Matt Shinners
Independent voters now represent the largest share of the American electorate, and yet they remain almost entirely unrepresented in Congress. Both major parties have spent decades optimizing for their bases, leaving the near majority of Americans who identify as independent with the choice of either voting for a party candidate they don't fully support or staying home.
A handful of high-profile independent candidates are trying to change that in 2026. They are often covered as fringe candidates whose stories are told through the lens of how they'll impact the outcome between a Republican and a Democrat, rather than on their own terms. This series exists because independent voters deserve better than that.
In Washington's 5th Congressional District, Nate Powell is running for the US House.
The Candidate
Powell is a 39-year-old Spokane fire lieutenant and first time candidate. He enlisted in the Marine Corps out of high school, completed two active-duty deployments, then came home and joined the Spokane Fire Department in 2012, rising to lieutenant in 2024. He's a member of IAFF Local 29.
His entry into politics traces to the 2025 reconciliation bill. "When the Big Beautiful Bill got passed last year, those cuts to Medicaid specifically within it I knew were going to affect the people that I saw at work every day, and I knew I needed to stop just flapping my gums and actually do some work," he said in our interview on July 23rd. After doing other work in his community, he ended up running when another firefighter who was gearing up for a run got deployment orders.
Powell is candid that he wouldn't be running without outside recruitment. He acknowledged to the Spokesman-Review that the Working Class Heroes Fund—the hybrid PAC founded by Nebraska independent Dan Osborn, who will appear in the next interview in this series—approached him first. Direct monetary support was minimal; what mattered, he said, was access to campaign staff he "wouldn't even know where to start" finding otherwise.
The Race
Washington's 5th spans 16,053 rural square miles including Spokane, Pullman, and Walla Walla, rated R+5 by Cook. Freshman Rep. Michael Baumgartner won it in 2024 with 60.6%, running well ahead of Trump in a district Trump carried with 53.9%.
The August 4 top-two primary is what makes Powell's run mathematically possible. "We have top two primary, which is fantastic for an independent," he told IVN. The field is eleven challengers deep—six Democrats, five independents including Powell—against the incumbent, who is running as the sole Republican in the field. This makes him the favorite for one of the top-two slots, especially with the strong incumbent advantage.
According to FEC filings through July 15, Powell has raised about $360,000, third behind Baumgartner’s $1.7 million and 2024 nominee Carmela Conroy's $396,000 (she took 18.3% in the primary and then lost to Baumgartner in the general). Powell does have more cash on hand than Conroy ($110k vs $74k), but Baumgartner is sitting on just shy of a million dollars, giving him a solid cash advantage.
The Polling
Tavern Research polled 578 likely voters May 18-25 (margin of error 5.6%) and found Baumgartner leading every Democrat tested by 6-8 points — but trailing Powell, 47-53. Independents drove the entire gap: they backed Baumgartner 52-48 against a generic Democrat but flipped to Powell 69-31. The pollster's own caveat needs to be kept in mind: 83% of respondents didn't recognize Powell's name, and it’s yet to be seen how it will shift if he wins the primary and Baumgartner starts using that campaign money in ads against him..
Why He Left Both Parties
"My set of policy positions doesn't have a comfortable home with the two-party system," Powell told IVN. "I'm a guy from organized labor. I don't feel like either political party has been focused on working people the way that I would like to see." He reframes the political axis entirely: "The issues that we are facing are not left-right issues; they are top-bottom issues. We've let billionaires and multinational corporations pay lobbyists to buy our politicians to own our government. Both parties are part of that."
His critique of Baumgartner is pointedly not personal. "He seems like he's a good guy... and then he went to Washington, D.C., and just got totally subsumed by his party—votes however his party would like him to vote, even if it's not in the best interests of the people here." That tracks the record: Baumgartner votes with Republicans 99% of the time, by LegisLetter's count.
Economic Ideas: Wages, Not Price Controls
Affordability is Powell's central issue, and his fix runs through wages rather than prices. "There's no real mechanism for the government to lower prices... we found through COVID that large corporations just hold on to those high prices and increase profits. So to close this gap, we need to increase wages," he said, pointing to stronger enforcement at the Department of Labor, NLRB, CFPB, and FTC, plus passage of the PRO Act to protect the right to organize.
On healthcare, he backs Medicare for All but positions it pragmatically: "In a perfect world, it's single-payer Medicare for All... but I'm also pragmatic, willing to compromise, and I will support whatever the most realistic thing that gets people healthcare is."
On the national debt, which his platform projects will consume nearly 50 cents of every tax dollar by 2050, Powell wants parity between how labor, capital gains, and corporate income are taxed: "The idea that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than my labor... is problematic for wealth equality in this country." On Social Security, his fix is narrower: eliminate the income cap on payroll taxes, which he says buys "an extra 20 or 30 years of runway" before the program hits a shortfall.
Government Reform
Powell's reform agenda includes banning insider stock trading by members of Congress, term limits, and overturning Citizens United—anchored, he says, in the fact that only 2% of Congress comes from the working class.
On AI, he views the technology as key to the economy of the future. He doesn’t want to ban it; he wants regulatory authority left with states and localities rather than preempted federally, aimed specifically at data centers: "That AI buildout needs to be regulated in a way where individual ratepayers aren't picking up the tab on higher energy prices," through requirements that data centers bring their own power generation and pay to upgrade the grid they strain. It's a live issue at home—Spokane County commissioners are currently weighing a data center moratorium.
Turning Out the Vote
Asked about independents planning to sit out November, Powell had a direct message for them: "Everybody has to vote. It is the one piece of power that you really have. But also get out there and do some work, because nothing is going to change if we do not work to fix it." He points to his own decision to run as the model he's asking voters to follow.
Practical Advice for Would-Be Independents
Asked what he'd tell someone weighing an independent run, Powell—a political outsider ten months into his first campaign — gave the most concretely practical answer in this series:
The infrastructure exists now. "There is infrastructure now to support independent candidates in a way that there has never been before," especially for people like him with no political background. "I was not a poli sci major or anything like that."
You need a bridge to reach it. "You need a bridge to that infrastructure to get started if you want to run a serious and viable campaign," which means proactively contacting the national organizations that support independents—the system, he says, is "insular and hard to navigate if you have never been a part of it." He specifically noted the Forward Party as one of the organizations that independents should reach out to for early support.
Expect to define yourself from scratch. "People want to figure out what type of independent you are in a way that they don't have to with the major political parties." A party label does work for a candidate that an independent has to do alone, race by race, voter by voter.
His summary: "You gotta get connected to the system if you want to run as an independent."
Assessment
WA-05 will be an interesting test of the power of the independent label in 2026. The “safe” bet is that the Republican incumbent will take the top spot in a Republican-leaning district where he is the only Republican on the ballot; and the second slot will go to the Democrat with the most money and with a history of running in the district.
However, the field is split, with six Democrats in the race. The independent field has options, as well, though Powell outstrips their fundraising by an order of magnitude. The labor credentials, veteran status, and work as a firefighter will carry a lot of weight in the district, potentially leading to him shoring up the independent vote. And the polling showing him as the only one who can beat Baumgartner is a strong message to a Democratic base that is looking to take seats from Republicans. If the Democratic base splits between the six party members and Powell based on that calculation, there’s a clear path for him to win on August 4th…and in November.
It’s important to remember, however, that the poll also showed a low level of name recognition. That’s an opportunity as much as a liability, though a win in the primary would go a long way to getting voters in the district to learn about who he is. This race will be a very interesting one to watch, so set a calendar reminder for yourself for the 4th.