This is an episode of Rooted In, where our reporters take you back to their hometowns to capture the voice of the nation ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

ISLAND PARK, ID -- If you're trying to understand the ongoing battle over the soul of the Republican Party, a good place to start is out on a lake in eastern Idaho near the Wyoming border. Armed with a fishing rod, of course.

I met Jack Nelsen, a lifelong Republican and state representative in Island Park, Idaho, where he put up with my endless questions about the future of GOP politics in return for helping him net some rainbow trout. (Despite my questionable fishing skills, two trout took pity on me and let me hook them.)

Idaho, deeply Republican and mostly rural, is about the furthest you could get from a battleground state.

So it is no surprise it is often overlooked in the national media during election cycles.

But under the surface there is a groundswell of tensions between traditional Republicans, the MAGA loyalists and newer hardline-right politicians tussling for power and influence in Idaho. This Mountain West state has become a key bellwether for the fight over what a post-Trump Republican Party could become at the national level, as well as a test lab for some of the nation's most controversial conservative legislation.

As a fourth-generation Idahoan, I pay close attention to what's going on in the home state (or at least try, given that my day job keeps me in Washington, D.C., or much farther afield covering U.S. foreign policy).

Nelsen is one of the old guard, a retired dairy farmer who's defied his party's hard right lurch and battles to keep the Republican Party on a more centrist tack, taking political flak in the process.

He's clashed with other hard-right state politicians like Clint Hostetler, a deeply religious legislator who recently moved to southern Idaho from California. Hostetler described himself to me as a "political refugee" who wants to save Idaho from leftist policies he believed destroyed California.

So have the newer upstarts permanently altered Idaho politics, or do the old guard still have a fighting chance to preserve what they see as Idaho values?

Watch our full episode to hear what Nelsen, Hostetler and others say about the battle raging within the right.