Firefighter Nate Powell thinks Eastern Washington is ready for an independent cage fighter for Congress

Marine Corps veteran and Spokane firefighter Nate Powell portrays himself as a fighter in his independent bid for Congress – a literal fighter, highlighting in campaign ads that he was “undefeated in the cage,” a reference to his 5-0-0 record in amateur mixed martial arts, where Powell fought as a lightweight in 2015-16.

He’s one of 11 people hoping to unseat Rep. Michael Baumgartner this November, and appears to be the second-best funded challenger – after Democrat Carmela Conroy, who was Baumgartner’s November election challenger two years ago and is running again – with over $130,000 raised as of the end of March.

Powell holds many of the same views as the progressive Democrats running for the same seat, despite a vocal suspicion of both political parties. He argues in favor of universal healthcare, pointing to his personal experiences as a firefighter continually responding to the same households who, because of their finances, could not seek medical help until it became an emergency requiring a call to 911.

“They use the emergency room as their primary healthcare because they can’t afford insurance,” he said. “I stood in the living room with a guy having a heart attack who would not take an ambulance to the hospital because he couldn’t afford it.”

The Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump last summer made major cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and only exacerbated this issue, Powell argues.

He believes that the broader economy has been rigged in favor of the wealthy, in large part because Congress is “a whole bunch of rich people … lawyers, corporate executives and career politicians, not people like us.” He was able to buy a home thanks to a “good union job and a VA loan,” but could not afford the same home today.

“How did we get there?” he said at a December event. “Billionaires. Corporate interests bought up both political parties. They bought our government, sent our jobs overseas, and they traded us cheap TVs for expensive houses and unaffordable healthcare.”

A member of the Spokane Firefighters Union, Powell regularly voices his support for strong unions and was the sole recipient of the Washington State Labor Council’s endorsement for the 5th Congressional District. He supports raising the federal minimum wage to at least $15 per hour.

He has called the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns “illegal, essentially kidnapping … without due process, held without charges, held without representation and access into what we just assume are horrible conditions, including right here in our home state in the detention center over in Tacoma.”

But he has also clashed with local progressives. In a recent candidate forum, he argued that he would not oppose building additional immigration detention centers in Washington because they would face tougher scrutiny locally than they would in Idaho or elsewhere. However, state officials are currently locked in a monthslong legal battle to gain access to the Tacoma detention center to observe conditions there, as the private facility’s operator has denied them access.

He was frustrated with a porous southern border under the Biden administration, though he believes that the Trump administration’s course correction has been “chaotic” and “inhumane.” A former wrestling coach, he also expresses discomfort with transgender women in women’s sports, though he doesn’t believe the federal government has a role in regulating the issue.

He also believes that Democrats have regularly taken criminal justice reform too far and that “a level of disorder has been allowed.”

“The Democrats are very sympathetic to why somebody is breaking the law, and I think the reason why is important, and we should be helping people, but breaking the law is breaking the law,” Powell said. “I know where that disorder comes from, it comes from the fact that people can’t afford to live … and that disorder that people feel in their lives makes its way onto our streets.”

Powell shows mild discomfort with being in the limelight, and he acknowledged in an interview that he wouldn’t have considered running for office if the Working Class Heroes Fund hadn’t recruited him in the first place. The political action committee was founded by Dan Osborn, an independent U.S. Senate candidate from Nebraska who lost against incumbent Republican Deb Fischer in 2024, but significantly overperformed compared to many other Republican challengers.

The political action committee, including Powell, all of whom are firefighters running independent populist campaigns running against Republicans in solidly red congressional districts.

The group, and Powell’s association with it, came under scrutiny in a local politics blog formed by the late-Jerry LeClair, a retired surgeon and major Democratic donor who supported Conroy’s bid for Congress. The blog post alleged that the PAC is a “dark-money” group recruiting “white males with working-class, public-service backgrounds, including firefighters and veterans” in part as a fundraising effort more focused on pumping up Osborn’s 2026 campaign than in the recruited candidates themselves.

Powell raised roughly $3,200 from the PAC, which has itself raised $1.4 million, much of which has been funneled to a third Osborn-affiliated PAC, Independent Campaigns LLC. Conservative watchdog group Americans for Public Trust has also alleged the organizations have illegally been paying other members of Osborn’s family.

Beyond the minimal financial support, Powell said the organization helped connect him to relatively high-powered campaign staffers and consultants from Western Washington.

“These types of relationships and connections that I have no knowledge of previously, I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Powell said, adding that the group has had no influence on his policy positions.

He acknowledges that independent members of Congress are rare – the only current independent members of the House were initially elected as Republicans – but he believes attitudes are changing.

“I think there’s a real appetite for some something different that’s actually going to work in this district, but also nationwide,” Powell said. “We are at a moment of crisis in this country, and I think people are ready to buck that two-party system and vote for the candidate that they feel is best.”