To ask who Eric Myricks is, is to understand something about the kind of leadership Idaho needs at this moment in its history. Idaho stands at a crossroads where rapid growth meets the fragile realities of rural communities, where aging families seek support, where young people search for opportunity, and where politics often drift far from the daily lives of the people they are meant to serve. It is also the home of Eric’s wife, Lesley, who was raised in Idaho Falls, grounding their family in the lived experience of this state and deepening Eric’s understanding of its people and its values. In such a moment, Idaho does not need another caretaker of the status quo. It needs a leader shaped by real experience, deep empathy, creative discipline, and a belief in the dignity of every person who calls this place home.
Eric’s story begins far from Idaho, in Cleveland, Ohio, where he grew up in a working family shaped by service, scholarship, and a deep respect for community. His mother retired as an administrator for Children and Family Services, and his father as an inner-city high school chemistry teacher—two professions rooted in service to others. His formative years were shaped by an all-boys preparatory education from K–12, punctuated by a one-year sabbatical in Kidron, Ohio, where he lived in an Amish community and attended Central Christian High School. Immersed in rural life, he learned firsthand the values of simplicity, discipline, and communal responsibility—values that would later resonate deeply with the landscapes and rhythms of Idaho. He returned to University School for his senior year, and it was there that he was accepted into the prestigious Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, only the second vocalist in the institution’s history to receive such an invitation. Eric went on to attend CIM, where he studied vocal performance and began shaping the artistic discipline that would ultimately carry him onto stages around the world.
Before he ever stepped into public life, Eric’s first calling was to ministry, a calling rooted partly in the quiet strength and communal ethic he absorbed in Kidron’s Amish community. Those early lessons in humility and service found deeper expression when he became a youth pastor in the Mennonite Church. There, he learned how to listen with compassion, how to guide young people through moments of confusion and hope, and how to speak to the deeper questions that shape the human spirit. Ministry revealed what his upbringing had already begun to teach him: that leadership begins not with authority but with service, not with the desire to be heard but with the willingness to hear others.
His voice, however, would carry him into a new realm. As Elijah Rock, Eric has become a celebrated artist of theater and the Great American Songbook, a canon that stands as a living testament to the American story itself. Few artistic traditions capture the emotional journey of this nation more completely: its migrations and longings, its struggles and triumphs, its restless reaching for possibility. To perform early American music is not simply to entertain; it is to inhabit the cultural memory of a people, to give voice to the stories that shaped generations.
That understanding followed Eric onto stages across the country, where he has headlined historic theaters such as The Boston Paramount and the Cleveland Playhouse Theatre. Over the course of his career, he has appeared in more than fifty union theater productions and brought his craft to acclaimed stage works, television, and film. His performance as Roland Hayes in Breath and Imagination earned him an NAACP Theatre Award, a recognition of both his vocal mastery and his ability to embody profound emotional truth. Through those years on stage, he learned how to carry truth with precision, how to connect across difference, and how to speak with a clarity that moves the heart. He also learned humility, for the stage demands an honesty that cannot be faked. Truth must resonate, or it disappears. Politics rarely requires that kind of honesty, though it should.
Eric allowed the truth he honed on stage to evolve into a powerful recording career, where his interpretations gained new resonance and reach. Acclaimed Great American Songbook albums such as Gershwin for My Soul, Matters of The Heart, Swoon, and the more recent Memories Unleashed – Impulse 1 reveal his devotion not only to honoring America’s musical heritage but to renewing it for modern audiences. His interpretations echo the lineage of Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, and Frank Sinatra – artists who understood that these songs hold the heartbeat of America and that preserving them is both an artistic duty and a cultural service. In Eric’s hands, the Great American Songbook becomes not a museum piece, but a living, breathing bridge between past and present.
Life called Eric into a deeper purpose when his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Rather than retreat from the pain, he stepped toward it. He and his wife Lesley founded The Elijah Rock Foundation Inc. to support caregivers and raise awareness about Alzheimer’s and related dementias. His commitment drew the attention of global leaders, and he was selected as an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at the University of California, San Francisco, a program established and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. That fellowship connects Eric to the Atlantic Institute, an international community of Fellows working to advance social equity, environmental sustainability, inclusive economic development, and broader access to healthcare, education, affordable housing, and renewable energy.
Through this fellowship, Eric was mentored by Dr. Bruce Miller, Director of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, and Dr. Charles Windon, neurologist and faculty at UCSF. Under their guidance, he engages with Atlantic Fellows from around the world, deepening his understanding of neurodegenerative disease, public health inequities, and the complex realities faced by caregivers across diverse communities.
Post his fellowship, he received a pilot award from GBHI, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Alzheimer’s Society, ensuring that the voices of families and caregivers were not merely studied but honored. Eric launched Memories Unleashed, a project that blended music, science, and personal narrative to illuminate how the arts can support brain health across the lifespan. In this work, Eric became a bridge between research and lived experience, between neurological science and the stories of ordinary people whose lives are reshaped by dementia.
Running for Mayor of Nampa in 2025, Eric walked neighborhoods, knocked on doors, and sat in living rooms and driveways listening to the anxieties and aspirations of everyday Idahoans. As a first-time candidate, he finished in second place with 28 percent of the vote, a testament to the connection he built with the people he sought to serve. He spoke with seniors who felt unseen in their caregiving struggles, young families priced out of the communities they helped build, and workers doing everything right yet still falling behind. What he discovered was simple and profound: Idahoans were not asking for theatrics or partisanship. They were asking to be heard.
Those conversations reshaped him. They revealed how far government can drift from the realities of the people it serves. They reminded him that public office is not a platform but a trust. They called him toward a form of leadership grounded in humility, reverence, and deep responsibility, Leadership that sees every person and honors every story.
This is why Eric Myricks is the right leader for Idaho’s future as Lt. Governor. A Blue Dog (Conservative) Democrat who brings the communicator’s grace, trained in theaters where truth must land with precision. He brings the advocate’s resolve, formed through years of fighting for brain health equity and long-term care reform. He brings the organizer’s humility, molded by thousands of door-to-door conversations with Idahoans whose struggles never make headlines but define the fabric of this state. And he brings the thinker’s discipline, shaped through global work on how communities can thrive across the lifespan.
Idaho does not need leaders who cling to the comforts of the past or govern with the assumptions of a different era. It needs leaders who understand the Idaho of today and the Idaho that is rapidly emerging — leaders with the energy, perspective, and imagination to meet the challenges facing a new generation while honoring the wisdom of those who came before. Eric’s vision is not ideological; it is deeply human, shaped by a belief that leadership must adapt, evolve, and rise to meet the moment in which we live.
If Idaho chooses Eric Myricks, it chooses a leader who believes seniors deserve care, youth deserve opportunity, families deserve stability, and communities—rural and urban—deserve a government worthy of their trust. It chooses a public servant ready to help Idaho write a future as expansive as its sky and as steadfast as its people.
And in the end, that is who Eric Myricks is: a servant shaped by experience, a voice shaped by story, and a leader shaped by the belief that every Idahoan deserves to be seen.