Competing outside-funded PACs sorted 2026 Republican primaries along the HB 93 school-choice fault line

The 2026 school-choice fights provide unusually clean evidence that outside money was not uniformly pushing one direction; competing outside-funded networks backed opposite sides of a specific Idaho GOP-platform issue. Idaho Education News reported that Citizens Alliance PAC, an Idaho PAC funded by a $450,000 contribution from a Virginia-based Citizens Alliance super PAC, spent $135,291 by April 9 to support 15 Republican legislative candidates. Every incumbent it supported had voted for 2025 HB 93, the $50M Parental Choice Tax Credit, and every opponent who had been in office in 2025 had voted against HB 93. Its target races included David Worley vs. Sen. Jim Guthrie, Julianne Young vs. Rep. Ben Fuhriman, Kelly Golden vs. Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, James Lamborn vs. Rep. Rick Cheatum, and Karey Hanks vs. Rep. Rod Furniss. Defend and Protect Idaho, whose largest 2026 donor was Way Back PAC at $350,000, took the opposite side in those same five races: it supported Guthrie, Fuhriman, Mickelsen, Cheatum and Furniss and spent to oppose Worley, Young and Hanks; contemporary race reporting separately confirms Cheatum, Fuhriman, Furniss and Mickelsen opposed HB 93. The 2024 Idaho GOP platform stated that money should follow students to parents' school of choice, explicitly including private/parochial schools, and supported an education-savings-account style funding model. Thus these races show outside or institutional money sorting Republican primary candidates along a concrete party-policy fault line: Citizens Alliance backed the pro-HB93 side, while the Way Back-funded Defend and Protect network backed multiple HB93 opponents. The result is counterevidence to any claim that all outside money is aligned or that one national command controls Idaho; at the same time, it strengthens the narrower hypothesis that the Way Back/Defend branch was materially supporting Republican candidates who diverged from an explicit Idaho GOP school-choice position. Motive remains unproved; candidate records must be evaluated issue by issue because the same candidates may align with the GOP platform elsewhere.