Would Idahoans send an independent to the Senate? Todd Achilles kicks off campaign in North Idaho to find out

LEWISTON – It’s been more than half a century since Idaho voters sent anyone other than a Republican to the U.S. Senate. Now, a former Democratic state lawmaker is launching an independent bid to unseat an incumbent GOP senator in 2026, hoping that Idahoans share his frustration with both parties.

Todd Achilles, an Army veteran and former registered Republican who represented a Boise district as a Democrat for just over a year in the Idaho House of Representatives, kicked off his campaign last week with what he billed as a “listening tour” throughout North Idaho. In a Thursday interview during a stop in Lewiston, he said he decided to leave the Legislature and the Democratic Party to challenge Sen. Jim Risch because the three-term Republican “just doesn’t represent the state anymore.”

“He’s a career politician, and Idahoans don’t like career politicians,” Achilles said. “We just continue to be a low-wage state and a high-cost state, and people are getting squeezed. Idahoans can’t afford to live in Idaho.”

Before touring the state veterans’ home in Lewiston, Achilles stopped at a dollar store and a supermarket to compare prices on canned soup, aluminum foil and other household staples, pointing out how low-cost retail chains can hurt local businesses and reduce consumers’ options. He said affordability had been a consistent theme in his conversations with voters at earlier stops in McCall, Grangeville and Orofino.

“I think that’s where a ton of this frustration is coming from,” he said. “The system’s not working. Too many people are getting screwed.”

By rejecting both parties and positioning himself as a moderate focused on bread-and-butter issues, Achilles is seeking to follow in the footsteps of independent Senate candidates Dan Osborn, who ran in Nebraska in 2024, and Evan McMullin, who ran in Utah in 2022. Both Osborn and McMullin lost those races but outperformed Democrats in the GOP-dominated states, raising hopes among Americans who don’t align with either party that similar candidates could disrupt the two-party system.

Piet Kongsatt, a 21-year-old from Spirit Lake who’s studying math, computer science and political science at Lewis-Clark State College, said he decided to come meet Achilles after seeing a post on Reddit about the candidate’s stop in Lewiston. He signed a petition to get Achilles on the 2026 ballot and said he’s interested in supporting an independent candidate because his own views don’t fit neatly into either the Democratic or Republican platform.

“Why the heck not?” Kongsatt said, summing up his feeling about Achilles running.

But unlike the recent Senate races in Utah and Nebraska, where the independent candidates won broad support from Democrats even while distancing themselves from the Democratic Party, a Democrat already is running in Idaho. David Roth, who ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Mike Crapo in 2022 and against Rep. Mike Simpson in 2024, said he realizes how unlikely a victory is but he has no intention of dropping out of the race.

“My goal every cycle that I’ve run has been just to move the needle – like, we need to do better than we’ve ever done before,” Roth said. “And if we keep doing that, it may take us a couple of cycles to get there, but eventually we can turn the tables.”

Risch, who announced in April that he’s running in 2026 for another term, would be 89 years old when a potential fourth term in office ends. The former county prosecutor and lieutenant governor has easily won each race since he was first elected in 2008 and serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Risch’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in a statement announcing his re-election bid, the senator said President Donald Trump’s second term has brought “an opportunity like no other” to achieve their shared goals.

“I want to continue working with President Trump to get government out of the way,” Risch said. “We now have a president who is focused on reducing government spending, returning power to the states, and cutting red tape – issues I have devoted my career to accomplishing.”

The latest Idaho Public Policy Survey, published in January by Boise State University, found that over 54% of voters identify as Republicans or as independents who “lean Republican.” Under 21% identify as Democrats or independents who “lean Democrat” and only about 14% identify as “pure independent.”

A poll of just over 1,000 registered voters in Idaho conducted July 15 to 17 found 41% support for Risch, 16% for Roth and 5% each for Achilles and fellow independent candidate Natalie Fleming, while 31% said they were undecided. Yet when the voters were told that Risch opposed a proposal in Congress to sell public land in Idaho and other states, support for the incumbent senator rose to 51% in the poll, which was conducted by Change Research on behalf of Conservation Voters for Idaho.

By spurning both parties, Achilles doesn’t have access to the campaign infrastructure or funding that can help a candidate reach voters in a state as big as Idaho. But he said other independents have reached out to him, expressing interest in running in state and local races as independents, and he intends to spend the next year building political infrastructure that could help independents win.

Achilles also has the baggage of being associated with both parties yet embraced by neither. He was a registered Republican, he said, until he changed his party affiliation to qualify to be appointed in February 2024 by Gov. Brad Little to a House seat vacated by a Democrat. Achilles resigned from that role at the end of June to launch his Senate bid.

During his time in the Legislature, Achilles sometimes broke with his fellow Democrats, such as when he voted to cut income taxes and voted for a bill that lets mental health providers deny care to a patient if it conflicts with their personal beliefs.

“He made a lot of Democrats unhappy during the legislative session with a couple of controversial votes he took,” said Charles Hunt, a political science professor at Boise State University. “And then he left the party and vacated his seat in the middle of his term.”

Hunt said Achilles eventually will have to weigh in on some of the controversial “wedge” issues that drive voters apart, such as abortion, immigration and the rights of gay and transgender people. Even if voters are frustrated by the two-party system, he said, they tend to have strong views on certain issues that make them vote largely with one party or the other.

“For someone like him to win, not only do you need to pull over some Republicans; not only do you need to win all of these independents, but you’ve got to win Democrats, too,” Hunt said. “And if they have someone else they can vote for, then that’s going to be a problem.”

Asked for her take on Achilles leaving the Democratic Party to run as an independent, Idaho Democrats Chair Lauren Necochea said, “One person changing their party doesn’t change our priorities.”

“Idaho Democrats are here to deliver for working people,” she said in a statement. “We’re fighting for a future where Idahoans have the freedom to make personal medical decisions, public schools are fully funded, and the economy works for the people who keep it running.”

His votes that upset Democrats haven’t stopped Republicans from painting Achilles as a Democrat in disguise. In a statement, Idaho GOP Chair Dorothy Moon said Risch “has represented Idaho quite well, especially during President Trump’s second term,” and she doesn’t expect an independent candidate to prevent Idaho from sending a Republican to the Senate again in 2026.

“Todd Achilles might have found a receptive audience in Boise, but he is clearly out of step with the great majority of Idahoans,” Moon said. “As a vocal critic of our Republican Presidential Caucus last year, as a major backer of the Ranked Choice Voting initiative that Idaho voters rejected by a 70-30 margin, and as one of the most left-wing Democrats in the statehouse for the past two years, Achilles’ radical ideology does not represent the people of Idaho.”

Achilles was born in Oregon and joined the Army through an ROTC program, serving as a tank commander from 1992 to 1995, he said. Following his military service, he earned a business degree from the University of Washington and went on to work as an executive at T-Mobile and Hewlett Packard. After buying a vacation home near Ketchum two decades ago, he said, his family fell in love with Idaho and decided to move full-time to Boise about 10 years later.

He said his candidacy is about leading by example, a principle he learned as an Army officer.

“Your troops always eat first,” he said. “And that philosophy just doesn’t exist in Congress anymore. We’ve got too many people who put their own self-interest above their voters, like stock trading. It’s just objectively bad, and Dems and Republicans are both doing it.”

Roth said he worries that by criticizing both parties, Achilles could promote apathy among voters and hurt a Democratic Party that is already fighting uphill in Idaho. But the independent candidate said plenty of people are already fed up with both parties.

“I’m giving folks an alternative to the parties,” Achilles said. “There’s a lot of people out there who are looking for change.”

Achilles will wrap up the first leg of what he calls the “Shake up the System” listening tour at War Memorial in Sandpoint at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. He said he intends to continue the tour in other parts of the state as he works to gain prominence around the country.