OPINION: Luke Mayville and his Medicaid for Idaho campaign are proving us political ‘experts’ wrong
The founders of Reclaim Idaho didn't accept the conventional wisdom that citizen initiatives in
The conventional wisdom says the requirements to get 6 percent of all registered voters -- a total of 56,000 signatures -- in at least 18 of the 35 state legislative districts is a near-impossible task, especially for a volunteer effort not paying signature gatherers.
And that's what the experts and professionals in
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"They would say things like '18 districts means you have to go all out across this huge state to really far-flung places, where it's really difficult to organize.' And from our perspective, they're talking about where we're from, right?" Mayville says. "And they're also talking about the kind of place where we had just successfully organized around a school levy."
Mayville and cofounders Garrett and
"If we can organize successfully in
I was one of the doubting
When I published a guest opinion about the campaign from Mayville in October, I misspelled his name. He was running was a clever campaign, sure, but what did his band of naive newbies from
By October, the trio had decided to make their petition campaign real and filed with the secretary of state, essentially adopting the language of former Sen.
"When we had our campaign kickoff
"Luke has a really fantastic way of getting people to buy into the bigger vision," said Reider. "It's one thing to say 'Will you go out and collect signatures?' It's another thing to say, 'Will you be a leader? Will you be the person?'"
ORGANIZED, ENTHUSIASTIC AND ANGRY
In 2013, after voters petitioned and overturned three unpopular education bills known colloquially as the Luna Laws, the Legislature added new geographic requirements for initiatives and referendums. That's on top of the requirement for 6 percent of the voters registered, not just those who voted, in the last statewide election.
I asked
"These two factors combined mean
For Mayville, anger or enthusiasm doesn't sum up what he's seeing. There's a mood in the country that has something to do with reaction on the left to the 2016 presidential election and from the center and right on "bread-and-butter" issues that are going ignored or unaddressed. Others in the
Mayville sees
"On the one hand, we're harnessing all this energy that was riled up by the 2016 election, but on the other side of the coin is the sense that there's actually real opportunity for bipartisan, nonpartisan coalition-building when you organize around these consensus issues," he said. "We can harness a lot of energy and build a majority coalition around these kinds of issues."
KNOCKING ON DOORS WITH MOM
Mayville grew up in
But it was his time in
"I saw an opportunity to try to take everything I know about organizing and the political science research or my own experience with the social action committee or volunteering for campaigns and focus it on this one weeklong campaign to pass the (
He's also persuaded from political science research "that face-to-face interaction is still the most powerful thing ... even in the age of big money in politics, big data, big analytics," he said. "Relationship-building and door-to-door contact and phone calls are still the indispensable, essential stuff of politics."
FROM POLITICAL THEORY TO PRACTICE
The practical effect of this political science was on view the past 10 days, as volunteers and activists gathered in
"This group has done a great thing, and now other groups can step up and say 'We can mobilize our network, too,' " said
Necochea's allies in Close the Gap such as the
"As I've been canvassing, I haven't had anyone say 'No, we're not willing to sign,' " said
As of Thursday, the campaign had about 47,000 of the 56,000 signatures and was close to having 15 of the 18 districts needed to qualify for the November ballot. As importantly, it's signing on volunteers and groups from around the state to help meet the
As the advocates close in on their target,
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