Three candidates — Republican Sen. Todd Lakey, Libertarian Jon Basabe and Democrat Mik Losé — have thrown their hats in the ring for District 23 senator.
District 23 covers the entirety of Owyhee County as well as southern portions of Ada and Canyon counties and represents over 53,000 people.
Todd Lakey
Lakey, an attorney by trade, has been serving as District 12’s senator since 2013. Due to redistricting, he now lives in District 23. He is once again running for Senate because he feels that it is important to “give back to the community.”
“As long as I feel like I’m still representing the people well and enjoying what I do, it provides an opportunity to make a difference in a positive way,” Lakey said.
Sen. Todd Lakey
The Republican said tax relief is a “very high priority” of his and he would like to see surplus funds go toward infrastructure projects like roads and broadband. He said he has a few pieces of legislation he’s been working on which he would introduce in the next legislative session, should he win.
“One is related to kind of growth and property rights, trying to find a balance between annexation and impact areas for the cities and individual rights of property owners to apply for annexation,” Lakey said. “I’ve been working on judicial appointments and compensation. I don’t know if I’ll be carrying that legislation, but that’s something we’re working on in the interim that will probably come up the first part of the session.”
Lakey said the appointment legislation picks up where the bill from last session, which was criticized for adding partisanship into the process and was ultimately vetoed, left off. As previously reported by the Idaho Press, the bill would have expanded the judicial council from seven to 11 members, limited members to four-year terms rather than six, and had the governor, who currently appoints just three of the council’s seven members, appoint 10.
Lakey said over the course of his Senate career, he has been most proud of his time on the Judiciary and Rules Committee.
“It’s given me an opportunity to really support our law enforcement community in the state. We have a wonderful quality of life,” Lakey said. “We are a safe state and we have safe communities and it’s because of the men and women in law enforcement and our first responders.”
Asked how he would handle division in the Legislature, Lakey said it’s all about finding common ground, both within his own party and across the aisle.
“What you do is try to find those areas that you can agree on. You don’t always get everything that you want in the Legislature but there’s lots of room to find things that you agree on,” Lakey said.
Experience, Lakey said, is what sets him apart from his opponents. He said his time in the Legislature has given him the opportunity to develop certain relationships and skills.
“Getting things done or helping stop things in the Legislature is about relationships and experience and the ability to get people to find consensus and common ground and agree with you,” Lakey said. “And I’ve developed that ability to be effective over there that my opponents don’t have.”
He said he has enjoyed the decorum he has experienced in the Senate and hopes the civility and discourse can continue with the new incoming senators. As far as things he would change, Lakey said he would like the Legislature to have the ability to call a special session instead of being reliant on the governor to do so.
Jon Basabe
Basabe was born and raised in Idaho, spending his early years in McCall before moving to Caldwell in the 90s. He works in quality assurance software development. The Libertarian said he decided to run for office to represent his local community in the Legislature. Basabe said his community has been negatively affected by the last 20 years of policy and funding on irrigation and education, which has fallen short of where it should be, in his opinion.
“Irrigation has kind of gone out of control when it comes to supporting the farming community, especially if population increase is going to happen,” Basabe said.
Basabe said his first priorities would be infrastructure and affordable housing, which he said he would prefer to see funded by government grants instead of impact fees.
Basabe would like constituents to have a greater hand in the legislative process, especially when it comes to voter initiatives making it on the ballot. He believes the special session Gov. Brad Little called in September was just playing “party politics.”
The credit for the education funding that was passed during the session, in his opinion, should go to Reclaim Idaho, who worked to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. The initiative was essentially deemed irrelevant after the special session and was removed from the ballot.
“The disparity between Republican and Democrat parties could have been easily avoided with a bit more cooperation,” Basabe said. “As far as being able to create a balance, that is where I think that’s more of the responsibility of third parties.”
Basabe said Lakey definitely has more experience, and he thinks the senator represented what was formerly District 12 “fairly well,” but there are some key issues he has disagreed with him on. The abortion trigger law passed in 2020 was one such example. Lakey was one of the bill’s sponsors and, according to the Idaho Capital Sun, said in regard to situations where a pregnancy could negatively affect the health of the mother, the women’s health “weighs less” than the life of the child.
Basabe said he believes in full bodily autonomy. This includes medical rights and privacy, which he believes were negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People have the right to choose if they see what’s best for them for their family, for their health,” Basabe said.
Mik Losé
Losé is a Democrat living in Kuna. According to LinkedIn, he does broker engagement for Blue Cross of Idaho. He is also a former Boise State football player and has run for state office multiple times. His campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Sydney Kidd oversees and reports for the Kuna Melba News and Meridian Press weeklies, in addition to her reporting and editing duties for the Idaho Press. She is a graduate of Utah State University and holds a degree in journalism. Previously, Kidd completed internships with Boise Weekly and Deseret News. A true Boise girl, she is happy to be working for a newspaper that serves the area she grew up in. In her free time, Kidd enjoys water and snow sports, discovering new food joints with her husband and occasionally running away to the ocean.
