As part of our ongoing election coverage, James Smith spoke with Nate Powell, an independent candidate for Congress representing Eastern Washington, about his campaign, policy priorities, and vision for the region. Powell, a Spokane firefighter, is running outside the traditional two-party system and says his campaign is focused on bringing working people together across political divides.
The following interview has been edited for grammar, structure, and readability while preserving the candidate’s responses.
Q: What inspired you to run as an independent, and what gap are you aiming to fill for Eastern Washington communities?
Nate Powell: “So I’m running as an independent because I don’t think either party has focused on working people and labor issues the way that I would like to see. It seems they both have become subject to the whims of corporate money. And running as an independent allows both sides, people who identify as more liberal and people who identify as more conservative, to come to a position of solidarity with each other so we can fight back against the billionaires and the mega-corporations who are fighting to keep us down.”
Q: How do you realistically plan to build influence without a party structure?
Powell: “For sure, not having the backing of a political party and the sort of funding and infrastructure that they provide is a challenge. But I think the polarizing nature of our politics is starting to push people away as we see the problems that the two-party system is causing us. I think there are a lot of people looking for another option and getting out of this partisan fighting that has started to characterize our national politics.”
Q: What systems do you believe are broken right now, and what would you do differently than either major party?
Powell: “I think that the main system that causes a lot of our problems, that it all stems from, is our campaign finance system. Without publicly funded elections, we are forced to have private individuals, and now, with the Citizens United decision, large corporations funding these elections. It creates a system where politicians are listening to their large corporate donors and not the people they’re supposed to be representing.”
Q: How do issues like economic inequality and healthcare access disproportionately affect communities in Eastern Washington?
Powell: “The main marginalized community that I’m concerned about is people in poverty. And that cuts across gender and racial lines. The drivers of racial inequality are economic inequality. So creating a healthcare system where all people have access to primary and preventative medicine, not paralleled by insurance companies who are scraping 20 percent off the top of our healthcare costs, would help those communities that need it the most.”
Q: How has your experience as a firefighter influenced your decision to run for office?
Powell: “That is the driving realization for me that our system is facing a ton of problems. It’s what I see at work. As I said, it is the result of the wealth inequality and the poverty that our community is facing.
We have to work as firefighters with the assumption that if there’s a detached garage on fire, people are living in it because home prices and rent prices have gotten so high that people can’t afford a place to live.
Healthcare costs and insurance prices have gotten so high that people are not getting the primary care that they need. They’re waiting for minor ailments to turn into emergencies before they get them taken care of.
There are people who are on government insurance and have access to care. There are people with employer-provided health insurance who have access to care. But there’s a giant population of people who don’t qualify for government assistance because they make too much money, but they don’t make enough money, or don’t have employer-provided healthcare. They fall into this gap where they have to pay out of pocket for medical care. That causes a tremendous amount of problems that we all pay for on the back end as those people use the emergency room as their primary medicine.”
Q: How would you balance the concerns of urban communities like Spokane with the needs of rural communities across the district?
Powell: “I guess I don’t see their needs as that greatly different. We all need access to good jobs with pay that can support a family and stability so that people aren’t stressing about potential job loss for no good reason. Everybody is going toward the same thing, trying to create a life of dignity for themselves and their families.
Some outcomes are more challenging in rural areas, such as access to healthcare, because they lack the density to support large or multiple hospitals the way we do in bigger cities. But I think, at the end of the day, we suffer from the same challenging problem: things are very expensive, and people are not making enough money.”
Q: When people hear your name years from now, what do you want them to say?
Powell: “In a perfect future, where everything works out the way I want it to, years from now I want people to think that I brought people together and showed this country, our district, that we have more in common, left and right, on both sides of the political spectrum, than we have separating us. That he brought people together.”
Q: If elected, how will you stay accountable to everyday people, not just donors or political insiders?
Powell: “I think that starts with where I get my campaign funding from, and that is from individuals, regular people, with the commitment to not take corporate PAC money. I do take money from unions. I’m very pro-union. I believe that is a good path to fight for higher wages.
Also, just being available to the community because I’m part of the community. I’m a guy who grew up in Spokane. I have a job, a wife, and a kid. I am not separate from the community that I’m trying to represent. I’m very much from within the community.”
Q: What is one hard decision you believe could cost you politically?
Powell: “I think that my position as an advocate for a single-payer, Medicare for All system could potentially cost me politically. We have a fairly conservative district. I do not know how well that will play with the more conservative people within the district. But I truly believe that a Medicare for All system will be better for our people in the long run.”
Q: What have you taken time to study about Congress in preparation for this role?
Powell: “The Congressional Investigations Office and the Congressional Research Office, and being able to use them as resources. Understanding that almost nothing gets done without a majority decision. Congress is complicated, and it has become more complicated because of the partisan fighting and the refusal to compromise.
That’s part of the reason I think the presence of independents, sitting between the two parties and forcing both of them to compromise, could be really valuable for our country.”
Q: Can you name issues where you would likely align with Democrats and Republicans?
Powell: “I think the Democrats will be more open to a Medicare for All system. Previously, I think Republicans were more concerned about a balanced budget and focusing on the national debt. This current administration, I don’t think, is as worried about that as we’ve seen our national debt grow and grow. But that fiscal concern and responsibility is a more conservative position of mine.”
Q: What concerns do you have about the growing national debt?
Powell: “As the debt continues to grow and grow, the debt service payments continue to grow and grow, and they take a larger and larger portion of our national income and each year’s budget. They start consuming the capital and money that we would use to pay for other services.
The service payment on the debt can eventually strangle the government’s ability to provide services to its people because more and more money is going toward paying for things we’ve already bought.”
Q: What kind of future do you want your daughter, Piper, to have?
Powell: “With the advent of AI coming to totally rearrange our economy, I’m having a hard time even imagining what the future could look like. What I hope she doesn’t have to do is work two jobs just to get by and fear being out on the street if any acute emergency happens and she’s not able to pay for it.
I believe in a social safety net as an investment in our future.”
Q: Is there anything else you would like to leave with voters?
Powell: “I think this country would benefit a lot from a little more solidarity with each other, and solidarity in terms of working together. Being open-minded to different ideas and approaches. Remembering that we have more in common. We the people should be working together to make our communities better.”
Editor’s Note: This interview is presented for informational and educational purposes as part of election coverage. The views expressed are those of the candidate and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Black Lens.