By Brian Parsons | Originally published at WithdrawConsent.org
[Edited 4/15/26 to correct John Crowder’s personal history.]
Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George’s life definitely didn’t make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you.
Cady Heron, Mean Girls
We’ve been in Pocatello for 12 years now. Not much remains consistent. Unlike restaurant or retail operations, the politics here are consistent and consistently toxic. We’re on our 7th Pocatello election, and what remains unchanged is the mean girl politics. It goes something like this… Extremist… Nazi… Supremacist… Bigot… Fascist… Nationalist… MAGAT… and the latest is to use “Christian” as a pejorative. Mean girl politics are shallow and catty and prioritize labels and fear over substantive debate. I’m pretty much over it. The churches would be wise to recognize it for what it is.
In our recent mayoral election, this was on full display as the mean girls brought the full quiver of labels and hurled their pejoratives at the uninitiated Greg Cates, who was lured into the Kafka trap. This is how the Kafka trap works… any acknowledgment of the insult is an admission of guilt. And acknowledge it they did. The mean girl politics weren’t limited to any one party or the extremes of Pocatello either; it was fully deployed by the good old boys of the genteel class, who had hoped to maintain control by proxy.
Mean girl politics is as much a Pocatello staple as potatoes. My response remains to encourage people to start talking again. Social Media is toxic, but if you take a moment to sit down and talk to people, you will find you have more in common than you think. Given our failure to do so, I’d like to correct the record on some of the latest targets:
Most recently, my wife had a conversation with a friend who passed on the town gossip that they heard former Commissioner John Crowder was a mean or nasty person. Who in the world started that rumor? Nobody who actually meets and speaks with John Crowder finds him to be anything but soft-spoken and often agreeable, assuming you’re not asking the public to fund a boondoggle. Perhaps they mistook his hearing loss for a personality defect? You will be asked to repeat yourself on occasion, as he points to the hearing aids. On the contrary, John Crowder is nothing if not a good man, a reasonable man, and the sole reason that I had a modicum of success in getting legislation to fix Idaho Medicaid heard when the elected legislators of Southeast Idaho refused to take it up themselves.
John came from California as an accomplished retiree. He attended both the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and SUNY Maritime College, worked as a merchant marine navigator, and eventually became a shipping executive with a $300 million budget. Later, John founded a private Christian school. He moved to Pocatello to be closer to his children, and when he found the local government unresponsive, he took action. He started a Conservative Coalition to give a voice to the residents of Bannock County who were unheard. They now count more than 500 residents among their ranks. More than five years in, he has been elected to the County Commission and to the GOP Legislative District 29 Chair, and has been awarded the State Republican Party’s Most Outstanding Chair award.
As the Vice Chair of the County GOP, I have had the distinct honor of working closely with Bannock GOP Chair Craig Yadon. I like to refer to Craig and his wife Mariya as the Chip and Joanna Gaines of Pocatello. What they did to transform the Petersen Building into the Purpose Center is nothing short of marvelous. They renovated the space in keeping with historic traditions and were awarded the Orchid Award by Preservation Idaho for staying true to the architecture’s roots. Many of the public have attended events there or stopped in for boba tea by now. It is a gem in this community.
Craig is a Pocatello native, an ISU graduate, a veteran, an associate pastor, and a successful businessman. He and Mariya are former missionaries to Thailand, and if you get past the quiet exterior, Craig has incredible stories to share, including surviving a plane crash and complete facial reconstruction. When not surviving plane crashes, Craig has quietly led the Bannock County GOP in a resurgence that saw Pocatello host hundreds of state delegates at the 2025 Idaho GOP Summer meeting. Just last weekend, they hosted more than 200 guests, including elected officials from Pocatello Mayor Mark Dahlquist to United States Senator Jim Risch, at their annual Lincoln Day fundraising dinner.
Finally, let’s address David Worley. In 2023, Pocatello made headlines when local librarian Vicki Christensen brought inappropriate material in the children’s section of the Marshall Public Library to the attention of then-Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad. Amongst the material were graphic novels demonstrating to children how to perform oral and anal sex on their friends. David Worley voiced his opposition on social media and led a peaceful demonstration to remove “Drag Queen Story Hour” from the library. As a result of his public defense of Christian values, a subordinate in Worley’s Idaho National Guard unit filed a complaint, and Worley was removed from his command. A formal investigation cleared Worley of the claims made against him, but Worley was never reinstated. This is the thanks of an ungrateful state and nation that denied Worley the First Amendment he fought to defend.
David Worley is a Pocatello native, a 23-year Army veteran, and a businessman. I worked closely with David’s wife, Barbara, who is the 2nd Vice Chair of the Bannock County Republican Party, to revise the county party bylaws to align them with state bylaws. When she isn’t serving in her GOP capacity, Barbara helps put on an annual summer camp to teach the children of Southeast Idaho about our nation’s founding. When David isn’t busy fighting for the children of Pocatello, he’s stopping violent woman beaters in the streets. David made local news in 2024 when he drove up on a man beating a woman on the side of the road in Pocatello and held the assailant at gunpoint until local law enforcement arrived. He even received an award from the Pocatello police for his actions.
So there you have it, these are the local extremists according to the mean girls. A gaggle of military service veterans, decorated public servants, a pastor, and a defender of the least of these. That is what the mean girls call extreme. Public service is a thankless job, so I guess it’s par for the course. Where did we go off the rails? If you haven’t had a chance to sit down with any of these gentlemen, please do. Ask them about their background, beliefs, or motives. If you’ve been led to believe that this is extreme, you’ll find you agree; you’ve been misled.
About Brian Parsons
Brian Parsons has been a resident of Pocatello for 10 years. He is a locally and nationally published columnist and the current vice chair of the Bannock County Republican Party. He’s a proud husband and father, and an unabashed paleoconservative. You can follow him on his blog at WithdrawConsent.org.
