Candidate filing happened a couple of weeks ago for public offices large — federal and statewide — and more local. But hardly any attention goes to the offices for which by far the most candidates sought election: precinct committeeman (or committeewoman).

These humble offices don’t get the attention they deserve. We should give them a little.

Especially since in this primary the top-level offices, for Congress and statewide office, do not have a serious contest among them, even though (maybe not coincidentally) an unusually large number of people have filed for them. Above the state legislative level, you can expect incumbents to win practically everything, easily. And there aren’t looking to be a large number of really hot legislative primary contests either, though a few are scattered here and there.

Precinct offices up for election are far more numerous than any other kind of office. Idaho has more than 900 precincts (that exact number changes from time to time), and every party can elect people to represent them in those places. All but one candidate for them (a Constitution Party contender in Canyon County) is either Republican or Democratic.

Their mere presence on the ballot or in office can be an excellent indicator of sheer political strength: Parties strong in an area tend to be full up with precinct officers, and sometimes see actual competition for the spots. (We’ll shortly get to the very practical reasons for such competition.)

And you can see some of this in the new filings. Republican candidates for precinct office totalled 797; some are in competitive primary contests, but a large majority of Idaho precincts will have a Republican Party officer in place, and that’s a real benefit when the time comes to organize. Democrats, by contrast, drew 351 contenders, fewer than half as many; their statewide organizational deficit is real just on that basis. (Remember the exact numbers may shift a little.)

Still, Democrats have been growing their rosters of precinct candidates (and, post-primary election, officers); the numbers are better than they often have been. Most Ada County precincts have Democratic contenders, and several other counties (notably Bannock, Blaine, Bonneville, Canyon, Gem, Kootenai, Latah, Nez Perce, Shoshone and Twin Falls) are respectively represented. A number of smaller counties with only a few precincts (Bear Lake, Bingham, Butte, Camas, Clark, Custer, Valley, Washington) have a few filings each, reasonable for their size. Few counties (Adams, Lemhi, Lincoln, among them) have none at all. Republicans, by contrast, fill almost all of these offices.

For Democrats, these positions can be an often untapped political source. For Republicans, they’re that too, but also something more.

The state Republican Party, whose governing structure (as with the Democrats) is built atop those elected precinct officers, has been increasingly active in recent years, getting directly involved in legislation and insisting on what legislators of that party may or may not do or say, lest they be labeled RINOs or ostracized from party support. The battle for control is most essentially conducted at county central committee meetings (and those of the legislative district central committees), and who gets to participate in those meetings derives from who is elected as a precinct officer. Change enough precinct officers, and you can change the course of the Idaho Republican Party.

A good example of how this plays out is Kootenai County, where 105 people have filed for the seats in 74 precincts, translating to around two dozen contests — largely between the more extreme group, which has been running the central committee for years, and others (many of them long-time Republicans) who have felt shut out. The practical implications of the elections are real; there’s a straight line, for example, between the central committee’s involvement in local community college board contests and the college’s recent near-death experience.

These precinct contests, and those in some other places like Ada, Bonneville and Twin Falls counties, especially, are likely to be hard-fought in the coming weeks. Of all the primary contests upcoming on Idaho’s ballots, none may be more worth tending to.