22-05-2025
Victoria Bauman wins Community Library Network seat
May 21—The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee completed a takeover of the Community Library Network Tuesday when its preferred candidate won a fifth seat on the board of trustees.
Victoria Bauman beat Michelle Lippert with 57% of the vote.
The seat was open after Trustee Tony Ambrosetti, who was appointed to fill a vacancy late last year, declined to run for a full term. Although Ambrosetti had conservative views aligned with the board majority, he was not officially endorsed by the KCRCC because he wasn't elected.
Now, all five members of the board that oversees six libraries in Kootenai County outside of Coeur d'Alene, as well as Pinehurst Library in Shoshone County, were endorsed by the KCRCC's influential "rating and vetting" process. The result is an inverse of voters' recent backlash sweep against KCRCC candidates for the North Idaho College board in November.
Library trustees are nonpartisan positions. Terms last six years.
Bauman ran in support of the library board's recent actions restricting access to materials it considers "harmful to minors" under Idaho's Children's School and Library Protection Act that passed in 2024. Library staff plan to open a room storing a "mature content collection" for adult access only at the Post Falls Library.
Lippert, a former longtime Post Falls school board trustee, was endorsed by the Library Alliance of North Idaho. She ran on concerns about board overreach interfering with parents' rights.
James Hanlon's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
