About Political Potatoes
Idaho politics with the receipts attached, written by a lifelong conservative Republican who decided the label was worth fighting for.
A small, well-funded network took the word “conservative,” hollowed it out, and turned it into a weapon against the very people it once described. Political Potatoes exists to take it back.
Conservative used to mean something specific in Idaho: limited government, personal responsibility, and a wariness of anyone who wanted more power over your life. It did not mean loyalty tests, out-of-state dark money, or self-appointed saviors deciding who counts as a real Republican.
The method
Political Potatoes is an Idaho political publication that names operatives, tracks their money, and shows the documents. It is written from Star, Idaho, by Gregory Graf, a lifelong conservative Republican and political strategist. This is not opinion dressed up as reporting. Every serious claim comes with a paper trail: campaign finance filings, IRS 990s, court records, screenshots, and the operatives’ own public statements.
The publication covers the machinery most Idaho coverage skips. That means the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its legislative scorecard, the “Freedom Score” that punishes Republicans for funding schools and roads. It means Citizens Alliance of Idaho and the Idaho Freedom Caucus. It means spoiler candidates, astroturf campaigns, doxxing operations, and the outlets that launder all of it into something resembling news.
The machine it covers
The people running the “conservative” machine in Idaho are not conservatives in any sense Ronald Reagan or your grandfather would recognize. They are conflict entrepreneurs. They profit from division, fundraise off manufactured outrage, and treat their followers as a revenue stream rather than a constituency.
Idaho’s far right machine is organized and always coordinating its next outrage narrative, telling you the thing you should be angry about without ever providing real solutions. Property taxes. Flock cameras. grocery tax. Legislator pay raise. Culture wars. Sharia law. Common core. DEI. Every session and election year its a new coordinated rage bait bumper stick narrative that omits facts and simple truths. This machine believes you are too stupid to fact check them and amplifies each other through their astroturf network to give the appearance they are bigger than they really are. The 2026 primary elections proved that their constituency is much small than they led everyone to believe. Political Potatoes played a role in helping inoculate voters against the lies and bullshit shoveled by conflict entrepreneurs and taking back seats won through deception.
The person behind it
Gregory Graf has spent two decades learning who is really behind a narrative and why. He created Political Potatoes and founded Snake River Strategies, a strategic communications and political consulting firm in Eagle, Idaho. He built IdahoVoters.com, the most thorough voter guide in the state, along with IdahoExtremism.org, a documented analysis of the far-right network working to seize control of Idaho policy.
He is a husband of more than twenty years, a father of five, a homeschooling parent, a gun owner, and a Christian who defends religious pluralism and the LDS community against people who would weaponize faith for power. He writes hardest about his own side, because that is where accountability actually counts.
He brings standing that most commentators lack. He has been doxxed for this work. He has been SLAPP-sued, and the court dismissed the case on summary judgment. A court-issued stalking protection order came out of a separate harassment situation. It is evidence of exactly how the machine treats anyone who documents it honestly, and he kept publishing anyway.
What you get
This work is not free to produce. Tracking dark money, filing records requests, building funding maps, and staying independent of the machine takes real time, real expense, and real risk.
Paid subscribers are the reason this publication exists and can keep going.
Free subscribers get regular Idaho political analysis and reporting, the kind that connects a single news event to the larger network behind it. Paid subscribers get access to the full investigative work: complete document sets, funding maps, and deep dives into how the networks operate. Idahoans have been quietly waiting for someone to say out loud what they already suspected. It’s their loyal following that helps makes Political Potatoes Idaho’s best political Substack.
If this work matters to you, a paid subscription is the most direct way to make sure it continues. The people running the machine are counting on independent accountability being too expensive to sustain. Paid subscribers prove them wrong.
Where to begin
Read the archive. Start with the investigations that map the network, then follow the money into the current fights over school funding, property taxes, and who gets to call themselves a Republican in this state. Check the receipts yourself. Every link is there so you do not have to take Graf’s word for anything.
The people who hijacked “conservative” in Idaho are counting on you staying quiet, staying tired, and staying convinced that nothing can be done. They are wrong on all three.
Take the word back.
