Idaho voters have several choices in the race for the state's Second Congressional District, including a young Independent candidate who says both major political parties have lost touch with working Americans.
Tripp Hutchinson is 28 years old, a lifelong Idahoan, and a member of the Ketchum City Council. He's challenging Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who's held the seat for nearly three decades.
Hutchinson is campaigning on lowering the cost of living, protecting public lands and taking on corporate monopolies. He also wants congressional term limits and says Washington. D.C. needs to do more for working families.
He joined Idaho Matters to talk about his campaign, his ideas and why he believes an Independent can make a difference in Congress.
In order to focus our interviews of statewide candidates, click here to see the rules that guided our outreach efforts. To see the full interviews for those who responded, click here.
Read a transcript of the entire conversation below:
Gemma Gaudette: From the studios of Boise State Public Radio News. I'm Gemma Gaudette. You're listening to Idaho Matters. Idaho voters have several choices in the race for the state's second Congressional District, including a young, independent candidate who says both major political parties have lost touch with working Americans. Tripp Hutchinson is 28 years old. He's a lifelong Idahoan and a member of the Ketchum City Council, and he's challenging longtime Republican Congressman Mike Simpson, who has held the seat for nearly three decades. Now, Hutchinson is campaigning on lowering the cost of living, protecting public lands and taking on corporate monopolies. Now, he also wants congressional term limits, and he says Washington needs to do more for working families. And he's joining us now to talk about his campaign, as well as his ideas, and why he believes an independent can make a difference in Congress. Tripp, thanks for joining us today.
Tripp Hutchinson: Hey, Gemma. Thanks for having me.
Gemma Gaudette: So, as I mentioned, you are 28 years old. You serve on the Ketchum City Council, and you have now thrown your hat in the ring to run for Congress against someone who's been in Washington since 1999. And if I'm doing the math right, he's been in Washington longer than you've actually been alive. So, what made you decide that this was the right time for you to run?
Tripp Hutchinson: Honestly, there's no time like the present. And I see my opponent, Mike Simpson, as a representation of the failures of the neoliberal experiment that's been going on in our country for the last 45 years. It just doesn't work for the vast majority of our people. And he is there to uphold that neoliberal order. And I think we have a mandate from the people of Idaho to change the trajectory of our country and of our state.
Gemma Gaudette: So, with that said, you are running as an independent, as I mentioned, in a state where we all know that Republicans have dominated for quite some time. And you've been pretty, pretty critical of both parties. What do you think that, you know, these two parties are getting wrong and what would you actually do differently?
Tripp Hutchinson: Yeah. Well, first of all, Idaho has a long tradition of independent values and thinking for ourselves. Uh, as I've traveled around the Second Congressional District for the last six months, the number one thing that I hear from people, whether I'm standing outside of a library, outside of a grocery store or at a county fair, is that the two-party duopoly has failed the working people of this state and of this country.
Gemma Gaudette: And you've talked a lot about the cost of living. I mean, particularly what you've seen in Ketchum, where, I mean, a lot of folks know housing has become unaffordable for a lot of working families in the Wood River Valley. But, I mean, that's really a problem across Idaho. So, what do you think Congress can realistically do to make housing and everyday life more affordable for Idahoans in particular.
Tripp Hutchinson: Yeah, this is why I think I'm uniquely prepared to do this job, because for the last three years, I was elected to the Ketchum City Council with a mandate to address the housing crisis that's been happening in my town for the last 30 years, but got supercharged by Covid. So, I've been working day in and day out for the last three years on housing matters in my town, which is one of the most difficult areas to address housing issues because we have limited amounts of land and crazy economic disparities. So, at the federal level, it would be reforming, uh, HUD and reforming the tax credit program, which is archaic and doesn't serve enough people around my town and around the state of Idaho.
Gemma Gaudette: You have said that you believe a family should be able to live comfortably on one income. In this day and age, that seems to be a fairly ambitious goal. I'm curious about what specific policies do you believe would help make that possible? And, you know, how would we pay for that?
Tripp Hutchinson: Yeah. This is, uh, I think this is a great example of how the two-party duopoly has completely failed the working people of this country. What we have right now is we have the Democrats and the Republicans essentially arguing over welfare policy. Right? And what we've completely lost in our country is talking about wage policy and labor policy and emboldening the working people to demand higher wages and to have the power to have higher wages. So when you ask about paying for it, what I'm advocating for in wage policy is that the government just sets the regulations so that the private sector then, uh, is required to, to get us back to a place we, we live in a country where my generation is literally making half as much money as the generations that came before us. And that's because the neoliberal design has made it so that working people and that labor no longer have the ability to fight for living wages. So we're talking about wage policy over welfare policy.
Gemma Gaudette: How much do you think people in Washington, Congress, Senate, truly understand your generation? As you just mentioned, people in your generation are making half of what other generations have made. Um, Gen Z is also, uh, one of the largest generations that we have. And you are becoming a Force. Yet age seems to also be against you. And what I mean by that is so many older people think, oh, what are these? What are what are these young kids? No.
Tripp Hutchinson: Yeah, I'll tell you what. It was the exact the exact same questions were asked of me when I ran for city council in my town. And now we have a city council and mayor. There's five of us. Three of us are born and raised in Idaho and under the age of 40. And we are proving that we have the ability to make policy that is effective on a local level. And now we're going to prove it on the federal level. Uh, and I'll also add to that something that I think is really important for people to understand. My opponent, Mike Simpson, is 76 years old. And I challenge Idahoans across this state to think about 76-year-olds in their lives, whether it be a grandparent or a parent, and think about their understanding of technology, especially in a moment right now where AI is truly an existential threat to our society. And who do we want making decisions on such a powerful technology? Do you want someone that barely even understands the internet, or do you want people that grew up with the internet, are native to the internet, and understand the inner workings, as well as the threat that AI poses to our society?
Gemma Gaudette: Another thing you've been critical of is term limits. And I, and I want to dig into this a little bit because this goes back, I think, to something you just said about age. What are your views around term limits? Why should we have them? And if not term limits, if you were to be elected and you couldn't get something like that passed, which I think would be difficult in in Congress, what about age limits?
Tripp Hutchinson: I'm in favor of term limits as well as age limits, but I'm definitely the most in favor of term limits, because we have to be honest about what is going on in politics at all levels, right? Whether it be municipal, state or federal. We're all human. There are dynamics of ego and power, right, where if you look at a state like Maine, where they've had a representative named Susan Collins for pretty much my entire life, and when she first got elected, she committed to only doing two terms and then just gave up on that commitment because of the ego and power at play for many of these people. And we have to come together as a society and say, as a collective, we're going to protect ourselves from, uh, from, from the power that is at play here and make a decision as a society that we will just have hard limits on how long anyone is able to hold these positions of power. We do it for the president, and we should be doing it for pretty much every single other seat in elected government that has substantial amounts of power.
Gemma Gaudette: So, your opponent, Congressman Mike Simpson, when I was interviewing him recently, the argument that he made against term limits is that seniority matters in Congress, that if you come in as a new congressperson, you're not going to be able to hold powerful positions. And that he has had to, you know, take these almost 30 years in office to hold the power that he has. And his argument is and that power benefits Idaho because of the committees that he sits on, the positions that he holds. I am curious about your thoughts on that, but, without term limits and without seniority, how then do you get into a position of power in Congress that would benefit Idahoans.
Tripp Hutchinson: Yeah. To answer the first part of your question, that is a classic cop out, in my opinion, from my opponent, Mike Simpson. Let's be honest about what's going on. Mike Simpson is still in Congress because he is doing the bidding of his corporate donors and the billionaires that want him to stay in Congress. He is doing the bidding for them, and he is good for them. So that that is straight away the reasoning. And I can see straight through what he's thrown down there. And then the second part of it is this is what the independent movement in Idaho and across this country is about is we've seen the stagnation and the hierarchical power and control that the two party duopoly has set for us within our federal government and Congress specifically. And the independent movement is how we start to make legitimate changes against the people that say, you have to be in these offices for 20 to 30 years to actually get anything done. That is not what the Founding Fathers intended, especially for the House of Representatives, which is supposed to be the House of the people, where you go in and do good work and then return to your community. It is not a place for a dentist to spend 30 years in office doing the bidding for massive corporations.
Gemma Gaudette: I want to get back to some policy issues and one being public lands, because this is such a huge part of Idaho and I think Idahoans identity. It's also a bipartisan issue. You have been very clear that you oppose selling or transferring federal public lands. Congressman Simpson historically has also opposed transferring those lands. So where do you actually differ from him on public lands policy?
Tripp Hutchinson: Yeah. Real quickly I will, uh, I'll give a shout out to my friend Todd Achilles because I think he puts it a great way. He says, not a single damn acre, right? And that is the mandate that we, especially in the independent movement, have gotten from Idahoans in regards to our public lands. And I think that it is important for us to realize that. Mike Simpson might have been okay on public lands 20 years ago when he was first in office. And I mean okay. Which is better than our other representatives. But when you look at any respected group within Idaho that looks at the actual votes that Mike Simpson has made over his 27-year career, his rating from all of these environmental organizations and all of these public lands organizations is an F. That's the reality. And he can campaign on saying that he is pro public lands. But when you actually look at his voting record, he is not. And he's getting worse by the day.
Gemma Gaudette: Let's talk immigration real quick. Um, this is also an especially important topic to Idaho, in particular to our agricultural industry. You have supported a pathway to citizenship for immigrants already living and working here. You've also suggested that that ICE may need to be replaced. What would immigration enforcement look like under your approach?
Tripp Hutchinson: Yeah, I think the most important spot to start is I'm a proud American and the founding of America and the American values that we all share is that we are a country of immigrants. I really think it's something that sets us apart from other countries in this world, and makes us a special, special country to be a part of. The other thing that also differs from my viewpoint on immigration is that we have to be honest about the climate change dynamics and the mass migration that is going to be caused by climate change, and we have to be realistic about that. So, my approach to immigration is long run. Understanding that our country is so reliant in our state is so reliant on immigrants that for immigrants that are already in this country, we need to invest in a robust and efficient path to citizenship. And then at the same time, over the next, uh, over the next 10 to 20 years, we need to seriously invest in, honestly, border security, to be honest about the mass migration that is going to occur from climate change. Um, and then lastly, you mentioned ICE. The way that I view ICE is I think that the organization of Ice does some very important things, especially when it comes to human trafficking. But what has happened in our most recent, uh, presidential administration is ICE has been hijacked. And when an institution rots and becomes the way that it has become, which is honestly a threat against Americans and against our Constitution, when it gets so out of hand like that, I don't see reform being an option for that organization. So, if I was in Congress, I would when I am in Congress, I will be advocating for disbanding ICE as an organization, but setting up a new organization to be doing the important work that Ice used to be doing and has been kind of hijacked to do the bidding of our current administration.
Gemma Gaudette: And before I let you go very quickly, what's your path to victory? You are going up against an incumbent of almost three decades. You're competing against several other challengers. Um, so path to victory. But also, what would you say to an Idaho voter who likes your ideas? But, you know, they might be a little concerned that voting for an independent might be throwing away their vote.
Tripp Hutchinson: First of all, it's been proven in this country, in this state, that voting for an independent is the best use of your vote, especially in this election cycle. And the Democratic Party, especially in these big ticket races, is the spoiler. So, for people wanting to vote independent, this is the best time to vote independent. And this is our opportunity to make a huge statement against the two-party duopoly. And the other dynamic is the way that you frame that question, in my opinion, is, is the way is the framing that the two-party system wants us to be viewing electoral politics? That's how they continue to hold on to power and the corporate sides of each party continue to do the bidding of corporations while leaving working people behind. I really see Idahoans as I've been traveling around talking to people. Idahoans know that the system has failed us, and they see the independent movement as our way to start getting our country and our state back on track. Um, so that is the independent movement as well as being an educated, prepared, compassionate, and also just someone that likes talking about politics with people across Idaho. That is the path to victory is authenticity and a passion to help out the people of Idaho.
Gemma Gaudette: Well, trip, I want to thank you so much for taking time for us today. We've been talking with Tripp Hutchinson. He is a Ketchum City Council member. He's also running for second Congressional District seat against incumbent Congressman Mike Simpson. Thanks for your time today, Tripp.
Tripp Hutchinson: Thanks so much for having me, Gemma.
