Honor the will of the voters by putting Lisa Sánchez back on Boise City Council | Opinion
Lisa Sánchez won reelection to the Boise City Council in 2021 with 57% of the vote.
Sánchez had to vacate her seat on the council in January after she lost her housing and had to move elsewhere, to an address that turned out to be two blocks outside District 3.
Now, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean has nominated Latonia Haney Keith, an administrator at The College of Idaho and the board chair of Boise’s urban renewal agency, the Capital City Development Corp., to fill Sánchez’s District 3 seat for the rest of the year.
While Haney Keith is clearly qualified, Boise City Council members should reject the nomination and work to get Sánchez back in the seat she vacated.
The main reason? It’s important to honor the will of the voters.
While some had predicted a close race in 2021 between Sánchez and Greg MacMillan, Sánchez won handily, carrying all but three of 17 precincts.
Admittedly, it’s sometimes been a rocky road for Sánchez since.
In addition to losing her seat on council, Sánchez was the subject of a complaint by the Idaho Freedom Foundation of her campaign finance spending. An investigation found no wrongdoing, but Sánchez spent some of her campaign money at restaurants, coffee shops, bars and other locations.
Even though Sánchez lost her seat on council because she moved out of the district, there is some question about whether Sánchez received bad information about the boundaries. She then moved back into the district, and was one of three finalists McLean had for her old seat.
Sánchez likely rubbed some people the wrong way when she demanded that she be reinstated “immediately” to the council, even hiring a lawyer to represent her interests.
Sánchez is known for speaking her mind openly, and at times that upsets people. In 2020 she suggested a white man who accidentally fired a gun at a rally was treated with kid gloves by police because he was white. In a social media post about it, she signed her name, “Love, Lisa Sánchez, Brown woman who chose not to have children for fear of their abuse and murder by white people.”
Be that as it may, whether you personally like Sánchez or not, whether the mayor or council members don’t get along with Sánchez or not, we see nothing that disqualifies her from being appointed to the seat she won fair and square in 2021.
Barring any disqualifications, it would appear that snubbing Sánchez is merely personal.
That’s not a good enough reason to reject the will of the voters.
Any appointment would be for the remaining few months of the term that Sánchez was elected to fill. And the fact remains that council members have an opportunity to reinstate the person who was duly elected by the people of District 3, and they should do so.
Council members are scheduled to meet at noon Thursday to consider the appointment of Haney Keith to District 3 and Colin Nash to an at-large position.
Haney Keith is a highly qualified candidate and would be a welcome addition to the council, and this is absolutely no reflection on her. But council members should do right by the voters of that district and appoint the person they elected.
Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe and newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser.
