Idaho gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy ditches GOP, announces bid as independent

Ammon Bundy enters his marketing campaign RV in Idaho Falls on Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. Bundy is an anti-government militant and activist who's operating for Idaho governor.

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret Information

Ammon Bundy, a controversial activist and Idaho gubernatorial candidate, introduced this week that he's now not vying for the state’s Republican Get together nomination and as a substitute competing as an unbiased candidate.

“The Republican Get together platform is the platform I stand behind,” Bundy stated in a press release launched Thursday. “However the Republican institution in Idaho is stuffed with filth and corruption they usually refuse to place forth the occasion platform.”

An area radio host first broke the information Wednesday, stating that Bundy would drop out of the first and endorse Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, a Republican. Bundy denied this, calling the report “lazy and tabloid journalism.”

Bundy introduced his candidacy final 12 months and launched a platform centered on shrinking the scale of presidency and selling particular person liberty. His “Maintain Idaho IDAHO” plan facilities on “taking again” federally owned lands and putting them beneath native possession.

His announcement that he's leaving a crowded GOP main probably received’t disappoint occasion leaders within the state. When Bundy first entered the race, Idaho GOP Chairman Tom Luna formally disavowed him, issuing a press release decrying Bundy’s “antics and political theater” and saying Bundy “will not be welcome within the Idaho Republican Get together,” The Related Press reported.

Bundy and his father, Cliven, are well-known anti-government activists, stemming from their position within the 2014 so-called “Battle of Bunkerville,” a dispute over the household’s claimed proper to graze cattle on public lands in Nevada. A whole bunch of protesters, lots of them armed, got here to the Bundy ranch to confront Bureau of Land Administration officers who had confiscated Bundy cattle. The standoff made nationwide information and turned Cliven and Ammon into well-known figures in anti-government circles.

In early 2016, Bundy led an armed takeover of the Malheur Nationwide Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, protesting the incarceration of two Oregon ranchers charged with arson on public lands. Ammon and his brother, Ryan, had been acquitted of associated expenses, whereas 18 different Malheur protesters pleaded responsible or had been acquitted of trespass or conspiracy expenses.

Bundy’s choice to run for governor first got here whereas in solitary confinement in 2017, awaiting his trial after the Malheur takeover, he instructed the Deseret Information final fall.

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Bundy has develop into a staunch opponent of pandemic restrictions, calling them “an important assault upon mankind.” He was arrested six occasions whereas protesting COVID-19 mandates, one leading to a one-year ban from Idaho’s state Capitol (which expired in August) after being arrested twice in a 24-hour span.

Bundy’s choice to run as an unbiased stems from his perception that the Idaho Republican Get together has develop into “corrupt and depraved,” and that his platform extra precisely represents a real conservative place.

“I'm sure that by unifying Idahoans behind the precise Republican platform we will take again management of the Idaho authorities and restore the conservative values which have made Idaho such an important place to reside,” his Thursday assertion learn.