Ammon Bundy is running for governor. Here’s his pitch to Idaho voters

At a rally on Saturday evening, Ammon Bundy formally announced his run for governor with a platform centered on abolishing most state taxes and claiming federal public land for the state.

After an afternoon picnic with “Bundy burgers” at Kleiner Park, in Meridian, the man from Emmett who is banned from the Idaho Statehouse grounds announced he is running for governor to a crowd of a few hundred people on a platform to “Keep Idaho Idaho.” News of his bid first broke in May, when he filed paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office.

Bundy, a far-right, militant activist who has been arrested at least five times since last August for protests at the Idaho Capitol and for refusing to wear a mask in the Ada County Courthouse, joins a crowd of Republican candidates nearly a year away from the 2022 primary election that includes Janice McGeachin, Idaho’s lieutenant governor. Gov. Brad Little has not officially declared he will seek re-election.

On Saturday, Bundy laid out a wide-ranging plan to overhaul Idaho’s government. He told supporters he wants to end “immoral” taxation, including “all property tax in our state” as well as personal income tax. In their place, he said the state will meet its budgetary needs by levying only sales tax, which he said he believes is acceptable because people can “voluntarily” choose what they purchase.

Bundy also proposes bringing federal lands under state control, which he says will allow Idahoans to “spread out” across the state.

“I am willing to fight to the very end to ensure that land rights stay with those to whom they properly belong,” he said.

To accomplish this, Bundy told the Idaho Statesman in an interview he would go through an “incremental process” that would involve requesting the lands from the federal agencies that manage them.

Bundy is known for disputing federal ownership of public land. In 2016, he and others took part in a six-week long armed takeover of a wildlife reserve in Malheur, Oregon that left one occupier dead.

In his speech, Bundy said that the affordable housing issues in Idaho are “simply a supply and demand issue,” which he said would be solved by opening up federally-protected lands to agriculture and development. He said he opposes dense growth.

“If we build up and create dense and congested cities with large populations, traffic and pollution, we will lose our conservative, traditional values,” he said.

The 45-year-old’s father, Cliven Bundy, who is known for a decades-long refusal to pay grazing fees on federal land his cattle graze on in Nevada, also spoke at the Saturday event in support of his son’s candidacy.

In an interview, he told the Statesman his son wants people to understand “the difference between freedom and communism” and that his son stands for “the Ten Commandments and the Constitution of the United States.”

During his speech, Ammon Bundy mocked the practice of stating one’s gender pronouns, saying “from here on out, I’m going to identify as a man, an American man, using he, him and his pronouns.”

He added, “Oh, the outrage, right? How dare I declare my gender? ... Who would have ever thought America would become something so ridiculous?”

Bundy’s pitch for governor also includes plans to ban abortion, repeal the state’s healthcare exchange, open up non-approved FDA drugs for consumer use and end financial assistance programs for poor Idahoans, according to his campaign website.

The candidate’s mother, Carol Bundy, also spoke at Saturday’s rally. She mentioned the drought in Nevada, which she said she saw as she drove north to Idaho.

“I left the desert that’s in one heck of a drought,” she said. “Somebody said it looks like Mars.”

Much of the western United States is currently facing extreme or exceptional drought, which scientists have linked to a warming climate.

But Ammon told the Statesman on Saturday that he isn’t concerned about climate change, despite overwhelming evidence that average temperatures are rising primarily due to human activity.

“I’m not concerned about climate change,” he said. “I mean, there’s been droughts, they come and go, you just got to do your history.”

It’s not the Bundy family’s first foray into politics. In 2018, Ammon Bundy’s brother Ryan ran for governor of Nevada as an independent. He received just 1.4% of the vote.