “Circus in Ada County” reporting: at an ACRCC fundraising event during Spoon’s vice-chair tenure, organizers prominently advertised a gun raffle, complete with ticket prices. Idaho Code §67-7702 prohibits political parties and political candidates from hosting raffles. The article includes photographic documentation of the raffle advertisement at the event venue.

A documented violation of state law in the institutional setting Spoon presides over as ACRCC First Vice Chair.

The Janice McGeachin task force credential

Per Political Potatoes’ “Thad Butterworth Idaho”: “Butterworth’s friends and colleagues Ryan Spoon and Priscilla Giddings served on Janice McGeachin’s failed indoctrination task force.” The task force — former Lieutenant Governor McGeachin’s 2021 effort framed as anti-indoctrination education review — is documented across contemporaneous Idaho press as a partisan political project. Spoon’s appointment to it is part of the chain of credentials that pre-date his ACRCC role.

The 2026 Worley alignment

Per Prism News’ coverage of the 2026 Idaho primary cycle, Spoon has rallied behind David Worley in his Republican primary challenge to incumbent state Sen. Jim Guthrie. The Worley-Guthrie race is the subject of the Manufacturing a Martyr investigation — the documented case of the IFF network manufacturing a primary challenger against a sitting Republican who voted on a bipartisan health-budget compromise. Spoon’s public support for Worley in 2026 is the most recent documented example of the same operating model that produced the Mickelsen ICE attack and the District 26 spoiler scheme: Republicans being targeted from inside the party by network operatives who have themselves been declined by voters.

Where he sits in the network

Spoon’s structural position is the documented bridge between (a) the IFF’s electoral spending arm, IFPAC, and (b) the official Ada County Republican Party machinery via the ACRCC vice-chair role. The two positions, held simultaneously, give the IFF network a mechanism to direct PAC money into Republican primaries while presenting the messaging through an “official Ada County Republican” institutional voice.

His personal contribution to the network’s operating model is documented:

• A documented January 21, 2025 X post calling for ICE raids on a Republican legislator’s family farm, followed by ICE arrival three days later and one employee’s detention.
• A documented IFPAC role in the District 26 operation that elected a Democrat over the Republican nominee in 2024.
• A documented public endorsement of a Constitution Party candidate against the Republican nominee for Ada County Sheriff.
• A documented April 2025 ACRCC presentation that produced a Republican PC walkout.
• A documented public alignment with the IFF-network primary challenge against Sen. Jim Guthrie in 2026.

Connected pages

• Idaho Freedom Foundation organization page, the foundation whose electoral arm Spoon chaired
• Doyle Beck dossier, IFF board member and the East Idaho money-source upstream of the Mickelsen attack
• Dustin Hurst dossier, IFF strategist and Spoon’s co-engineer on the District 26 Democrat-elect operation
• Mark Fitzpatrick dossier, Old State Saloon owner whose ICE-tip free-beer promotion provided the financial reward channel for the Mickelsen attack
• Glenneda Zuiderveld dossier, parallel network operator with documented intimidation pattern
• Greg Pruett dossier, propaganda-network operator
• The Mickelsen Coordinated Attack investigation, the full operational walkthrough of the January 2025 ICE attack
• Manufacturing a Martyr investigation, the Worley-Guthrie operation Spoon publicly supports
• Follow the Money investigation, the funding-pipeline trace

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