Health care, affordability and data centers were among the topics that dominated a recent forum in Walla Walla with Washington state’s two 5th Congressional District candidates: Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner and Democratic challenger Carmela Conroy.
At Whitman College’s Cordiner Hall, Baumgartner, who’s running for a second term in the Nov. 3 general election, defended his support for President Donald Trump’s policies. Conroy, a former U.S. diplomat and prosecutor, argued for why she should replace Baumgartner as Eastern Washington’s representative.
The event was presented by Northwest Public Broadcasting and the American Association of University Women Walla Walla. Matt Loveless, an assistant professor in Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, moderated.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act
A topic that touched many others: H.R. 1, aka the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in July 2025.
On a question about affordability, Baumgartner pointed to the act’s elimination of federal taxes on tips and overtime, its expansion of the low-income housing tax credit and new tax deductions on loan interest on American-made cars.
He also defended the act’s new work requirements for Medicaid and food stamp recipients, and that it disincentivizes states from offering health care to people living in the country illegally.
The act also cuts more than $900 billion in Medicaid spending over the next decade, and makes additional cuts to the Affordable Care Act marketplace and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Hospitals and health care systems in underserved rural areas like Walla Walla and Columbia counties heavily rely on Medicaid payments.
Baumgartner pointed to $50 billion set aside for improvements in rural healthcare over five years. In fiscal year 2026, Washington state is getting $181 million.
Although Baumgartner said H.R. 1’s provisions don’t affect legal immigrants, about 10,000 legal immigrants in Washington state have lost their Medicaid coverage this month under the act. A federal court has blocked — at least for now — about another 800 from losing theirs.
Conroy said, “People who are here legally, who have gone through the process that they need to — to contribute to our economies as doctors, as farm workers, as educators, as students who are contributing to the knowledge of our own in-state student body — all those folks should have access to health care.”
Conroy said that, if elected, she’d work to expand Medicaid access for youth, birth to 19 years old, citing a 2022 U.S. Department of Defense report that said 77% of Americans aged 17 to 25 are unfit for military service because of physical, mental or behavioral health issues.
Trade and tariffs
Conroy said one way to improve affordability is to end the Trump administration’s “trade chaos.”
The president has placed tariffs on scores of countries, including U.S. allies such as Canada, which has responded with tariffs and product bans of its own.
Walla Walla Valley wine industry experts have said that the trade policies have increased prices on imported wine, while Canada’s retaliatory tariffs and boycotts on U.S. goods have decreased wine exports because fewer places in the provinces now sell them, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reported.
“It is a fact that tariffs are a tax that is imposed on importers of the country imposing the tariffs,” Conroy said.
She criticized her opponent for voting “to surrender Congress’ power of the purse to the executive.” In February, for example, Baumgartner voted against a resolution to end the tariffs on Canada.
Baumgartner agreed that tariffs are taxes and said he opposes them: “I generally support lower taxes, and it’s no doubt that America does better when we have free and fair trade.”
But, without addressing the wine industry or the trade war with Canada specifically, he called tariffs, in some situations, a “tool of diplomacy.”
Data centers
A major issue in Walla Walla County is the proposed Amazon Web Services data center planned for Wallula Gap Business Park. In the last few months, the project has inspired local pushback.
Baumgartner said, “No community should have a data center forced into it that the community doesn’t want.”
He said a data center should not increase utility customers’ water and electricity rates to effectively subsidize the company. He has sponsored legislation on this issue.
“It is appropriate right now that communities take a pause, industry and policy makers need to work together and make sure people support them, how they’re being done,” Baumgartner said.
He had earlier introduced a bill, which was ultimately withdrawn, to ensure lawsuits don’t slow down environmental reviews of data centers. Conroy accused him of changing his position.
Conroy said she’s uncomfortable with the Trump administration weighing whether the federal government should have a stake in A.I. companies that build data centers.
“In order to have free trade, we need to make sure that we let the market do its business,” she said, “but it can’t be at the expense of local communities.”
Both candidates are based in Spokane, the district’s largest city. Baumgartner beat Conroy in the 2024 general election.
The state’s 5th Congressional District covers Asotin, Columbia, Ferry, Garfield, Lincoln, Port Oreille, Spokane, Stevens, Walla Walla and Whitman counties, and most of Adams and Franklin counties.
