Idaho U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher will face three election challengers for his seat this November. The candidates in the race acknowledged that the increasing cost of living is a major challenge Idahoans are facing, but largely disagree on how to solve it.
Democrat Kaylee Peterson, independent Sarah Zabel, and Constitution Party candidate Brendan Gomez are running against the Republican incumbent to represent Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, which covers the Idaho panhandle and western side of the state.
The Idaho Capital Sun sat down with Fulcher, Peterson and Zabel to talk about where they stand on healthcare, immigration and public lands.
Gomez did not respond to a request for an interview.
The general election will take place Nov. 3.
Candidates agree healthcare is too expensive, present different solutions
Nearly all the candidates said high healthcare costs are one of the top challenges Idahoans face.
Zabel said healthcare costs need to be addressed in four different areas: hospital services, physician services, prescription drugs, and the insurance marketplace.
She proposed breaking up hospital systems that buy up and eliminate competition, allowing healthcare workers such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants to provide higher levels of care when appropriate, and requiring transparency of costs of different medical services and pharmaceutical options.
She would also support providing something similar to enhanced premium tax credits, which were meant to make health insurance purchased through state marketplaces more affordable, but expired at the end of 2025.
“We’ve seen where the biggest holes were,” she said. “So look at where are the people most affected, and let’s see if we can patch those parts at least where the people are most affected, and where it’s driving the worst part of the insurance spiral, so hopefully it’s not the whole thing, but it is a big chunk.”
Peterson would support a single-payer health insurance program, often called Medicare for all, for base-line coverage with private insurance options.
“For me, the government needs to step in, and we have to reimagine a system in which we’re not also paying the taxes for healthcare and paying thousands of dollars a month,” Peterson said. “I think single-payer options right now would seem like the most affordable. While allowing the private market to do its thing, we bring some competition back into our healthcare market.”
She said it would provide more oversight and transparency to the healthcare market.
Fulcher said that rising costs since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010 have shown that it has a number of problems. However, he said it’s a “landmine” issue and can’t be eliminated at the moment because there’s no replacement with enough support.
He said he’s supportive of a proposal to create a “voluntary parallel path” for private market-place insurance. Fulcher said he’s working with the sponsor, Alabama Republican U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer on the proposed legislation.
“If you chose, you could sign up for a market-based deal,” Fulcher said. “And the brief summary is, you get the benefit paid directly to you, and then you go figure out what channels you want to invest that healthcare in …you pick the provider, you pick the healthcare service, and you manage it yourself.”
Candidates say immigration reforms needed to support workforce
Peterson said she supported the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would’ve created a temporary legal status for undocumented farm workers, streamlined the migrant agricultural worker visa H-2A program and updated some of its processes, and created a green card option for long-term farm workers.
It also would’ve required employers to all use the federal work authorization verification system E-Verify to determine if workers were legally allowed to work in the U.S. Versions of the bill have been proposed since 2019, and it passed the House in 2021 but failed to move forward in the Senate.
Fulcher voted against it, and fellow Idaho Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson voted in favor.
Peterson said she’d support funding more immigration judges and streamlining processes for legal immigration “for a fraction of the cost that we are paying masked federal agents to invade our communities.”
Fulcher said he opposed immigration reform proposals that didn’t include amnesty, which would allow undocumented people already in the country a pathway to legal authorization.
“I’m open to negotiating that, trying to put some intelligence into right-sizing the number of slots available and the window of time it’s valid,” Fulcher said. “But I really don’t subscribe to scrapping it, or opening up to just amnesty either. So I think the probably the best solution there is to work with our industries. And it doesn’t have to be a national thing.”
He said he supported making changes to the program that differ state by state and industry by industry depending on needs. Currently, the program is only for temporary, seasonal work and cannot be used for year-round farm labor, including dairies.
Zabel said she supported an effort proposed this year, the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act, which would expand the H-2A program and allow for year-round work.
She would also support similar visa programs for industries like construction and hospitality, which often rely on undocumented labor.
“We have needs all year round, and they’re not being met,” she said. “… it’s not something that you need a think tank to figure it out. The solution is right there.”
Idaho’s public lands are a top priority for candidates. Fulcher says he doesn’t want to sell lands.
Fulcher named management of public lands as one of his top priorities.
“The popular perception out there is, ‘Fulcher wants to sell lands.’ I do not. That’s not it,” he said. “But what I do want to do is I want to figure out a way to manage it better.”
Part of that perception stems from a late-night committee vote in May 2025 on a proposed provision to the passive tax-and-spend budget reconciliation, which became the “big beautiful” law. Fulcher voted in favor of an addition that would have sold off thousands of acres of federal lands in Nevada and Utah, the Idaho Press reported. The amendment passed the committee but ultimately was not included in the final budget package.
Fulcher said the amendment was backed by Nevada Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei.
“It was a Nevada issue, and I support them,” Fulcher said about his vote. “The landscape in Idaho is a lot different than Nevada.”
He said he doesn’t want the federal government adding acreage to public lands because of the strain of managing existing land. He also said the state and private entities need to be more involved with the federal government to manage Idaho’s more than 30 million acres of federal public land.
Zabel said she strongly opposed the idea of transferring management to the states.
“The state doesn’t have the resources, the wherewithal to manage the (federal) public lands,” she said.
She said she supported allocating more federal resources to management because the lands “are a public trust.” She said she’s also concerned about recent federal decisions, such as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management decision to swap an approved solar power generation and battery storage facility for a data center instead on Nevada federal land.
“I am afraid that bad choices and bad solutions will be shoved down on us,” Zabel said. “We need our congressional delegation and our senators to be firm that public lands are a public trust, that these federal lands are federal lands because they belong to everybody.”
Peterson criticized cuts to federal agencies that oversee these lands, like the BLM or U.S. Forest Service.
“We’ve watched Idaho’s congressional delegation chip away at the federal agencies and staffing responsible for managing that land, and then complain about the maintenance backlog,” she said.
She said she supports using timber harvesting to reduce wildfire risk, but that the market for it needs to be expanded to support it.
“With responsible leadership … willing to take an interest, we can expand these markets while protecting public use, public land management, (and) making sure it’s being done sustainably,” Peterson said. “So we have long-term lucrative job opportunities.”
Fulcher leads candidates in fundraising
Fulcher’s campaign has raised a total of more than $660,000 between Jan. 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, according to the latest available data from the Federal Election Commission. Just over $300,000 of that comes from contributions from political action committees, or PACs, such as the Georgia-based Freedom Fund, the Idaho-based J.R. Simplot Company PAC, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee PAC, known as AIPAC.
His campaign has spent nearly $600,000 as of June 30.
Peterson’s campaign had garnered just over $181,000 as of June 30, which included a $3,000 loan from herself, and $11,000 from three other PACS, according to FEC filings. The PACs represented a machinists association and union plumbers and pipefitters.
Her campaign spent almost $171,800.
Zabel’s campaign collected nearly $81,500, which included a $30,000 loan from herself, and $500 from the North Idaho Working Families PAC, according to FEC data. Her campaign has spent around $57,000.
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