Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador skips Gov. Little’s State of the State address

As Idaho’s elected officials gathered in the House chamber at the Idaho Capitol to hear Gov. Brad Little’s State of the State address, close observers noticed an absence: Attorney General Raúl Labrador.

The state’s top lawyer was in Baton Rouge attending the Louisiana governor’s inauguration, his office told the Idaho Statesman.

A state elected official’s absence at the Idaho Capitol’s flagship annual event is unusual, underscoring a well-known tense relationship between the governor and attorney general. Two long-serving Idaho state officials said they could not remember another instance when a high-ranking state official had missed the State of the State address, other than for illness.

“It’s rare that an elected official doesn’t appear there,” Ben Ysursa, who attended around 40 such addresses while serving in the secretary of state’s office, told the Statesman.

Labrador is close friends with Jeff Landry, the newly elected Republican Louisiana governor, his spokesperson, Dan Estes, told the Statesman by email. The two men served together in Congress and also were both attorneys general in their states at the same time. Estes said Labrador’s chief of staff and chief deputy were invited to attend Little’s State of the State address in his stead.

Landry’s inauguration was scheduled for Monday but was moved a day earlier over weather concerns, according to the Louisiana Illuminator. Little’s address was Monday afternoon.

“I was honored to be invited” to Landry’s inauguration, Labrador wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after this story was published. “Would not have missed it for the world!”

Labrador’s office did not respond to a question about whether he paid for his travel to Louisiana himself. The attorney general’s office told the Statesman no travel records existed over that period this month and cited a personal exemption. The section of Idaho law stipulates that “personal notes created by a public official solely for his own use shall not be a public record.”

Ysursa said the attorney general’s absence to attend a close friend’s inauguration sounded legitimate, while also noting his strained relationship with Little.

“There’s no love lost between those two,” he said.

Little’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Little, Labrador competed to be governor

Little and Labrador ran against each other for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2018, the year Little won his first term. When Labrador ran for attorney general in 2022, Little endorsed Lawrence Wasden, the five-term incumbent.

The two run in different factions within the GOP: Little as a more traditional Republican, Labrador as a Tea Party-aligned former congressman who has the support of the state’s most conservative lawmakers. But he has rankled members of the Republican establishment with his hard-line views and what he has called an “aggressive” approach to the attorney general’s office.

During the 2018 governor’s race, a planned endorsement from President Donald Trump of Labrador was derailed after supporters of Little funneled negative comments Labrador had made about the president during the 2016 campaign to the White House, according to The New York Times.

Little and Labrador have quietly tussled on multiple occasions since then, like when Labrador declined to join a multi-state lawsuit over clean water rules but did not inform the governor, according to the Associated Press.

Labrador has also butted heads with agencies in Idaho’s executive branch, having sued the governor-appointed members of the State Board of Education over its decision to purchase the University of Phoenix and dug into the Department of Health and Welfare over a federal child care grant program.

Analysts have speculated that Labrador may make another pitch to become the gentleman on the second floor, potentially in 2026.

“You owe it to the chief executive to be there and lend your support or at least your presence, especially if everybody thinks you’re gunning for him,” Jim Jones, a former attorney general, told the Statesman. “I’d have made a point of being there.”

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