Russ Fulcher

A northern Idaho woman who is running for U.S. Congress as an independent said she chose to run out of “sheer frustration.”

Sarah Zabel, an Air Force veteran from Bayview, Idaho, is running against Republican Rep. Russ Fulcher for Idaho’s 1st Congressional District. She took a trip to Moscow and Lewiston last week to talk to local voters.

Zabel said Wednesday that Congress’s devotion to party identity has made it unable to function. Voters likewise are tired of the dysfunction on Capitol Hill, and she believes Idaho is a “highly independent” state that can embrace a candidate like her.

She was a registered Republican for three decades but has since split with the party on several issues, including taxes.

According to her, the federal government keeps falling into debt because it chooses to cut taxes for the top revenue earners in the country. She said this problem was worsened by President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

Zabel said billions of dollars are not being collected because of this choice, and the consequences have been harmful to voters as the government looks to find revenue in other areas. For example, there was a congressional proposal last year to sell off millions of acres of public land.

Idaho needs to guard against the government selling vast swaths of land in the future without consulting the state, Zabel said. She is a fan of the Public Lands in Public Hands Act introduced in congress last year that would have banned the sale or transfer of most public lands except under specific conditions. It was co-sponsored by Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson.

The most common questions she received while in Moscow and Lewiston last week were about ICE.

While she does not support abolishing ICE, she said the agency in its current form is not working.