For Bajun Mavalwalla, running for Congress is personal

Bajun Mavalwalla's son isn't the entire reason he's running for Congress, but his son is certainly why the retired Army combat veteran decided to stop running other people's campaigns and launch his own.

Mavalwalla is a Democrat, one of 11 candidates hoping to unseat Rep. Michael Baumgartner this November.

A little more than a year ago, Bajun Mavalwalla Jr., also a combat veteran who served alongside his father in Afghanistan, joined a large protest against the detention of two immigrants, Cesar Alvarez Perez and Joswar Rodriguez Torres. After seven months in a detention center, a federal judge ruled in January that Torres was illegally detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Alvarez Perez chose to self-deport in August rather than spend more months in a cell.

The June 11, 2025, protest grew by the thousands and ended in a cloud of smoke grenades and pepper balls deployed by Spokane police. Mavalwalla Jr. was one of nine protesters who were later charged by federal prosecutors with criminal conspiracy to impede or injure immigration agents or their property; six pleaded guilty, while Mavalwalla Jr. was among the three who took their cases to trial and were later convicted. They are currently awaiting sentencing.

The older Mavalwalla maintains that his son is innocent of the federal conspiracy charges, arguing he joined the protest with no foreknowledge or collaboration with other protesters and is the victim of the Trump administration's aggressive efforts to use the legal system to punish its political enemies. Charging protesters with conspiracy, in particular, is unusual; the particular federal statute had never previously been used in Eastern Washington's history.

Mavalwalla believes the federal government used Spokane as a testing ground for bringing conspiracy charges against protesters; similar charges have since been brought elsewhere across the country, including against 15 on Tuesday in Minnesota .

"The swamp of Washington, D.C., decided they could come and flood Spokane, that no one would pay attention, and clearly our congressional representative doesn't think it's worth saying anything about," Mavalwalla said in an interview.

On social media, at the microphone or in person, Mavalwalla's disdain for the Republican Party is palpable. He refers to the Trump administration as "fascist," has called ICE a modern "gestapo" that needs to be dismantled, and has called for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to be brought before the Hague on war crimes charges for, among other things, the deadly second strike of a disabled boat allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela.

He has dismissed Baumgartner as a ladder climber seeking to advance in party leadership and has been particularly critical of the incumbent's shifting position on tariffs. He argues the district needs leadership that will fight for the region's farmers and ranchers, arguing trade wars and rising prices on fuel and fertilizer are already devastating Eastern Washington.

Republicans are also undermining rural hospitals, Mavalwalla argues. Medicaid cuts disproportionately affect poorer, rural communities like Dayton, he said, which are simultaneously the most vulnerable to the economic shockwaves from a hospital closure.

But neither does Mavalwalla always get along with other Democrats. He is highly critical of former diplomat Carmela Conroy, who is running for the same office after losing to Baumgartner in the general in 2024; Mavalwalla believes Baumgartner actively elevated Conroy as his main rival two years ago by attacking her by name in the primary, hoping to face "the weakest candidate in the field" in the general.

He feuded with Naida Spencer, the former chair of the Spokane County Democrats, and recently accused the party of prematurely throwing their support behind Conroy a second time for, among other reasons, leasing her the party's former office. He has softened his tone somewhat since Spokane Councilman Paul Dillon has temporarily taken over as party chair, and he received the county party's endorsement for the congressional race (as did every other Democrat who asked for it).

While Mavalwalla has been campaign manager for three prior congressional campaigns, including when Bernadine Bank ran for this seat in 2024, he struggled early on to turn his first run for office into the well-oiled machine that he will likely need to flip a seat that's belonged to Republicans for three decades.

His early campaign ads mostly consisted of blurry footage of the candidate speaking to the camera or going door to door on an electric scooter. As of the end of March, he had raised less than $45,000 - roughly 3% as much as Baumgartner had raised. Publicity from his son's trial has since driven a surge of campaign donations, Mavalwalla said; whether this has substantially closed the gap won't be clear until second-quarter donations are publicly reported in mid-July.

Mavalwalla views himself as a savvy strategist and tactician, and argues his sense for realpolitik is better than the other candidates, believing himself the best chance to both attract disaffected progressive voters seeking immigration and healthcare reform as well as conservative voters who believe they've been left behind by D.C. and the national economy.

Democratic contenders in the district have historically tried to run up the votes in Spokane County, where most of the district lives, he argues. He instead focused his early campaign primarily outside of Spokane County, learning about the issues facing rural voters more concerned about their local hospital, or a windfarm ruining a beautiful vista, or the crime in their towns. He dismisses the notion of a blue wave or some kind of political revolution lifting up the Democrats in Eastern Washington - no vote can be taken for granted, he argued.

"This notion of we're going to flip the 5th - I am not going to flip the 5th," he said. "If I win, it's because I clawed every single vote I could get, and the margin will be narrow."

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This story was originally published June 16, 2026 at 7:04 PM.