PRIMARY 2026: PAC Attack

By Tim Oren

Anyone who’s been pelted with election mailers and glanced at the return address, or listened to an ad long enough to get to the ‘paid for’ bit, knows the direct contributions to candidates that I’ve featured in this column are only a portion of the Idaho primary scene. A large fraction of the cash flow and spending goes through PACs – political action committees, where the rules on contribution limits and disclosure are looser. A scan of Sunshine-documented donations to PACs from the 2025 election to May 1^st came up with 159 unique organizations, with totals ranging from $2 to over three million.

This week, I’ll look at how the largest Idaho PACs have gathered funds – next time I’ll look at how they are using them. Here’s a snapshot of all Idaho PACs reporting over $100,000 in donations from 11/4/25 until 5/1/26:

The dollar column is the total raised, the count is the number of donations making up that total. (Note that donations may not match 2026 campaign expenditures, due to funds carried over from earlier periods.)

Winnowing the List

I’ll start with three that don’t directly affect the Republican primary:

Natural Medicine Alliance of Idaho is the organization backing the legal pot initiative. Three megabucks in only 17 contributions? That’s after the Secretary of State’s office forced the PAC to disclose the identity of a major backing family. A large chunk of the income is still hidden behind an associated LLC: ‘…the Secretary of State’s Office questions whether that LLC was used in a way that could conceal donor identities and whether it should instead be classified as a “nonbusiness entity,” which would require full disclosure of its contributors.’ (from the linked article). There are a number of “companies” in my big dog contributors list that also appear to skirt the edge of this requirement – props to the SOS’ office for being on it.

Idahoans United for Women and Families is the legalized abortion campaign. Whatever I may think of their cause, I’ll have to give a tip of the hat: They make ample disclosure of a grassroots base of support that is quite diverse in their contribution amounts.

Presumably the Idaho Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee won’t be sending out Red primary mailers (but I’ll check). They have a number of ‘Unitemized’ donations, but the total amount is not material. It is interesting to look back into late 2025, and see how a number of the ‘big dogs’ that show up as Republican contributors are also kicking in for the blue side, something I’ll consider to get a total picture of the IACI & Friends influence on our elections.

Then there are nominally independent PACs that are really conduits for money originating elsewhere. First up is Citizens Alliance of Idaho PAC. Idaho indeed: $450,000 comes from Citizens Alliance Political Action Committee Inc, headquartered in Fairfax, VA. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s almost all non-Idaho money.

Next there’s Idaho Liberty PAC, whose $300,000 all came in three donations from Idaho Victory Fund. You’ll find then down the list with a smaller raise, so this presumably includes some earlier 2025 funds as well. Idaho Liberty PAC is a cover identity for Idaho Victory Fund, so I’ll consider them together when analyzing donations next week.

36-18-1 has one donation from Republican legislator Jordan Redman, so it’s his personal PAC.

Idaho Summit Fund has $200,000 from Joe Russell (Rocket Express), with a little help from some friends, so that’s his personal PAC.

Idaho Family PAC has $100,000 from Larry Williams, so it’s yet another family PAC, just like it says.

The Relevant and Real

The highest dollar PAC remaining on the list is the Idaho REALTORS PAC. They are active out there, as shown in this Xeet. When I dig into their donor list, I need to pull a yellow card: Of their supposed 5426 contributions, 4919 of them are “Unitemized” and they make up nearly $147,000 of the almost $260,000 received – better than half. Most of these are numerous identical amounts reported in clusters of identical dates. This might be totally innocent – cash collected at REALTOR® tea parties – but it’s also a hallmark of smurfing in Federal elections and looks sus. I commend this PAC to the attention of @IDSecOfState.

As suggested by the link above, Idaho REALTORS PAC is active in the ‘Independent Expenditure’ category, with a strong RINO bias (I’ll lay out major PAC ideology maps next week).

Next up is Idaho Majority Club, which – to its credit – is open with its donor disclosures:

There’s the Idaho Victory Fund again, with a 50 grand chunk. Other notable amounts come from the Idaho State Controller, the Idaho Dairy PAC, Mike Simpson’s campaign, a developer interest group, a Timothy Thompson who might be a pastor in southern CA, and a guy who’s trying to buy the Ada County coroner’s office. The only Idaho SOS filing related to Idaho Majority dates to its founding in 2015, and discloses only its agent.

Next in order is Defend and Protect Idaho, which sounds like it should have something to do with law enforcement, but…

…whose largest donor is CEO of a major developer, that among other things has brought us Eagle-ites “The Hemingway” in downtown. Other major donors include a venture investor, and – curiously – a large chunk from the “Democracy Program” which appears to be linked to Georgia’s Carter Center. Yeah, that Carter.

Now we’re down to the Idaho Victory Fund. I’m only including donors since the last election, but since they have transferred more than the amount raised in that period to their Idaho Liberty cover identity, plus Idaho Majority, some amount of further look-back might be warranted, for those inclined.

This is the PAC driven by Brad Little, and there’s a solid lineup of the IACI flavor in company. The single largest donation traces back to Greg Wendt,  who among other things was a major donor to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and PAC. Interesting company you’re keeping, Governor! I looked for information on Idaho Victory Fund at both Idaho SOS and IRS sites, and came up empty.

I looked at the Idaho Prosperity Fund in a recent X thread. Its donors are an IACI line-up, as are its board membership and executive officers. Interesting is the list of candidates who appear to be affiliated. These include Alexandra Caval, Casey Swensen, Cherie Vollmer, and Brent Reinke, all of whom featured in last week’s post as challengers to conservatives in the Magic Valley legislative races. Also affiliated are incumbents Jerald Raymond and Rod Furniss, plus Don Hall (replaced by Grayson Stone).

Next is Idaho Dairy PAC, flagship of the industry that proclaims its reliance on cheap immigrant labor.

The largest chunk comes from a ‘Political Action Trust’ that has no disclosures, but since its mailing address matches to a Dairy Farmers of America office in SLC, I think we can assume that it’s out of state money. The second largest comes from a well-known Magic Valley company, and the rest (I’ve only showing the largest) are other dairy companies or vendors to same.

Finally, we have the PAC for Public Lands:

This features the same developer behind “Protect and Defend”, paired with an out-of-state PAC, whose stated goal is “To defend the Biden-Harris affordable clean energy plan, strengthen our democracy and achieve just and equitable climate solutions”. Their most recent ‘news’ was an ad campaign in favor of radical Arizona Democrat representative Adelita Grijalva, who recently sponsored a bill to let illegals loose from ICE detention. It’ll be rather interesting to see who this PAC supports in Idaho.

Afterword

This post looked at the ‘input’ side of the largest Idaho PACs. Next week I’ll look at the other side – their pattern of outgoing donations and ‘independent expenditures’, and what those tell about the PACs, and even more the candidates.

If readers have samples of mailers or other advocacy funded by these PACs, I’d encourage documenting them in comments here, or tag me @TimOren54 on X.