05/18/2026
Every juggler knows the act only works until it doesn't. Brent Regan has been spinning plates in Kootenai County for nearly a decade, and the cracks are showing.
Regan has never held public office. Voters rejected him the one time he tried, losing a 2013 school board race to Christa Hazel by 600 votes. He figured out he was not a politician. He was a puppet master. Instead of earning power through voters, he built a machine to seize it from behind the scenes. A journalist once called him "the sugar daddy of the hard right and the godfather of North Idaho politics." He is an extremist who operates as a puppet master, accumulating control over institutions that were never meant to belong to one person.
He chairs the KCRCC, the organization that is supposed to represent all Kootenai County Republicans. He simultaneously chairs the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a libertarian organization that hired and refused to disavow a documented white nationalist, even after 30 faith leaders and elected officials demanded accountability. He controls the Rating and Vetting process through a secret committee whose members sign NDAs, meaning a small group of handpicked insiders, accountable to no one, decides which Republicans voters are allowed to see on their endorsement list.
Then there is Matt Gaetz. The KCRCC paid about $20,000 to book Gaetz as their Lincoln Day headliner, after the House Ethics Committee found substantial evidence he paid a 17-year-old girl for acts that this platform won't let us describe. When asked about the House Ethics Committee report, Regan said he had no reason to read it.
Brent Regan sued a city councilman for social media posts calling the vetting process rigged. Under oath, Regan admitted he took the rating and vetting ballots home himself to count. That was exactly what the posts alleged.
Most recently, the KCRCC voted to transfer $17,418 of party money to the Kootenai Freedom Caucus PAC, which is running Regan's own slate of candidates. Incumbents voted themselves campaign funds from the party treasury. Regan did not want to say what the money was for, and when pressed, he stonewalled.
This is a man juggling the John Birch Society, white nationalist ties, multiple lawsuits, secret committees, about $20,000 to book Matt Gaetz, and a party treasury he treats as his personal campaign fund. Some of those plates are already broken on the floor.
Running a county party should require focus, transparency, and accountability to voters. Brent Regan is too busy keeping all his plates in the air to offer those things. On May 19th, let's do Regan and North Idaho a favor by voting in new KCRCC leadership.
