Canyon County Republicans Say Secretary of State McGrane ‘Misled’ Them, Vote to Censure and Call for His Resignation
By Greg Pruett • September 18, 2024The Canyon County Republican Central Committee has voted to censure Secretary of State Phil McGrane and called for his resignation by a vote of 23 to 13 after they said he “misled” them at a meeting several weeks ago.
The resolution comes as a dispute continues over Democratic candidate swapping in the district, with a potential lawsuit pending. The Secretary of State’s office approved the swap despite an Idaho law that says candidates cannot withdraw from one race and be appointed to another race unless another candidate has died.
Democrat candidates Anthony Porto and Toni Ferro attempted to swap their races against Republican candidates Kent Marmon and Camille Blaylock shortly after the May primary. Porto contacted the SOS office to find out if the move was legal.
At a meeting with the CCRCC on August 20, McGrane apologized and said their office had made a mistake. He told the crowd that the most legally defensible position was to revert the candidates back to their original races. Marmon and others believed the only legal remedy was to allow the withdrawal to continue and that Democrats could appoint other candidates to those races, just not Ferro and Porto because Idaho law prohibited them from being appointed.
After a public records request was done by District 11 Chairman Greg Stuck, the CCRCC met again. They passed a resolution similar to one that failed on August 20, which says that McGrane “misled” them. In particular, the resolution cites an email from Election Director Guilleromo Velasco to Democrat candidate Anthony Porto on June 3, which states in total,
“Hey Anthony,
AdvertisementI chatted with Phil briefly about your questions. We believe you are correct that folks can withdraw and change seats, but he wants to double-check tomorrow.
Before any of this can happen, we need the withdrawal forms signed and notarized. Once those are submitted to our office, they trigger the timelines for your legislative district central committee. See IC-34-715 for reference.
I will get a final answer for you first thing tomorrow, but let’s continue to coordinate to make sure nothing gets lost for the November election.
AdvertisementGreat to meet you in person today!
Guillermo”
Members of the CCRCC tell Idaho Dispatch the email differs from what they were told at the meeting on August 20. Idaho Dispatch obtained a partial recording (12 minutes long) from that meeting in which McGrane addressed the controversy. McGrane says toward the beginning of the audio (transcription by Idaho Dispatch),
“I wasn’t involved initially in this, but I can tell you I’ve done a deep dive into this entire situation, and looking at it, and I wanna just kind of share, how we got here.”
A few moments later, McGrane makes the following statement:
“Whenver you heard of whether it was about this situation in the district or you heard the resolution, there’s a lot of people are saying, ‘Wait, what? What’s happening? This doesn’t make sense. How did we ever get here?’ And honestly, that was my reaction as well, is, ‘Wait, what’s happening?'”
In another statement made during the meeting, McGrane says he wants to “walk through the timeline of events” on the approval of the candidate swamp. He states,
“On June 7th, Anthony Porto, who is one of the candidates. He also works with the Democratic Party, reached out to our office, and he both made a phone call and followed up with an email asking if it would be acceptable, to get it in writing from our office for candidates to swap and replacements, if it was acceptable and legal. I can tell you at the time, many of you, probably not all of you, have looked at the statutes, and the code section related to this. Our office focused on the appointment process and did not thoroughly look at the withdrawal section related to the code. That’s the short of it. Our office responds {inaudible] on June 7. On June 13, our office responded and said ‘yes,’ that that can happen.”
Idaho Dispatch contacted the SOS office to ask for clarification on the timeline because the email from Velasco is on June 3, but McGrane mentions an email on June 7 at the August 20 meeting for his timeline.
In addition to the June 3 email, another email was sent from Porto to Velasco on May 24, asking him if their “legal team” had a chance to review the question about “having candidates change seats.” That email was not mentioned in McGrane’s timeline of events at the meeting.
Idaho Dispatch also asked for clarification on whether McGrane was involved with the initial approval of the candidate swap and if he would like to respond to the resolution censuring him and calling for his resignation. We have not received a response as of this writing but will post any reply by the SOS office.
Tags: Anthony Porto, Camille Blaylock, Canyon County Republican Central Committee, Guillermo Velasco, Kent Marmon, Phil McGrane, Secretary of State, Toni Ferro
One thought on “Canyon County Republicans Say Secretary of State McGrane ‘Misled’ Them, Vote to Censure and Call for His Resignation”
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I’d add a few points. 1) The entire Idaho Code 34 pertaining to elections is only 156 pages (not counting blanks where sections have been removed.). 34-7, the section pertaining to this matter is only EIGHT PAGES long. So what all this mess essentially says is that our Secretary of State (who is also an attorney listed by the ISB as “Active”) cannot read eight pages of code to resolve an issue which he had known about since at least June 3, before the “permission” for the swap was given on on June 13.
2) The reinstatement of the withdrawn candidates in August was just as illegal as the appointment of them to the posts vacated by the other in the first place.
3) Candidates are impacted by and develop their campaign strategies based at least in some part based on who their opponent is. The two impacted GOP candidates spent precious weeks without any knowledge that this “switcheroo” had happened, as neither McGrane nor any of his subordinates saw any need to let them know there were changes in their races. (While there is no legal code saying they have to, it would be the ethical thing to do–which leads to the question: Is McGrane actually engaging in manipulation or is he just incompetent?” Either way, D11’s premise that he should resign is pertinent.
4) He essentially told the CCRCC that he didn’t even know about this until June 7….whether that was in the inaudible section or at a different time…and reiterated that in conversations before and after his speech. That was a blatant lie.
This is not McGrane’s first rodeo with regard to election integrity. When he served as Ada County Clerk, he also potentially influenced an election by failing to randomize candidates’ names on the ballot, leaving Michael Hon consistently as the last name on the ballot in his race. Election integrity is an important issue.
Whether McGrane is malicious in this illegal activity or just incompetent is irrelevant. He has demonstrated that he will not accomplish his job as needed, that he is willing to lie about it, and that when caught, rather than doing the right and legal thing he just wants to cover it up. Idaho deserves better from our Secretary of State.