Why are you running now, and what makes you the right candidate for this moment?
The system is broken, everybody knows it, and yet there are very, very few people actually running on fixing that broken system. And I have been developing a campaign to do something about fixing our broken system for a long time now, and this is the time to run it.
What do you think is the top issue, and what is your plan to address it if elected?
For me, the top issue is getting big money out of politics. I am proposing a constitutional amendment called the Ban Big Money Amendment. It's meant to be a tool to help inspire people to become single issue voters and to get other candidates to run on it. So there's five principles. The source of all political spending has to be voting age citizens. No corporations, no organizations, no super PACs, no unions, just people. And if they give their money to some specially designed organization that's just for political advocacy, then that organization can spend that money. Then, we cap the annual spending of any individual to some percentage of individual median income, and that would turn the volume of the wealthy way down, so no more Elon Musk spending all that money in an election. Then we need to have a specific list of what constitutes political spending: Campaigns, electioneering, advertising, any kind of media marketing campaign that's intended to manipulate people, lobbying, those things need to be restricted for big money. The fourth thing that we need to do is return the power to local, state and the federal government to cap campaign spending. That ruling in 1971 Buckley v. Valeo got rid of that. My amendment would bring that back. The amendment has to have teeth. So if somebody violates this amendment, then they commit a federal felony and they face fines and jail time.
How will you represent the entire district, from the urban areas to the rural and tribal parts of northern Nevada?
I am an idealist when it comes to representative government. I want nothing more than to be able to represent everybody well in Congress. I am familiar with urban issues. I've lived in cities my whole life. So there might be people in the rural areas who will say like he doesn't understand our issues. I'm going to get out there and I'm going to learn. I'm the kind of person who listens. I know I don't have all the answers. So I've been very out there in my campaign, learning about mining, tribal issues, farming issues, water, ranching, public lands. I have a PhD in physics. I'm good at studying. I am a huge policy nerd. On the issues that are of importance to Northern Nevada, if I am not already relatively expert on those things, I will become expert on those things in short order.
