Michael McGarr doesn't know how to get to Congress, but he's going to try 'something completely different'

Michael "Mike" McGarr, former air traffic controller and retired copy editor for The Spokesman-Review, isn't sure how to convince voters that he's the guy to end three decades of Republican control of Eastern Washington's congressional seat.

"No one person can do that, and I don't know if you expect the candidate to be like Venus, born fully grown in the half shell with all the answers and the attitude," the Democrat said in a May interview. "All I can say is that every job I've ever had, I've risen to the occasion."

What he does know, he says, is that what Democrats have tried for 30 years isn't working.

"I just see the same thing with all the other candidates, the same way, the same campaigning, the same information about them," he said. "I don't know anything about them, and that's my plan, if nothing else, to let people know about me."

He doesn't plan to accomplish that with glossy mailers and billboards - if he could afford them, he'd spend the money on gas instead so he can tour more of the district and talk with people directly. Much like Matthew Hayes, another of the 11 candidates hoping for a shot to unseat Rep. Michael Baumgartner this November, McGarr finds the bombardment of campaign advertising off-putting and thinks the rest of the electorate does too.

"If that's what it takes to win, I'm not the guy," McGarr said.

McGarr received the endorsement of the Spokane County Democrats, along with everyone else who asked for it, but he questions whether endorsements carry much weight anymore. A former newspaper man, McGarr personally relies on interviews with the media, blurbs in the voters' pamphlet and his own research before casting his vote, and thinks other candidates should expect the same from other voters.

"Treat us like adults," he said. "Treat us like intelligent voters that just want to know what they're doing."

He laments the lack of progress in modern politics, arguing that politicians from both parties seem more focused on undoing the work of the last administration than advancing novel policy. If he had a campaign policy (and the money to license the line), it would be Monty Python's "now for something completely different," he says.

McGarr floated some major reforms in an interview, such as creating a flat federal income tax that exempts the first "$50,000 to $70,000"; or investments in mega projects a la the interstate highway system, such as massive irrigation systems diverting water from places like the flood-prone Mississippi to drought-stricken areas like the Hoover Dam halfway across the country.

But he concedes that much of the work ahead of him would be "to repair some of the damage" caused by the Trump administration. He also believes existing laws against executive overreach need teeth, arguing they have done little to rein in the White House.

A former Republican himself - he ran as a Republican for a California State Assembly seat in 1996, losing in the primary - McGarr sympathizes with many of the concerns of the right but believes their solutions have been tainted by the extremes of the party. He believes in a tough border policy and in building a wall, but not by bulldozing nature preserves or rounding up farmworkers. He is also put off by "DEI or woke or whatever you want to call it," noting that despite his lifelong love of "Star Trek," he can't bring himself to watch the latest season because "a gay Klingon? What does that have to do with science and space travel?"

"But the government didn't do that, Hollywood did that," McGarr said, arguing that the reactionary attacks on the "woke-left" have more to do with mass media than actual Democratic policies.

"I understand people have problems with sexuality, but that's not, that shouldn't be a federal issue," he added. "Like, with transgenders, OK, I accept or approve of biological males being barred from competing in women's sports, because there's a physical reason for that, but for the rest of this, bathroom bans and things like that, there's no reason for that."

He admires politicians like Liz Cheney and John Fetterman who are willing to go against party leadership, and argues that Baumgartner is comparatively a rubber stamp for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

But he acknowledges that he doesn't know how to convince voters that he wouldn't be a rubber stamp for the Democratic Party, or indeed whether trying to be a different kind of Democratic candidate will be successful.

"I can say I don't know how to do this," McGarr said. "I'm mostly not doing what I don't like from before, but I don't know how this is going to proceed."

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