Doug Basler, a pastor and Republican candidate for Congress, told JNS on Wednesday that he would like to debate Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), whom he is seeking to unseat, after the two advanced in the state’s open primary for the 9th Congressional District.
“I am happy to debate Adam Smith and listen patiently while he talks, and hopefully he listens patiently while I talk,” Basler told JNS. “Then we can either agree or come to the agreement that we disagree, but that doesn’t make Adam less than me. It just means that we’re two people that think differently.”
“That’s the real power of America,” he said.
The ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Smith has a long history as a pro-Israel lawmaker. He previously told JNS that he was aware that AIPAC might stop supporting him “in the short term” after he voted against military aid to Israel.
“I strongly support our Jewish community and I strongly support Israel, our ally,” Basler told JNS on Wednesday. “I don’t want any group to feel bullied or intimidated. Pro-Hamas groups are bullies. They’re trying to intimidate and bully people.”
Anti-Israel groups have staged protests outside of Smith’s home.
“I want to unify us, so we can have freedom to talk without fear of being bullied for what we believe, what we think or who we are as a person,” Basler told JNS. “A lot of this stuff is immutable. Why should anybody be less than because of something they have zero control over?”
Basler said that after focusing his primary campaign on beating Kshama Sawant, a socialist and a former member of the Seattle City Council, he began today to plan his strategy for the general election against Smith.
Melissa Chaudhry, a Democrat who admitted that she did not list support for LGBT rights on her website to avoid alienating fellow Muslim voters, took votes from Sawant, according to Basler. If not for Chaudhry, Sawant might have been neck and neck with Basler, he said.
“Thank you, Melissa Chaudhry,” Basler told JNS. “I need to send her a thank you card, and I should probably thank all the billionaires that engineered this. The problem is, I don’t know any.”
This will be the fifth time that Basler will face Smith in the general election. He’s hopeful that people are “starting to wake up and shift.”
“I’m encouraged that Adam is attacking me, because that means he does perceive me as a threat,” Basler said. “I don’t think he’s ever attacked me before.”
In a statement, Smith aligned Basler with U.S. President Donald Trump. “Ask him what he’d have done differently from this president and you won’t get an answer, because there isn’t one,” Smith wrote. “That’s the whole pitch. Go to Washington, D.C., and go along.”
“We’ve seen where that leads,” Smith stated. “This president started a war in Iran on a hunch, with no plan for how it ends. Service members have died. Billions have been spent. Everybody here is paying for it at the pump, and not one Republican in Congress stood up and asked him a hard question about any of it.”
Smith called the race “winnable” and stated that Democrats will “take back the House.”
