(Editor’s note: Sorry for the lack of new articles; work has kept me busy, but I’m back to writing regularly. And while that will likely frustrate some who are in an abusive relationship with facts and honesty, the majority of you may be happy about what’s coming next.)
Kill the property tax. That’s the pitch.
You own your home. You paid for it. So why keep writing a check to the county every year for the privilege of living in a thing you already bought? Put that way, it sounds like common sense. It feels conservative. It feels like freedom.
Scott Herndon, the former North Idaho state senator who’s been desperately trying to stay in power in North Idaho and recently defeated Sen. Jim Woodward in the May primary, is running on some version of that promise again. Woodward was the kind of Republican who read the budget before voting on it. Herndon devises cunning ways to gaslight voters. There’s a difference, and Idaho is about to feel it.
Herndon is a Christian nationalist with fringe views; he intends to impose them on Idahoans. He is not interested in compromise. His actual agenda goes well beyond taxes: stripping away genuine religious freedom, overriding parental rights that don’t match his ideology, and dismantling local government control in favor of top-down, state-mandated rules that would dictate what parents can and cannot do while enforcing a singular religious viewpoint on everyone else. The property tax promise is the bright, shiny object he uses to get elected. The rest of the agenda is what he does once he’s in office.
But there’s a layer underneath even that. The property tax promise isn’t just a distraction. It’s a donut diplomacy play: a promise structured to fail, because the failure is more valuable than the win would be. Understanding that changes how you read everything else.
The Claim That Sounds Like Math But Isn’t
It sounds precise. He’s counting on you not checking it.
Here’s what he’s omitting.
First, the gap. He’s describing $1.2 billion in what he calls excess spending growth and promising to use it to eliminate $2.3 billion in annual property tax. That’s a $1.1 billion hole he glossed over with the phrase “over time.” “Over time” is doing enormous work in that sentence.
Second, property taxes are not state revenue. Property taxes are collected locally by counties, school districts, fire districts, and cities. The state legislature does not control that money. Herndon is describing a mechanism that does not exist. He cannot “redirect” local property tax revenue by containing state spending growth, because those are two entirely separate pots of money governed by entirely separate legal structures. Saying otherwise is deliberate misdirection, not a misunderstanding.
Third, the $1.2 billion in spending growth includes Medicaid expansion, which Idaho voters approved directly by ballot initiative, school funding increases, public safety costs, and infrastructure maintenance that had been deferred for years. Containing that growth means cutting services that real Idahoans depend on. Herndon never names them because naming them would end the coalition.
Fourth, “phase out over time” is not a timeline. It is an escape hatch. There is no bill. There is no fiscal note. There is no mechanism. There is a slogan with a dollar sign attached.
This is what makes the claim manipulative rather than merely optimistic. Herndon uses real numbers to create the impression of a worked-out plan while skipping the part where the numbers actually connect to each other. The vagueness is load-bearing. A plan specific enough to be checked would be specific enough to be rejected.
The Number They Skip Right Past
Property taxes fund your fire department, your schools, and your roads. The Tax Foundation has analyzed property tax repeal proposals, and its conclusion is direct: there’s no good way to pay for property tax repeal. You either replace the revenue with a different tax, meaning your sales tax or income tax goes up, or you cut the services. There is no third door.
So when a candidate says “we’ll just cut government waste to cover it,” ask him for the line items. Ask him which schools. Ask him which fire stations. With Herndon, he pivots to whoever’s blocking him because specifics are the one thing this operation cannot survive.
And then, because he has so little faith in voter intellect, suggests that renters don’t pay property taxes and therefore you are carrying that burden. Seriously? Has Herndon never heard of landlords before, and the entire concept of investment properties? Of course, he has. Gaslighting voters is a feature, not a bug, of Herndon’s political machine (Idaho Freedom Caucus).
States tried aggressive property tax limits in the 1970s and 1980s. ITEP’s research found that these limits led to reduced local services, instability in local finances, a heavier reliance on regressive taxes that hit working families hardest, and benefits that flowed primarily to wealthy property owners rather than to young families in starter homes.
Idaho already has a smarter tool: the circuit breaker, a targeted property tax credit for older, disabled, and widowed Idahoans of modest means. The Idaho State Tax Commission runs it. That’s relief that actually works: aimed at the people who need it, with the cost covered. It doesn’t trend on Facebook. It just functions.
The Playbook Underneath the Promise
This is classic donut diplomacy: the strategic use of a promise designed to fail, because losing on the right issue is more useful than winning. The donut is the hole in the middle. There is no plan. The hole is the plan.
Herndon has no bill before the legislature, nor will he have any serious legislation on this. His entire brand is built on telling voters what to be angry about, and this latest pressure campaign is designed to generate noise without generating accountability. And if that's not enough, it appears he cut a deal with Dorothy Moon to help her get reelected by ensuring his property-tax-elimination narrative was put front and center in the Idaho Republican plank at the recent state party convention.
The far-right playbook works like this. He tells you what to be angry about, a real grievance, weaponized on purpose. He hands you a demand with no legislation behind it, dresses the vagueness in specific-sounding figures, and pushes the outrage into the algorithm. When nothing passes, as I’d argue was always the plan, blame never lands on the guy who never wrote a workable bill. It lands on the “conservatives” who wouldn’t fall in line. Then comes the ask: re-elect me, send reinforcements, we just need more people like me in that building.
The absence of passable legislation is the product. A bill that passed would end the grievance, and the grievance is the whole business model. When nothing passes, the loop resets: new outrage, new fundraising email, new cycle. This is the operation Herndon is running alongside his Las Vegas campaign operative, Rory McShane, a consultant whose recent winning record is thin.
Let’s look at two recent examples of this in action. Remember all the outrage over the grocery tax? Or the furious fits thrown over legislator pay increases? Nothing happened, but the far-right managed to raise and spend nearly $2 million to try to install their loyalists in office over that outrage in this last election.
This is gaslighting of voters. Herndon uses a popular, legitimate frustration about property taxes to get himself elected, then uses the inevitable failure of an unworkable promise to argue that Idaho needs more Christian nationalists with his particular brand of inflexible, top-down ideology. The tax limitation is the vehicle. The destination is a state where his religious viewpoint is enforced by law, and parents who disagree have no recourse.
Research on populist radical right parties in power has examined their fiscal records. They campaign on tax rage. They don’t balance books. Herndon’s “$1.2 billion redirected over time” is a perfect specimen: a number large enough to sound serious, vague enough to mean nothing, and structured so that when it fails, the failure belongs to those he’s labeled as enemies of the state. (“RINOs”)
What Real Property Tax Relief Looks Like
Property taxes pinch. Assessments jump, budgets balloon, and a retiree on a fixed income can get taxed out of a paid-off home. That grievance is legitimate and deserves a serious answer.
A serious answer looks like the circuit breaker, expanded and funded. It looks like homestead exemptions are indexed to real home values. It looks like spending caps that local voters actually control. It looks like a legislator who shows up with a spreadsheet instead of a sermon, one who can explain how the $1.2 billion connects to the $2.3 billion without a hand wave and the phrase “over time.”
It does not look like burning down the majority of your local budget and promising the ashes will pay for the empty fire station.
How to Spot the Gaslighting
When a candidate runs on outrage with catchy bumper-sticker slogans with math that clearly omits honest context and has no real plan for passing legislation, that’s the tell. Ask them for the line items. Press them on what gets cut. Make them name one school, one station, one road. Ask them to explain, in plain terms, how state spending restraint eliminates a local tax collected by entities the state does not control. If they answer with “waste, fraud, and abuse” and pivot to who’s stopping them, that’s when your own eyes tell you that their words are absolute bullshit. Chances are you’ll get blocked on Facebook by them after asking your first question.
Property taxes are worth fixing. Herndon’s let it all burn thinking works for those who are convinced we don’t need schools, healthcare, roads, or police. Unfortunately for him, most Idahoans would strongly disagree with that absurd notion. Backwards thinking hurts us all, so tell your legislator to strongly ignore whatever nonsense policy ideas Herndon is shoveling. He deserves to be made irrelevant, just like the go-nowhere policies he’s preaching.
Sources
About the Author
Gregory Graf is the creator of Political Potatoes and a lifelong conservative Republican who lives in Star, Idaho. He is also the Founder and CEO of Ghosts.app and may have used his new program to help him write better. 😂
Do you want to help support Political Potatoes? Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
Disclaimer: The following is intended to convey an opinion on newsworthy events of public concern regarding public figures and/or public officials in exercising their official duties. No implications or inferences—beyond those explicitly stated in the preceding— are intended to be conveyed or endorsed by the Author. Wherever available, hyperlinks have been provided to allow readers to directly access any underlying assertions of fact upon which this opinion is based.
Well done Greg! The financial acumen (or lack thereof) in certain individuals is breathtaking. This is especially evident in the far left and far right extremes we see here in the US. Just like common sense not being too common, pragmatism seems to be in short supply. Over my decades of life I’ve seen the extremes and they never work, but their acolytes seem to perpetuate their nonsense in the hope ‘we the people’ forget the past, or ignore the future. And, oh by the way - welcome back!
That’s the M.O. of the far right - smoke and mirrors. This works well with their flock because they’re trained not to ask questions or deal with those pesky little annoyances called facts.