POCATELLO — A fourth-generation Idahoan and small-business owner who grew up in Pocatello is challenging Republican Gov. Brad Little this November, running on a platform that focuses on the fundamental rights of her constituency through advocacy, autonomy and transparency.

Terri Pickens is a Boise trial attorney born and raised in Pocatello, where she ran track at Highland High School on her way to a scholarship at the University of Southern California.

She returned to Idaho for law school at the University of Idaho, eventually serving as the Nez Perce County public defender before moving to Boise in 1999 to expand her legal career. She has run her own law firm for nearly 20 years and raised two children who went through Idaho’s public schools. She said she’s used her law degree to be a successful small-business owner, a trial attorney and an advocate.

Her candidacy will focus on issues that include economic growth, workers’ rights, public education and public lands, along with civil and reproductive rights, and immigration.

Reproductive and LGBTQ rights within the state are especially poignant for her, as recent legislation has become so restrictive that it’s pushing her 22-year-old daughter away from the state.

“She doesn’t have bodily autonomy and she doesn’t have the right to love who she loves,” Pickens said. “She may end the fifth generation of this state and that just isn’t acceptable to me.”

Pickens has been in Idaho her entire life and said she is going to do everything she can to redirect the policies of the state to be more welcoming for people who have lived here their entire lives.

When asked why she considers herself qualified for the state’s top office, Pickens drew a sharp contrast with the current governor, Brad Little.

“I think I’m more qualified than a rancher,” Pickens said.

Pickens recently spent an evening at The Yellowstone’s Restaurant in Pocatello to speak with the community and has already visited 22 of Idaho’s 44 counties during her current run for governor. When she previously ran for lieutenant governor, she hit every county, and she plans on doing it again.

“I’m having these conversations one on one with folks in the communities and not just Democrats,” Pickens said. “I’m talking with everybody. I’m talking with the press and the media because I believe a free press is how we maintain our democracy. It is how you hold me to account to my constituents, and it’s how my constituents know that I’m there to answer the questions that they have. That isn’t happening right now across the board in this country with the GOP, and it certainly isn’t happening in this state. I don’t believe that a top-dollar fundraiser donor room are the people that really need help in this state. I think it’s the people in this room that I’m sitting in tonight that need help.”

She said that right out of the gate her plan is to make Idahoans’ lives better, and the easiest way to do that is to provide them some economic relief.

Pickens was critical of the legislature’s recent tax package, which she said delivered roughly $450 million in tax breaks to the wealthiest Idahoans. For any detractors who may decry her judgment on the tax breaks, she provided a key point:

“If you made over $750,000, that tax break worked for you,” Pickens said. “If you made under $750,000, it did not. Most of the people who are the detractors are in that under category. If you’re making $750,000 and above, you don’t need a tax break. The people below them, however, need access to affordable housing. They need food. They need their grocery tax repealed. They need their property tax relief, and they absolutely want to have a safe infrastructure and safe place to live.”

She also criticized what she described as the “voucher tax scheme” and said she wants to repeal it entirely. Pickens said the $50 million tax-credit program subsidizes private-school tuition for families who can already afford it. Her reasons for repealing it were twofold.

“There isn’t any oversight, there are no guardrails,” Pickens said. “There are no rules as to where that money goes and how that money is spent, and that’s at the backs of Idahoans. That’s money that we need to invest in our public schools. The reason that we need to repeal it is because, while they allege that the money doesn’t come out of the school system, it actually does.”

Pickens said those outcomes result in the loss of extracurricular activities, after-school programs, and track and chess clubs.

“We lose the ability for students to get ahead,” Pickens said. “I ran track for Highland. That was a free program. Because of that, I was able to get a full-ride track scholarship to a four-year university. If you take away those extracurricular activities from those kids, they don’t have that same opportunity, and to me that’s immoral.”

Pickens said those two programs alone would provide half a billion dollars that could be reinvested in programs that help working families get ahead.

“There are so many ways that we can make the economy work for families in this state, but the present governor and the Idaho GOP supermajority just don’t care and aren’t doing it,” Pickens said.

Secondary to economic reforms is Pickens’ focus on restoring fundamental freedoms to those in the state, starting with bodily autonomy. She plans to campaign alongside the Idaho United for Families ballot initiative to restore abortion access, preserving and protecting it once it passes.

“Because losing bodily autonomy doesn’t just mean giving abortion back to women,” Pickens said. “It means having OB/GYNs return to the state. It means having doctors return to the state because they’re no longer being criminalized for practicing medicine, and that works for everybody. It works for women who want to have children, who want to have access to health care, but don’t, because more than a third of the OB/GYNs in the state have already left.”

Pickens said that when the state undermines women’s autonomy and Medicaid funding, it affects every corner of the state, and the areas hit hardest are rural communities. Pickens pointed to the closure of an oncology clinic in Boise and the loss of rural health clinics statewide, which she attributed both to physicians leaving Idaho over abortion-related legal risk and to reduced Medicaid funding that she said makes it harder for high-volume rural clinics to stay open. Pickens said those effects extend well beyond reproductive care to farmers, children and anyone relying on local emergency services.

Restoring collective bargaining rights for workers is also at the forefront of her campaign. Pickens referenced her father’s career as a Pocatello contractor, which she said was damaged when the state passed its right-to-work law in the 1980s. While repealing that law would require legislative action, Pickens said she would sign such a measure, restoring the foundations that helped shape the Gate City over a century ago.

Pickens drew a sharp distinction between her approach and Little’s, saying transparency and direct engagement with constituents are central to how she would govern.

“I am not afraid of the people that I’m going to be serving,” Pickens said. “When you stop being able to answer to your constituents, it means you’re done doing your job.”

She provided an example: 34,000 Idahoans called Little and told him to veto the voucher measure. She said it went unheeded after a social media post from President Donald Trump urged him to sign it, which he did that night.

“It’s atrocious,” Pickens said. “It’s embarrassing. I think Little has really made it clear that he no longer is fit to serve the people of the state of Idaho.”

On federal matters, Pickens said Idaho’s governor has limited direct leverage beyond infrastructure and disaster-relief funding, but pledged to press the state’s congressional delegation — Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch and Reps. Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson — to represent Idahoans’ interests rather than what she views as deferring to the Trump administration.

For Pocatello and cities across Idaho as a whole, Pickens said it’s important that the Association of Idaho Cities work together.

“Every city in this state is different,” Pickens said. “The communities are different. The dynamics are different, and the needs are different. Everyone across the board in this state is hurting somehow for some reason. We just need people to start listening and showing up.”

The Idaho State Journal reached out to Little’s office for comment and did not receive a response.