Every now and then a story surfaces that gives you hope that no matter how desperately the RWNJs try to pull our country into an abyss of hatred and ignorance, good people can emerge to pull us back from the void.

Such a good person is young Shiva Rajbhandari (above).

The Intercept

“THE NATIONWIDE CAMPAIGN to stifle discussions of race and gender in public schools through misinformation and bullying suffered a reversal in Idaho on Monday, when a high school senior vocally opposed to book bans and smears against LGBTQ+ youth took a seat on the Boise school board.

The student, Shiva Rajbhandari, was elected to the position by voters in Idaho’s capital last week, defeating an incumbent board member who had refused to reject an endorsement from a local extremist group that has harassed students and pushed to censor local libraries.”

The extremist group in question, The Idaho Liberty Dogs a group of fine upstanding citizens…

…whose FaceBook Page includes inspirational posts such as…

…had endorsed Steve Schmidt (no, not THAT Steve Schmidt), in the School Board election against young Mr. Rajbhandari.

Rajbhandari was not pleased that the wingers, who had once shown up, armed, to counter-protest him and his ninth grade classmates during a climate awareness strike they held at their school, endorsed his opponent:

“Rajbhandari, who started leading Extinction Rebellion climate protests in Boise when he was 15, is familiar with the group’s tactics. “We used to have climate strikes, like back in ninth grade, and they would come with AR-15s,” he said, bringing rifles to intimidate “a bunch of kids protesting for a livable future.”

So when the Idaho Liberty Dogs called on Boise voters to support Schmidt — and a slate of other candidates for the school board who, ultimately, all lost — Rajbhandari told me he texted his rival to say, “You need to immediately disavow this.”

Now, as you can see in the video below in which he announced his candidacy for the board…

…Rajbhandari is a well spoken and diplomatic young man, and his request that Schmidt renounce the endorsement of a group that had sought to intimidate and terrorize ninth graders was imminently reasonable.

But I guess Schmidt felt the support of the AR toters was crucial to his election chances, because he refused to renounce the endorsement.

Schmidt was sadly mistaken… Rajbhandari won the election bigly:

“Rajbhandari, a third-generation Idahoan whose father is from Nepal, was elected to a two-year term with 56 percent of the vote.”

Sometimes the good guys do win.

Congratulations to Shiva, whom I hope stays in politics long enough to wrest an Idaho Senate seat from the GOP in 2040 (if it hasn’t been done by that point in time), and congratulations to the voters of Boise for making such a wise and inspirational choice.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. “Congratulations to Shiva, whom I hope stays in politics long enough to wrest an Idaho Senate seat from the GOP in 2040 (if it hasn’t been done by that point in time), . . . .”

    Um, Shiva’s currently 18, correct? One must be a minimum of 30 to qualify as a US Senator, correct? That’s 12 years away, correct? Twelve years added to our current year of 2022 is 2034, correct? Well, that happens to be a year in which a Senator from Idaho will be up for election/re-election. In fact, current Idaho Senator Mike Crapo (seriously–that’s his name) is running for re-election.

    Also, I can’t find it through a quick Google search (it may never have been an issue) but the only thing on the minimum age requirement is that person has “attained to the age of 30” to BE a Senator but it doesn’t seem to be as clear whether that age must be attained by the date of the general election or if a person could be 29 on Election Day but turn 30 a week or even a month (or even by the day before the Senate takes office–usually January 3rd) and still BE a Senator. (All this is probably moot since Shiva is already 18 as the article indicates so he’d have to be 30 *IN* 2034.)

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