BOISE, Idaho — “I turned down Saturday Night Live to make sure we got to Idaho in time!” Marco Rubio told a cheering crowd of about 2,000 people in an airplane hangar in west Boise on Sunday evening.
That may be a first for Idahoans: a presidential primary candidate picking them over appearing on the sketch comedy show. They usually just grimace politely whenever their state is mistaken for Iowa in conversations with outsiders. Now, they suddenly find themselves relevant in a presidential race. Tuesday’s biggest contest is in Michigan, and Mississippi may be the one that proves whether Trump’s scare in Louisiana was part of a real Cruz surge. But Idaho might well be Rubio’s last chance to show has some relevance before the race goes back to his home state.
Rubio earned even more enthusiastic cheers when he mentioned the victory he had won that day in Puerto Rico, more than 3,000 miles away. “In an open primary, where anyone can vote not just Republicans — Democrats and independents — I got over 70 percent of the vote,” he said. “Not because I became less conservative, but because I took my conservative principles to people who are living the way I grew up.”
Rubio was also quick to point out that Idaho’s Sen. Jim Risch, ranked by National Journal as the most conservative U.S. senator, was standing by his side.
But this has been a race where being or standing beside the “most conservative” hasn’t necessarily been the key. Nor can much be gleaned from the Puerto Rico win, which occurred amid much lower turnout than 2012 and was less impressive than Mitt Romney’s 83 percent or John McCain’s 90 percent in 2008.
Nor have endorsements from other politicians mattered much, even though they are the one and only category where Rubio has excelled so far in 2016. Even the backing of someone as popular as Risch is in Idaho may not mean too much.
There are only dim clues as to how Idaho will vote. The only public poll at the moment, from Idaho Politics Weekly, shows Trump at 30 percent, Ted Cruz at 19, Marco Rubio at 16, and Ben Carson at 11. But this poll isn’t much help because it was taken between February 17 and 26.
It was mostly finished before the first debate in which Rubio and Cruz really attacked Trump. It was entirely finished before Trump pretended not to have heard of the Ku Klux Klan, before Mitt Romney (admired among the state’s many Mormons) urged a vote against Trump, before Carson dropped out, and before Cruz’s big victories on Saturday. It might as well have been taken before Christmas.
In fact, Trump’s dramatic underperformance on Saturday, along with the stark difference between the early vote (February 20 through 27) and election day (March 5) results in Louisiana, suggest something bigger is happening that could crop up here as well. It’s just hard to say.
Among the handful of attendees at his rally that I spoke to, the fear that Trump might win was more common than the certainty that they would end up voting for Rubio. Thirty-nine-year-old Heather McCarthy, who had already voted early for Rubio, said she would not back Trump even in a general election. Others said they’d at least consider it, but they were not enthusiastic.
“I used to always be in the camp that I would always vote” for the Republican nominee, said Robert Tibbetts, 45. “But to vote for someone I didn’t respect or have a lot of faith in would be quite a challenge. I might be able to hold my nose and do it.”
The opinions of a few people at a Rubio rally are not going to be representative of Idaho Republicans in a one-party state. But the state where I got married and spend a lot of my time nowadays at least doesn’t seem to fit the model of a Trump state.
Idaho is basically a happy place. Its economy is growing fast and its unemployment is low. Its people are as polite and laid back as Midwesterners, but with a western love for the outdoors. Crime is practically nonexistent and mostly committed by white people. That includes about 80 percent of non-consensual sex offenses, so there at least isn’t that much racial bitterness over “who’s doing the raping.” In short, it does not seethe with many of the frustrations that have driven Trump’s rise.
If Trump does get traction here, one place to look is at the dust-ups there have been over Sharia law in the state legislature. Last spring, such a fight briefly put Idaho into non-compliance with an international treaty on child support payments. But the most outspoken legislator on that issue has actually endorsed Cruz.
There have also been protests lately over plans to resettle Syrian refugees. Idaho has historically absorbed a large number of refugees for the size of its population, many of them Bosnian and Iraqi Muslims and also Africans. They have thrived here and it hasn’t been terribly controversial. But the resettlement of Syrians did become quite unpopular after the San Bernardino terrorist attack. A mid-December poll showed 75 percent of Idaho Republicans opposed.
In southern and eastern Idaho, the two areas Rubio visited Sunday, the large and insular Mormon communities are probably the least likely to support Trump, especially after Romney’s speech. (A poll of Republicans in neighboring Utah put Trump in fourth place.) Northern Idaho is probably Trump’s best chance. But the smart money there has to be on Cruz. He was in Coeur d’Alene the other day before visiting Boise on Saturday, and he’s up on television as well. Trump hasn’t visited the state.
Tibbetts, to whom I spoke at the Rubio event, told me he still wasn’t sure about Rubio. When I asked him why, he cited the way the senator had gotten into the mud to wrestle Trump. Possibly a necessary move for him, but one that might be having more negative effects than Rubio partisans want to believe.
“I’m not sure yet,” said Tibbetts. “I was a little worried about the direction he took the campaign in, trying to go insult to insult against Donald Trump. I’d like to see him dial it back.”
Rubio’s team seems to have figured that out. He made no comments about the size of anyone’s hands or other body parts last night.
