In November 2025, the official Kootenai County Republican Central Committee reposted a 1992 court document on Facebook and X. The committee published Christa Hazel’s Social Security number, an old driver’s license number, her date of birth, her maiden name, and an address where her aging parents still live. Dorothy Moon went on Facebook to defend the post. I wrote about the escalation at the time. That’s where we begin on this episode of the Political Potatoes podcast.
Christa Hazel is a Coeur d’Alene Republican, a former school board chair, a co-founder of the Save NIC effort that rescued North Idaho College’s accreditation, and the candidate running against Rep. Elaine Price in the May 19 primary for Legislative District 4. She sat down to walk through what crossing Brent Regan’s KCRCC actually costs. Anyone trying to understand why “better candidates” don’t run in Kootenai County should listen to her answer.
A chronology of the doxxing
Hazel walked us through the timeline of the coordinated harassment campaign against her for daring to step outside of the party’s orthodoxy. In July 2025, a far-right activist posts a dismissed 1992 J.C. Penney shoplifting complaint from when she was 18, a complaint the court marked purged decades ago. The post leaks her old driver’s license number (a Social Security number at the time), her birthdate, her maiden name, and a former address. A network of social-media accounts amplifies it. A false dossier circulates, sourced repeatedly to the Idaho Tribune, the local outlet Dave Reilly has been publicly identified as operating. A sitting state senator passes that dossier around as if it were verified. Then in November 2025, the official Kootenai County Republican Central Committee reposts the original document itself on Facebook and X.
The Idaho Statesman and Spokesman-Review confirmed the document contained Hazel’s actual Social Security number by reviewing her Social Security card. The Coeur d’Alene Press picked it up two days later. Brent Regan, asked about it by the Statesman, refused to take the post down unless the court demanded it.
“It’s hard to tell someone who doesn’t live in the weeds and isn’t really in politics what the beef is between Republicans,” Hazel said. Christa astutely observed that the party machine operates much like an HOA on steroids. The neighborhood hasn’t changed. The neighbors haven’t changed. What changed is a small board that suddenly polices what flag you fly, what school your kids attend, what doctor you trust, what church gets called real Christianity. That’s the KCRCC, and it’s now an official arm of the Idaho Republican Party.
Her working rule for surviving the politics is short enough to put on a yard sign: “In Kootenai County, you have to verify before you trust.”
Dave Reilly, on the record
Hazel didn’t really dwell on Dave Reilly, because she didn’t have to. Reilly’s record sits in the open. He stood at the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally and livestreamed a Charlottesville KKK rally a month before it. The Idaho Freedom Foundation quietly hired him in 2023 to shape its messaging. Take Back Idaho archived more than 5,000 of his deleted tweets, including the antisemitism too thoroughly documented to argue with.
On the podcast, Hazel added the Coeur d’Alene chapter. Reilly freeze-frames photos from her public meetings and republishes them as if she had posed. He contacted her father under what Christa described as false pretenses. He live-streams her personal information. And he carries on online communication with Frank Silva, a convicted member of The Order, the 1980s domestic-terrorism cell that bombed targets, robbed armored cars, and murdered Denver radio host Alan Berg.
I called this out on the podcast: Rep. Elaine Price runs with the people who run with Reilly. Until that changes, every endorsement she takes from that network is a choice she made.
Christa’s FBI father and Ruby Ridge disinformation
Hazel’s father is Wayne Manis, the FBI street agent who ran the bureau’s largest pre-Oklahoma City domestic-terrorism investigation: The Order. His book The Street Agent documents the case. Court records back it up. Manis spent the Ruby Ridge siege preparing for hunting season in the mountains, came out, and ranked as the least-involved FBI agent on scene. His one Ruby Ridge job was taking Randy Weaver into custody after Weaver surrendered.
Then X accounts and Idaho Freedom Foundation channels rewrote that record. They claim Manis shot Vicki Weaver, shot Sammy Weaver, shot the dog, or led the assault. None of it is true. All of it gets pushed around by people who, when asked, want you to think of them as Christians.
Hazel reads the disinformation as bait. “I believe it’s meant to trigger militia type activity.” Coming from the daughter of the agent who actually worked the case, that read deserves to land.
Hazel's opponent has a documented financial relationship with the operation running these lies. As KCRCC treasurer, Elaine Price authorized three payments totaling $11,000 to Idaho Dynamics LLC, Dave Reilly's Wyoming-registered company. Reilly's surrogates and the operators in Price's network openly repeat the Ruby Ridge lies about Christa's father in their podcasts and online channels. Price has not publicly corrected the record, including in podcast appearances where she sat alongside the people telling them. Her silence isn't neutrality. She has allowed the lies to be told because the lies benefit her campaign, and her campaign is running on a foundation of misinformation, contention, and dishonesty.
What she’s running on, since the KCRCC won’t tell you
The part of Hazel’s story that doesn’t fit a dossier is the actual campaign. She’s the only LD4 candidate who has actually led public education: school board chair, the 2012 bond, the Save NIC fight that pulled NIC back from losing accreditation. Her policy lane runs through workforce training, career-technical education, lower property taxes through targeted rather than across-the-board cuts, and a willingness to admit she changed her mind on national politics between 2020 and 2024 because that’s what conservatives are supposed to do when the facts change. Her model is Butch Otter casting the lone Idaho vote against the Patriot Act and taking the flack from his own party. On the podcast, Hazel says Otter has endorsed her campaign.
Price’s record makes Hazel’s case for her. Price moved a $15 million cut to the Idaho Digital Learning Alliance and sponsored a bill earlier in the session to defund it entirely, while LD4 alone has run thousands of IDLA enrollments across public, charter, private, and homeschool families. She voted against accepting the $186 million first installment of the One Big Beautiful Bill’s rural healthcare grant for Idaho, a federal program President Trump signed and Rep. Jordan Redman is co-chairing the implementation of.
Hazel’s framing on the budget cuts will hold up well past this primary: “I am not for, you know, I understand trimming the fat. I’m a conservative, government should trim the fat. But I recognize that there are essential public services. In many cases we’re trimming into bone and sometimes we’re amputating very needed programs.” That’s the conservative case for what she’s running on. Price doesn’t have one against it.
Why May 19 matters in Kootenai County
Hazel could sue. The exposure on what has been done to her family is real. So far, she has chosen instead to run. Her sharpest line of the episode: “I would rather just shut up and run and take these guys out... through an election, not through violent means, not through litigation.” The court of public opinion is cheaper than the court of law, and on May 19, LD4 voters get to be the jury.
This isn’t a normal primary. It’s a referendum on whether an official county Republican party can post a candidate’s Social Security number, get publicly defended by the state chair, and the rest of the state shrugs. East Idaho voters faced a version of this same question in District 32A. Now it’s Kootenai County’s turn. Hazel is the candidate the network was trying to break. She’s still running.
Listen
The full episode is available here on Substack and YouTube. Send it to one Republican in LD4 who still thinks the KCRCC is the party.
A note on equal time
Rep. Elaine Price is welcome to come on the Political Potatoes podcast and share her perspective. She can reach me by direct message through Substack.
About the Author
Gregory Graf is the creator of Political Potatoes and a lifelong conservative Republican who lives in Star, Idaho. Follow him on X: https://x.com/gsgraf
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