27-06-2025
Idahoans rejected the straight white pride festival. Now vote like it
Mark Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Old State Saloon in Eagle, Idaho, is no stranger to culture-war marketing stunts. A former California reserve police officer turned real estate agent and bar owner, Fitzpatrick has built a reputation around performative outrage packaged as patriotism. His events include 'Beer for Breeders,' anti-vaccine Christian singles nights and constitutional Bible study at the bar.
But in June, Fitzpatrick escalated his campaign of provocation with what he called the 'Hetero Awesomeness Festival.' Promoted as a celebration of traditional family values, the event functioned as a thinly veiled 'Straight White Pride' rally — one that Fitzpatrick hoped would attract national attention, help boost revenue at his bar and solidify his standing in Idaho's far-right political machine.
Dozens of people attended the festival in Boise across from the Idaho Capitol.
The event was heavily promoted on X (formerly Twitter) for months by fringe influencers and far-right personalities. But despite the hype, Idahoans quietly rejected the entire spectacle. Hardly anyone showed up. The event featured militia-style attendees carrying rifles around children who were playing on bounce houses. At one point, a party-crashing performer singing a pro-LGBTQ+ song was kicked off the stage by Fitzpatrick himself.
During the festival, Fitzpatrick was broadcasting live on The Backlash podcast, hosted by Dave Reilly, a white supremacist with a long history of racist and antisemitic rhetoric. During the live broadcast, Reilly praised Boise for not having 'any blacks,' an overtly racist statement suggesting that Black people make cities undesirable. Fitzpatrick sat beside him, and his grin grew wider as Reilly dropped that racist comment. He did not cut the feed, object or distance himself during the event.
Reilly's audience — openly antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ and steeped in white grievance politics — is the audience Fitzpatrick welcomes at his bar.
Only after vendors started disavowing Reilly over his racism did Fitzpatrick attempt to distance himself from Reilly's remark. He knows what Reilly is, and only when he got called out for it did he make a disingenuous effort to distance himself.
The most disappointing part of the festival wasn't the spectacle itself, but the people who chose to align with it. Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon, the Idaho Freedom Foundation (which had a booth at the event) and multiple IFF-aligned legislators supported or promoted the festival. Some have regularly appeared at Old State Saloon events as well.
This is the same pattern seen with Ammon Bundy, an out-of-state agitator who came to Idaho to build a platform by sowing division and lies. The IFF embraced Bundy when it suited them and dropped him when the lawsuits came. Fitzpatrick is following the same trajectory, and the IFF machine is once again complicit in this.
Idaho Republican legislators and far-right propagandists eagerly supported Fitzpatrick's 'Straight Pride' event at a gathering the night before. Not one of them has disavowed Reilly's racist comments.
Just like they did with Ammon Bundy, Idaho's far right will cling to any grifter who builds an audience.
The failure of the 'Straight White Pride' event is proof that X's engagement numbers do not reflect real-world support. Fitzpatrick and his allies banked on the amplification of influencers to fill the park. But X is not real life. It is inflated by bots, anti-American foreign actors and echo chambers that create the illusion of momentum.
Legislators who buy into this illusion are chasing ghosts. View counts do not equate to real people, and Fitzpatrick's failed festival just proved it.
Idahoans were smart enough to reject Fitzpatrick's hate-fueled grift. Now it's time to reject the politicians who align themselves with these far-right influencers, amplify their messages and pretend to represent the people of Idaho. They don't. They represent self-serving organizations like the IFF and their own ambition, hoping that you'll ignore their bad behavior and re-elect them next year.
Gregory Graf is a lifelong Republican, political consultant and creator of and .
