VOTE411 Voter Guide

I spent 31 years in the Air Force and retired as a major general. In my military career, I managed the networks carrying the President's communications, oversaw cyberspace operations protecting military infrastructure worldwide, commanded at multiple levels, and managed budgets worth billions of dollars. I developed policy at the highest levels of the Air Force and the Department of Defense, where I also saw firsthand how government becomes unmanageable and unresponsive to the people it serves. On retiring to northern Idaho, I researched policy impacts on our communities through my work with RAND Corporation. I know how to solve complex problems at scale. Idaho needs that experience in Congress.

My first goal is to make Congress responsive to the people — not to party leaders or donors. That means showing up, doing the work, and voting for Idaho families, not a party line. On policy, I'm focused on putting a middle-class lifestyle back within reach: tackling housing and health care costs, fixing our agricultural economy by dropping damaging tariffs, reforming immigration to match what our farms and dairies need, and keeping public lands in public hands. It means restoring honest competition so small businesses succeed on the merits of their ideas. Securing our future means fixing Social Security before the 2033 shortfall becomes a crisis, and bringing real fiscal discipline to a government that pays more in interest on the debt than it spends on defense. It means getting ahead of AI and disinformation before they damage institutions we depend on. Most of these problems have workable solutions. What's been missing is the independence to pursue them.

Our most significant challenge is that Idaho is misrepresented, by representatives who vote the party line regardless of what their constituents want and by a national narrative that treats this state as monolithic Red territory – conforming to the values and priorities directed in extremist media. It isn’t. Speaking with people up and down this district, I found neighbors of every affiliation who want the same things: affordable housing and health care, an agricultural economy that works, secure retirements, and a government that lives within its means. The policy agenda to deliver that is clear: undo the self-inflicted damage of tariffs and burdens on the workforce; make the highest earners pay their fair share; tackle the real costs driving housing and health care out of reach; fix Social Security before the clock runs out; and restore fiscal discipline to a government now spending more on debt interest than on defense.

Thank you for engaging — especially for doing your research. Democracy works when voters dig into who the candidates are and what they actually stand for, not just which party they belong to. I encourage everyone to look past labels and compare candidates on policies and record. What do they propose, and what have they done? Whose interests do those choices serve? My worldview is simple: our economy is supreme, but it is built by our people through our land. Economy and people are not competing priorities; they are the same priority. Government should maintain the conditions that let people build their lives, and then get out of the way. Neither party is doing that today. I will. I'm grateful for the chance to serve. Please vote!