The war of words between the Bingham County Republican Central Committee and the Idaho GOP took another turn over the past week.

While there will still be a Republican primary in Bingham County on March 2, according to the Idaho GOP, 18 of the 22 elected precinct committee members of the county’s central committee will not be participating in the planning and organization of the event, according to a news release Matt Thompson, acting chair of the Bingham County Republican Central Committee (BCRCC), provided to the Idaho State Journal on Saturday.

In his news release, Thompson said BCRCC leadership “had planned to run the caucus and had notified the state GOP by registering on the GOP website on Nov. 28, 2023 as precinct captains, caucus captains and caucus coordinators as directed in the caucus rules.”

Thompson says in the release that on Dec. 4 Brent Regan, the chairman of both the board of the Idaho Freedom Foundation and the Idaho GOP Rules Committee, confirmed he had received the BCRCC caucus registrations and confirmed Thompson would be recognized as the caucus coordinator for the county.

“However, in a closed-door meeting and prior to hearing of the BCRCC appeal to the State GOP, on Jan. 6, Dorothy Moon and her executive committee voted to remove the BCRCC from planning and executing the Bingham County caucus and instead turned it over to the five people who had participated in or signed the July (2023) grievance against the BCRCC,” Thompson wrote in the release. “Since this latest development and other disputes between the county party and the state GOP leadership are still in litigation, the members of the BCRCC have agreed we will stand down. Sadly, the vast majority will not be participating or working with each of our respective precincts during the presidential caucus to prevent any further confusion for Bingham County constituents.”

Thompson’s statement continued, “While disappointed in the direction of the current leadership of the state party, the Bingham County Republican Central Committee encourages voters to attend the caucus and cast their votes for president and plan to be there that day to do the same.”

The Idaho GOP issued a news release of its own on Tuesday that described the claims from Thompson as “false allegations” that seem to be “creating intentional confusion surrounding the presidential caucus.”

“Elected Bingham County precinct committeemen that registered as caucus captains with the state party are in fact the caucus captains that will be overseeing the three caucuses in Bingham County,” the Idaho GOP news release said. “The executive committee approved overwhelmingly, with only one dissenting vote, the appointment of representatives to oversee the three Bingham County caucuses.”

Thompson told the Journal during a recent phone interview that in addition to BCRCC leadership filing paperwork for consideration of caucus captains and coordinators, so did other Bingham County committee members — specifically those who filed a grievance this past July about the process that was used to appoint Thompson and others into leadership roles, which resulted in the BCRCC filing a lawsuit against the state party.

“Due to the fact that there were multiple overlapping registrations for caucus captain for the same caucus locations, the executive committee was required to select a caucus captain from the registrants for each of the three caucus sites,” the Idaho GOP said in its statement.

The Idaho GOP selected the following individuals to serve as caucus captains:

— Ron Murdock, a Bingham precinct committeeman, will be the captain at the caucus that will be held at Snake River High School.

— Dr. Kirt McKinlay, a Bingham precinct committeeman, will be the captain at the caucus that will be held at the Blackfoot High School Gym.

— Jim Barbre, a Bingham precinct committeeman, will be the captain at the caucus that will be held at Shelley High School.

“Due to pending litigation that Bingham County filed against the state party, there is no current Bingham County chairman to act as the caucus coordinator,” the Idaho GOP said in a statement. “Therefore, the state executive committee, including the Region 6 acting chair, approved the appointment of a caucus coordinator to oversee the three Bingham caucus captains.”

Thompson on Wednesday provided the Journal with an additional statement from Trent Clark, the Idaho Region 6 GOP vice chair, who calls the state GOP statement about approving the appointment of a caucus coordinator a “gross misrepresentation.”

“Names were provided as individuals willing to implement caucus duties in Bingham County,” he said in the statement. “That the county party officers had not approved these names was not mentioned. That such appointments resulted from a state party enjoined from supplanting the officers of the Bingham County GOP would never have occurred to me.”

He continued, “Had this information been made available, my vote would clearly have been ‘No!’”