Independent Idaho congressional candidate Sarah Zabel talks with the Reader 

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Sarah Zabel is running as an Independent for the First Congressional District of Idaho in the November 2026 election — a race that also includes incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher and Democratic challenger Kaylee Peterson, both of whom the Reader has interviewed (find those articles at sandpointreader.com). 

A Bayview resident since 2018, Zabel is a retired Air Force major general specializing in communications and computer systems, a RAND Corporation adjunct and author of Fighting Chance: How Science Explores, Explains and Leads the Battle Against Depression. She visited the Reader offices in January for an interview ahead of a series of statewide campaign appearances, including on Monday, Feb. 9 from 5:30-8 p.m. at Evans Brothers Coffee (524 Church St., in Sandpoint).

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

ZACH HAGADONE:

I think it’s pretty interesting that you’re running from North Idaho — we don’t usually get statewide candidates from anywhere north of, like, Moscow or Lewiston, or really the Boise area. … Maybe we could start with a little bit of biographical information. What brought you to Bayview and how long have you been there?

SARAH ZABEL:

I’m retired military. I served for a little more than 30 years — 31 and a half years — and I retired at the very end of 2018. Before that, I was looking forward to retirement. Even though I joined the military from Texas, I moved all over the U.S. One of my sisters settled in the Spokane area, another one in the Seattle area. So I was looking around up here. … It’s pretty — it’s so dramatic. …

I bought some property and then, after I retired, I built a house there. But, as soon as I retired, I really retired into elder care, because my father was in his 90s with Alzheimer’s disease, so I was looking after him full-time. COVID started not so long after that, so it was really full-time. He passed away a couple of years ago, and I went to work part-time for RAND Corporation.

ZH:

What led you to running for office?

SZ:

Coming up on the election in ’24 and then after the election in ’24, I was just so frustrated with our options and with what’s going on — the direction that our country was going under Biden, and then the direction that (especially now, even more intensively) the country is going under Trump. And after the election, wanting to tear my hair out, I finally thought, “OK, what can I do about this?” And that’s what got me into this. 

First, I was looking for: “Who is the candidate that I can support and be out there and vocally supporting?” And I, frankly, didn’t find one. So, I started thinking, “OK, well, maybe I need to put my hat in the ring and do this.”

ZH:

What are some policy priorities or key issues for you?

SZ:

[W]e have so many things frustrating us right now, like the costs — cost of living and health care, you know, screamingly so. This is eating our lunch and our dinner. … I studied Social Security and the trust funds projected to run out in 2033. At that point, the payroll contributions will only cover about 77% of what’s currently being paid out now. These are crises that we see coming up. You look at the debt and how it’s growing. And can we do anything about that? And so I spent a couple of months reading and researching, getting online, getting into books to see what we can do. And I found that, yes, actually, we can solve these problems. In fact, some of them, we’ve tackled and overcome equivalent problems before, right? 

After World War II, our national debt was like 100% of GDP, and we got that down to 30% of GDP. They took some pretty strong actions. I don’t think we need to be quite as rigorous as they were, but we can get it down, and the first thing you do is you fix taxation, and people who are making the highest incomes have to pay more. You have to collect revenue. 

You look at what the current administration has done with the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act — they’re absolutely going the wrong way. We’re increasing debt and the sort of breaks that they’re giving to the highest 10% of earners, the highest 1% of earners — they’re willing to devastate the country to do that. …

Their tax breaks add up to about $105 billion a year, and that comes from the Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation. What does that cover again? That’s the 1%. …

The amount that they wanted to make from public land sales? You’re looking at $10 billion over 10 years, so that’s just a drop in the bucket. Medicaid, PEPFAR [the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief], USAID, all of that could go in the hole that they created by giving tax breaks for the top 1%. All of those things could be funded every year, including the entire workforce for the National Park Service and the backlog of maintenance on national parks — that all fits into the tax break for the top 1% of earners. …

This is a self-inflicted wound, and I think we need better choices — other choices — and Idaho really needs to speak. We are colored dark-red only; we’re not the way they rest of the country and the rest of the world looks at us, as if we are this dark-red smear over here. It’s much more complex.

ZH:

[Y]our perspective and your candidacy does feed into that idea that we’ve gotten so partisan and tribal over the past 10, 15, even 20 years that no matter what happens — even if it was your “team” that was screwing up — you were still going to raise your pom-poms and be in favor because you disfavor the others so strongly that you’d rather see your enemies lose than you win. …

Was that part of your calculus? Just seeing this moment as maybe the time when people are willing to look past the letter at the end of the [candidate’s] name?

SZ:

That letter at the end of the name is the hardest part. … It’s not that this is the best moment; it’s just that I cannot live with myself if I do not do something, but this is a good moment because of the midterms and this matters for ’28. If we can get our voice out there and really make a noise, that’s when the parties should take note of what they learn in ’26 … and it’s actually affecting how the parties behave and react. …

We have to raise the taxes on the very high-income people — we have to. We have to raise corporate taxes. Those are things that are very uncomfortable for both parties; but, again, if both parties know it has to be done, they don’t want to have their presidential candidate running on that sort of platform in ’28. …

So this might be the moment when it’s actually possible to have them swallow something they don’t want to swallow. …

Before 2017, the highest corporate tax rate was like 35%, and went down to a flat tax of 21%. The Democrats were proposing, “Hey, let’s bring it up to 28% corporate taxation.” That’s a hard one, because it’s much easier to bring it down than it is to bring it back up. … I don’t have a better number, so I’ll say 28% for that — a decent tax rate, a normal tax rate.

ZH:

So, beyond Social Security, health care affordability and taxation — like you mentioned — what are some other priorities for you?

SZ:

Another big one is — and  it’s actually not one of the old problems, it’s one of the new problems — and that’s the way that AI is consuming our brain space. I think we need responsible limits on AI. We don’t want to crush ourselves so much that we get dominated by something like Chinese AI, but we need responsible limits. And, some of the very early things we can do is make sure people and companies are accountable for what they put out. And I’m thinking here about the sorts of deepfakes and the sorts of information that is going to flood us going into the ‘26 and ’28 elections. We need to get on top of that.

ZH:

I don’t know if you agree with this or not, and I guess I’m asking if you do, but is the reluctance to look at these issues related to campaign finance — Citizens United? … It feels to me like all these [issues] sort of connect in certain ways, right? …  You’re talking about getting health care costs down, but at the same time, the taxation piece that you talked about? 

SZ:

You have campaign finance, but you also have to look at the media billionaires — the people who screen and filter and provide content for what ordinary people see on TV and what they get in their social media feeds. That’s very influential in how they perceive their options, how they vote. That’s not necessarily a Citizens United issue. Citizens United is more directly about campaign finance — this is influence and the influencers, and they are right up there among the multi-billionaires.

ZH:

One of the things that I think most people agree on, no matter what their party is, is that the Congress is not working. … If you were elected, where would you see yourself in the matrix of the coalitions that could actually get things going?

SZ:

[E]specially with the Republicans, it’s a matter of, “Oh, if you want to keep your job, it’s not just, ‘please Mr. Trump.’” It’s, “If you want to keep your job, you have to please your constituents. You have to work for them.” So that’s a big, screaming message that hopefully wakes people up going into ’28.  … They start looking to their people rather than looking to the White House. …

There’s a Problem Solvers Caucus … people who are trying to get the job done. … It’s

Not about the party.

ZH:

We talked a lot about domestic policy, but there’s definitely a lot of foreign policy stuff going on that … given your military background, I’m curious to hear your thoughts about.

SZ:

So, I retired, like, seven years ago. In the military, the people who are three-stars and four-stars now are my contemporaries. I was a two-star. I retired as a two-star. What is going on now in Venezuela? What they’re threatening with Greenland? They know Venezuela is illegal. It is illegal from the first boat strike on. Is not a gray area. It’s not debatable, it’s illegal, and they’re doing it … and I am so disappointed in them. …

[T]o our understanding, the military was introduced into hostilities on Sept. 2, so you can take a look at the War Powers Act. Some people have claimed that the authorization for use of military force signed after 2001 and for 2001 applies. It does not. …

It means all of our service members involved in that are part of an illegal war. And like I said, the military leadership knows this. They know this, they know it. … Survivors from the first strike on Sept. 2, that they watched for an hour and then killed … that is illegal, and that is a war crime. And the admiral who said that he ordered it, that he knew it — nobody told him to do it. He ordered it. He was protecting Mr. Hegseth, whatever. He needs to face the court martial.

[O]f course, he has a right to a vigorous defense. He has the presumption of innocence. It is a court, but he needs to face the court marshal; and, honestly, all the generals and admirals involved, they need to face the American people. The leadership needs to face the American people on what they’ve done there.

ZH:

I’m thinking about the Greenland stuff, too, and the destruction of NATO. Is it saber-rattling, or is it more than that?

SZ:

I think it’s dead serious. It’s more likely to come to a coerced transfer of territory rather than bullets flying, but it’s very serious. 

ZH:

Maybe you could speak to the implications for the dissolution of NATO? I assume that, in your position, you worked with allies. 

SZ:

Yes, on multiple levels. My position is, America has a preeminent position in the world — we are the top of the heap, but we’re not — by ourselves — superior to the rest of the world. … We do have the strongest military; but, again, put our next two adversaries together and we’re not that big. We’re in our position because of our allies — because of our economic strength and because of what had been soft power: goodwill or at least nullification of bad will. We built our position in the world at least since the end of the Cold War. … It’s been a strategy of enlightened self-interest, and it goes all the way from fighting AIDS in Africa to providing help to different countries … and all of that is under the axe.

ZH:

Because of your specific experience — working in cyber operations — it seems to me in my layman’s opinion that if we fracture or destroy this alliance system, which has kept a balance between various parties and adversaries, it opens us up to a lot more of the cyber aspect of conflict. … We look at places like Russia and all the bot farms that we see in Africa operating, and in China — what are the stakes? … What are the implications for the the U.S. if we start going alone without our alliance system for cyber security?

SZ:

Being able to count on the information that we get from our allies across the world — that is hugely important, because the world is networked. Financial systems are networked. Communication systems are networked across the world. … The fact is that without that really strong relationship — where we have to keep working and improving and making sure that our systems and our networks are defended broadly with cooperation — without that cooperation we’re hugely vulnerable. …

[W]e’re struggling with a lot of problems that hit us very hard. … It’s just too much, you know? What can we do about it? But, like I said, it’s lots of working hard. We can beat those current problems back, and we really have to look at the “brave new world” — “brave’s” not the right word — the “fearful and angry new world” that we’re entering.

ZH:

It sounds to me like your perspective is that the old partisan matrix is only going to make it more fearful and angry.

SZ:

Yeah, they’re really locked in. … They had, what, 44 days of shutdown? They could have been working through all of those things, but instead, it’s like each one’s in their little foxholes, and they’re so focused on their positions and the leadership personalities that they are not focusing on the bigger policies — they’ve lost sight. They’re deep in, and not focused on broad policies that they need to be focused on.