Most of what I write here is about things that need fixing. Idaho politics gives me plenty of material, and not much of it is happy reading. That is part of why this piece is a welcome change of pace. Writing about somebody who is doing the right thing, quietly, in the corner of the state most people only see from a postcard, is the kind of column I want to write more of. There is more good news in Idaho than most of my readers think, and Thomas Tull is one of the better examples of it.
Idahoans who follow Mike Rowe got an early look at Tull back in February, when Tull sat down with Rowe for episode 468 of The Way I Heard It. Rowe described meeting Tull at a Carnegie Mellon energy summit, where Tull pulled him aside after his remarks and told him the country’s skills gap was the most pressing issue of our time and that he wanted to help expand Rowe’s scholarship program. A few days later, Tull flew across the country to record the conversation, and the two have been working together since.
That was the first time most Idaho readers heard the name. A new profile in the Washington Examiner brought him back to attention this week, walking through the old Alcoa research campus in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, where Tull is two years into transforming a million-square-foot industrial space into Re:Build, an advanced manufacturing operation focused on robotics, aerospace, and defense. Both pieces describe the same man.
What Rowe’s audience and the Examiner’s audience are now learning is something Teton County has known for a few years. The Tull described in those national pieces, understated, data-driven, allergic to the spotlight, is the same one who quietly purchased the Teton Ridge Ranch in 2020 and started showing up at community events in Driggs and Tetonia. The story he told Rowe about his upbringing, the single mother working two jobs, the grandmother who spent fifty years cleaning hospital floors, is the same story he told me on the Political Potatoes podcast last fall. Same man, same story, same values, told in three different settings.
The Examiner profile quotes Sen. Tom Cotton calling Tull “the most extraordinarily accomplished and visionary and patriotic person I have ever met that no one knows about because he is very modest and humble.” Rowe described him as a “blue-collar patriot” with a “default to act.” That description fits the pattern Idahoans have observed locally. His philanthropy is direct.
His $1.5 million gift to the Teton County Sheriff’s Foundation came at a moment when the county had cut its budget and was struggling to staff a Sheriff’s Office covering rural areas with thirty to forty-five minute response times. His $2 million in support for Teton Valley Health Care arrived while the rural hospital was running a $500,000 monthly shortfall. He paid for fairgrounds improvements that kept Teton Valley Rodeo and youth programs running. The donor of the $1.5 million hospital gift was anonymous for months before the hospital announced who had stepped up. That is how he prefers to operate.
The Rowe conversation and the Examiner profile both build their argument around the same idea. The country’s industrial backbone has been hollowing out for forty years, and the trades that hold it together, like welding and electrical work and machining, have been culturally devalued for almost as long. Tull and Rowe are now working together on a Pittsburgh event in conjunction with U.S. Steel and Carnegie Mellon to bring attention to the workforce question, and Tull’s Re:Build investment has the same principle behind it. You cannot have manufacturing without the people who do the work, and you cannot have those people without communities willing to value them.
That same instinct shows up in his Idaho work. The Sheriff’s gift was about hiring deputies. The hospital gift kept payroll flowing for nurses, technicians, and support staff who keep a rural medical system running. The Search and Rescue donation funded a rapid-response truck and the people who operate it. The fairgrounds investment supports the youth programs and the rodeo that keep the rural economy and the rural identity intact. The principle is the same in both states. Communities are held together by people who do real work, and those people deserve real support.
Tull put it directly on the podcast last fall when he said, “If you have the wherewithal to try to help out, I think that is part of civic duty. Foundational things every community needs must be supported.”
The Examiner piece sets that ethos in the context of national security and economic resilience. The Rowe conversation sets it in the context of a generation of young Americans who deserve to know that working with their hands is honorable and well-compensated. The Idaho version sets it in the context of a small county trying to keep up with growth without losing what made it worth moving to in the first place. All three are versions of the same idea, applied at different scales.
There is one moment in the Examiner profile that explains a lot. Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, told the Examiner about Tull, “Whatever he is doing, it is never about him.” That is the part that makes the rest possible. A wealthy newcomer arriving in a small Idaho county with a public relations agenda and a desire to be seen would have produced a different reception. Tull did the opposite. He bought the ranch, he showed up, he listened, and when he wrote checks, he tried to keep his name off them. That is what good neighbors do, and the rest of the country is starting to notice.
The story Rowe tells, and the story the Examiner tells, is one of national consequence. A man with significant resources is using them to address one of the country’s most serious long-term problems, the loss of industrial capacity and the workforce that comes with it. The story Idaho has been telling, in pieces, for the last several years, is the local version of the same story. A successful man chose to spend real time among us, and he chose to invest in the institutions that hold our communities together.
Idaho’s reputation depends on the people who live here, the people who choose to make it home, and the people who choose to invest their time and resources here, even when home is somewhere else. Thomas Tull is one of the reasons that the reputation is in good hands. He brought resources, and he brought the judgment to use them well. That combination is what good neighbors look like, and it is what helps the state keep what it values while it grows.
The Examiner profile and the Rowe podcast give the country a clearer picture of who Thomas Tull is. If anything, plenty of us would like to see him more involved. Idaho has bigger ambitions than most people outside the state realize. We have talked for years about what it would take to bring real professional sports here. We have communities outside Teton County that face the same kind of budget gaps and rural service challenges that Tull has helped address in Driggs and Tetonia. We have promising candidates, organizations, and entrepreneurs across the state who could use a partner with his judgment and his record of follow-through. The same focused determination that turned around an old Alcoa plant in Pennsylvania and that quietly reinforced an entire county’s public services in eastern Idaho is exactly what plenty of statewide efforts could use right now.
Idaho is fortunate Thomas Tull chose to make this state part of his life. We would happily welcome him full-time if he ever decides to make the move. I hope to keep finding more stories like his to tell, and I hope a few of them are about the next thing he decides to take on here.
About the Author
Gregory Graf is the CEO of Snake River Strategies and creator of Political Potatoes. He’s a lifelong conservative Republican living in Star, Idaho.
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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.
I still lived in Cincinnati in the mid 70s when the steel plants started shutting down. So it is amazing and inspiring that someone 50 years later has found a way to reinvigorate aspects of that industry and the communities that surround them.
Tull’s work in Teton County speaks volumes about the vacuum we have in providing services for our law-enforcement and our rural hospitals. That vacuum comes from decisions made by folks who value tax cuts to the tune of $450 million rather than funding the services that Tom Tulls feels are necessary. Can’t understand why the politicians, the governor, the faith groups, and the everyday Idahoan can’t see it this way too.
Thank you for profiling a person doing the right things for the right reasons and in the right way. Mr. Tull is someone we can actually look up to.