Labrador is mostly all right with me but he won't listen on certain critical matters and it's burned him every time. Vaughn almost got him last time. It's fine for me to talk about being primaried but there needs to be another viable candidate to pull it off. Ugh.
I’m shocked how long Simpson has lasted, he’ll be at 18 years at the end of his present term (not even counting his infamous prior service in the state legislature). What was the prior norm for ID House members was a high turnover in a short period of time (since they’d often move up to the Senate). You’d have to go back to Addison Smith and Burton French in the 1920s/1930 to the last time you had someone sit in a House seat as long as Simpson (and that mostly because the leftist Republican William Borah refused to leave his Senate seat and carried out feet first after 33 years in that body in 1940).
Simpson’s House predecessor, Sen. Mike Crapo, has overstayed his welcome (now with a combined 24 years in House and Senate as of next year) and badly needs to go. That might get both Simpson and Labrador out of their seats, but we definitely don’t want to risk Simpson getting it. The execrable ultraleftist Frank Church was the last one to win a 4th Senate term (he unfortunately wasn’t taken out by George Hansen in 1970 when he should’ve been).
Vaughn Ward, whom you mentioned, who was initially supposed to be the front-runner when he first ran against Labrador for the right to take on Dem fluke upset winner Walt Minnick, but that was almost 6 years ago in 2010. Labrador has had no substantial challenger since (even the well thought of challenger to Simpson in 2014 got just 38% in the GOP primary).