Paul Sand, a 77-year-old retired software engineer and antique shop owner from the tiny Clearwater-region community of White Bird, is running for Idaho governor on the Libertarian ticket, centering his campaign on a dramatic shift of power away from state government and toward county governments.

Sand is making his second run for governor after a 2022 Libertarian bid. He is entirely self-funded, accepting no contributions from corporate donors or private individuals, and is relying on local media coverage and word of mouth to get his message out.

A Case for County-Centered Government

The centerpiece of Sand’s platform is a fundamental restructuring of Idaho’s governmental hierarchy. He envisions county governments taking on most of the responsibilities currently held by state agencies, with the Idaho Legislature convening only on a limited schedule and primarily to approve county budgets.

Under his vision, a handful of state offices would remain — including the Idaho Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and a state transportation department — but most governing authority would devolve to the county level.

Sand argues that county governments are more accountable to residents than the state capital. “Counties are more uniform and they actually have closer contact with the people because the people can actually set their budgets and vote them in and out — it’s a perfect system,” he said.

He frames his campaign as an effort to energize county governments to assert themselves. “I want to give people an alternative,” Sand said. “I want to convince the counties that they should stand up for themselves.”

Tax Elimination and Public Lands

Sand also proposes eliminating Idaho’s income and sales taxes entirely, leaving property taxes as the primary mechanism for funding local governments. He argues that concentrating revenue at the local level aligns with his broader goal of keeping government closest to the people it serves.

On public lands — a perennial issue in Idaho politics — Sand breaks from those who favor privatization. He opposes selling off state or federal public lands but supports continuing to lease them for purposes such as mining and grazing. The distinction puts him closer to the traditional Western conservation-with-use position than to either the full-disposal or full-preservation camps.

A Campaign Built from White Bird

Sand’s home base of White Bird, a community of roughly 80 people located southeast of Lewiston in Idaho County, is a fitting emblem for his brand of small-community politics. He operates Sandcastle Antiques there and spent a decade on the White Bird City Council, serving from 2007 to 2017.

That local government experience shapes how Sand talks about the race. He is not running a conventional statewide campaign with donor networks or major advertising buys. Instead, his outreach depends on grassroots attention and earned media — a strategy that reflects both his self-funding constraint and his philosophical distrust of top-down political structures.

The Broader 2026 Field

Idaho’s 2026 gubernatorial race features a crowded Republican primary alongside candidates from smaller parties. The Idaho GOP held its convention earlier this year, reflecting an active intra-party debate over the direction of state government — debates Sand’s candidacy enters from the outside.

Libertarian candidates in Idaho rarely capture more than a small share of the statewide vote, and Sand’s no-donation model limits his ability to compete financially with major-party nominees. Still, his platform raises policy questions — particularly around tax structure, county authority, and public lands — that resonate in rural Idaho communities where frustration with Boise-based decision-making runs high.

For Sand, the point may be less about winning the governorship than about forcing a conversation. His campaign is a direct challenge to Idaho’s centralized state government model, pressed from a man who has spent his life in one of Idaho’s smallest towns and believes the answers to the state’s problems are closer to home than most politicians admit.