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Jim Chmelik

State Representative Legislative District 7 Seat A

Biography and Background

I have been married to my wife Colleen for 36 years and we have 8 children and 13 grandchildren. We have lived on the Camas Prairie for 24 years and my wife was born and raised here.

We have managed a small timber operation, a hay operation and also a cabinet and millwork company since arriving here in 2000. Idaho is home and our family has deep roots on the Prairie.

I have served as and Idaho County Farm Bureau board member for 22 years and have attended twenty state conventions and participated in debates which shape Farm Bureau policy that is used to guide our lobbyist in informing our elected leaders and shaping the laws within our state.

I have been involved in Idaho politics for over 22 years. I have been a precinct committee person and also the secretary for the Idaho County Republican Central Committee. I have been elected and served as an Idaho County Commissioner from 2011-2017. In that time we limited county tax increases and employee raises to just 2% in a six year period. We put health care out for bid saving county taxpayers thousands of dollars and still maintained a quality health care program for employees. I personally spent hundreds of hours fighting for and protecting access to our natural resources within our community. For my troubles the Southern Poverty Law Center targeted me as one of the top ten elected officials in the west to be taken out. I consider that a badge of honor.

I have served for eight years on the board for St John Bosco Academy, six of those as chairman.

For the last eight years I have been teaching young adults in our church and preparing them for confirmation.

Between raising a family, running our businesses, and serving the community I have learned many things about balancing time, balancing budgets and developing relationships across our great state. It has been very rewarding and I would like to bring this experience to Boise as the next representative for District 7.

Top 3 Issues

Issue 1

The success of our district is tied to our natural resources. From recreation, to logging, to ranching; these resources represent the backbone of our communities. Deeply concerning are the dams and any attempt to remove them. From inexpensive renewable energy, as a port to the pacific ocean for shipping and receiving goods to and from our communities and the multiple opportunities for recreation, these dams provide a major source of economic activity for our district. We can not allow them to be removed. For 20 years as an Idaho Farm Bureau member I have fought for the protection of our dams and our water. It is critical to the success of Idaho as a state as are all our natural resources. It is vital that we are good stewards over the lands to insure future generations have the same opportunities we have today.

Issue 2

Education funding and class curriculum. Our schools are being influenced with ideologies that have no place within a learning environment. Our children are being indoctrinated and not educated. If we are going to have leaders for tomorrow it will be by providing a traditional education based in mathematics, history, language, rhetoric, the arts, and the sciences with sound study of facts as they present themselves to teh student. The woke agenda is destroying and laying waste to our young minds.  The education funding is broken. Our rural communities who used to receive dollars from the care and extraction of our natural resources have dried up and so have the education dollars previously available. This has to change if our rural school districts are to survive and our young people are to thrive and have the same opportunities as our large urban areas. It is the right thing to do.

Issue 3

Judicial reform and police funding. In the past I have opposed mandatory minimum sentences. Today I have second thoughts. Too many people are being released back on our streets from drug dealers to sexual perverts who are exploiting the leniency of judges who seem to have more concern for the criminal than the victims and something has to change. Police funding in our rural communities is not keeping pace with cost of living, and affording a home. Policing is a function of government and should be a priority for our elected officials. In the last four years we have doubled the Department of Health and Welfare. In many instances we are paying people not to work and neglecting our responsibility to an actual function of government. This needs to change.

Integrity in Affiliation

Submission: No
This candidate has not submitted an Integrity in Affiliation form for this election cycle.

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