Idaho state Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld easily recalls the moment her husband drove up next to her car in their garage. His face was pale as he ended a phone call, she said.
The company for which the Zuidervelds are independent sales representatives had just told Tom Zuiderveld that three of its dairy customers no longer wanted to work with him. The reason? Glenneda Zuiderveld’s politics, she told the Idaho Statesman. The couple, high school sweethearts, will take a six-figure pay cut, she estimated, about 80% of their family’s revenue.
“It’s one thing if you don’t like my politics. Send the nasty grams. Do the ugly mailers. That’s part of politics,” said Glenneda Zuiderveld, a Republican from Twin Falls in her second two-year term. “But to actually go after your livelihood like that is a step too far.”
The call came on March 20, more than two months into the Idaho Legislature’s 2026 session. Glenneda Zuiderveld went public on Substack the same day, and 10 days later issued a news release saying that the three dairies were retaliating against her husband because of her support of immigration enforcement. The three are Millenkamp Cattle and Black Pine Cattle, both in Jerome; and Cedar Ridge Dairy in Filer. Millenkamp and Black Pine are actually the same dairy operating under different business names.
Glenneda Zuiderveld and her husband have some savings, she said in an early April interview from her garden-level office in the Statehouse. But they hadn’t really talked yet about what they were going to do.
She was sure of one thing: “I am still going to run. I am not going to back down,” she said. “To stay the course of representing the people, I have worked really hard to not back down and to make sure I’m representing them.”
But Rick Naerebout, the CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, painted a different picture: Two dairymen out of 350 in the state had quietly made a purchasing decision. That was “free-market capitalism,” he told the Statesman, not the whole industry out against her.
That said, Naerebout was blunt: Glenneda Zuiderveld, he said, is “anti-ag.”
The spat represents the yawning gap between different factions of the Idaho Republican Party and what makes someone conservative. “Not all Idaho Republicans are created equal,” he said.
Naerebout — whose organization for years has called upon Congress to reform immigration, and who repeatedly points out the dairy industry’s dependence on foreign-born workers — said he talked with one of the two dairymen, and that dairyman’s decision was not based solely on immigration. Naerebout declined to say whom he talked to.
Glenneda Zuiderveld had voted against funding the eradication of invasive quagga mussels from the Snake River and against law enforcement budgets, Naerebout said. The senator told the Statesman she was skeptical of how effective the current quagga mussel treatments were.
Water is the “lifeblood” of the Magic Valley, and Glenneda Zuiderveld has opposed bills that support water infrastructure, Naerebout said — opposition he calls “baffling.”
A representative of Millenkamp Cattle initially declined to comment, saying the company had not seen the allegations. That representative did not return a follow-up email with the details included. Attempts to reach Black Pine were unsuccessful.
The company the Zuidervelds work with did not return a request for comment. Glenneda Zuiderveld did not want to share the name of the company for which she and her husband still work as contractors.
In a statement Tuesday, after this story was published, Hank Hafliger of Cedar Ridge Dairy said that the decision “was the combination of all her votes and statements” on agriculture issues. Like most American companies and people, Hafliger wrote, they choose to do business with people who have similar values.
“District 24 is completely dependent on agriculture and food production, and we struggle to find a single meaningful bill she has advocated for in support of her constituent farmers and food processors in her time in Boise,” Hafliger wrote. “Like the hundreds of other purchasing decisions we make in our business, we did not publicize this decision, nor do we care to have it discussed further in public discourse.”
4 Twin Falls legislators ‘work against Magic Valley ag’
Tom Zuiderveld is not apolitical, Naerebout added: He is his wife’s campaign treasurer and donates to candidates and to the Magic Valley Liberty Alliance, an ultra-conservative organization that Naerebout called “anti-agriculture.” Tom Zuiderveld donated $1,100 to the alliance’s political action committee in 2024, according to a campaign-contribution filing with the Idaho secretary of state. Neither the PAC nor the alliance itself returned a request for comment.
Glenneda Zuiderveld, along with three other conservative Twin Falls-area legislators, “do not represent Magic Valley agriculture and they work against Magic Valley agriculture, and they work against conservative principles,” Naerebout said. The three are Sen. Josh Kohl and Reps. Clint Hostetler and David Leavitt, all Twin Falls Republicans.
Hostetler told the Statesman that his opponents are twisting his votes against some “enhancement” budgets, which are expenses above what is needed to keep the lights on, into messaging that he opposes the groups that would get funding. He said he was trying to be fiscally conservative with his votes.
“What does it mean to be conservative?” Hostetler said Friday by phone. “Conservative means making the hard decisions when it comes to the budget so we can ensure the fiscal stability of our budget.”
Kohl and Leavitt did not return messages requesting comment.
Hardliners in Idaho politics
Glenneda Zuiderveld’s career, along with that of her husband, has been intertwined with the dairy industry. She said she was raised in Idaho, got married in Las Vegas at 18, and moved to California, where her two oldest children were born. She returned to Idaho, where her third child was born.
In 2022, she challenged five-term incumbent Sen. Jim Patrick and won the GOP primary by 37 votes, after Idaho Freedom Action ran an attack ad against her opponent. She dove into issues like ranked-choice voting (her bill banning it became law in 2023) and immigration (she co-sponsored a failed memorial in 2024 asking the federal government to secure the border and impeach then-President Joe Biden).
She also became the center of a fight in November 2023 when then-Senate Pro Tem Chuck Winder, R-Boise, sent her, along with two other legislators, a letter rebuking them for criticizing other lawmakers online. Winder told Glenneda Zuiderveld he would remove her as a committee vice chair for her actions. Winder lost his primary race the following year.
But perhaps her most consequential act has been her involvement in the self-identified Gang of Eight, a group of fiscally hardline senators and representatives who in 2025 and 2026 pledged to vote against budgets that didn’t meet their requirements, such as no new employees and no federal funding. She said that the anti-police accusation came from not wanting to approve expenses beyond the basic needs.
The other Magic Valley legislators in the “gang” are in the same camp as Glenneda Zuiderveld, Naerebout said, but she’s the only one the two dairymen do business with.
He pointed as well to her vote against a symbolic resolution in 2026 supporting water infrastructure projects. In the Senate, Glenneda Zuiderveld took umbrage with a section in the resolution about cloud seeding, a type of weather modification that typically tries to increase the amount of rain or snow.
On another bill, to add $30 million to invest in water infrastructure, she said that she wanted previous projects to go forward first and that there should be limits on the type of projects and an end date for the funding.
“What makes the Magic Valley magic is our water,” she said on the Senate floor in 2025, before she voted against it.
Polarization and division
Ruptured social ties are one of the consequences of deep polarization and division, whether that’s a business split or often, cutting off contact with family and friends you disagree with, said Jeff Lyons, an associate professor at Boise State University.
In a time with heated national conversations around politics, it’s hard to insulate state government from the anger. For some, it’s become a badge of honor to not back down in the face of criticism, no matter how valid.
“I do sense more hostility,” Lyons told the Statesman in a phone interview. “… Are you willing to compromise, or will you be somebody who will wage a battle against the other party at every turn on the road?”
Naerebout said he’s seen an increase in individual Idaho dairymen wanting to be more involved and to contribute to campaigns in the Idaho primary on May 19.
In an April 8 newsletter, the Gang of Eight wrote that losing the business from the dairymen “went beyond disagreement” and brought “personal risk” into the role of legislating. The gang includes Leavitt, Hostetler, Kohl and Zuiderveld, along with Sen. Christy Zito, R-Mountain Home; Rep. Kent Marmon, R-Caldwell; Rep. Lucas Cayler, R-Caldwell; and Rep. Faye Thompson, R-McCall.
“Because once political disagreements start costing people their jobs or their family’s businesses, it changes the nature of public service,” they wrote. “If this becomes the expected cost of serving in office, fewer good people will be willing or able to step forward.”
