Tiffany Bond, an independent, is one of three challengers trying to unseat Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. Maine Calling Host Jennifer Rooks asked her to name the biggest issue affecting the people she wants to represent in Washington.
This is an excerpt of “Maine Calling” from Monday, Oct. 1, 2018. To listen to Bond’s full appearance, click here.
Bond: All the issues are important. I think the biggest issue is right now we have representation that doesn’t understand the consequences of federal law on average people in the 2nd Congressional District. That causes a host of problems from tax code being put together in a way that doesn’t help us to there being work requirements, which have some really negative consequences, for aid. So there’s a wide range of things, but I think the biggest thing that we need to change at the federal level is having somebody who’s actually going through that, and I think that’s a very different take than you’re probably hearing from other candidates.
Rooks: What, if anything, ought to be done about the partisan divide in our nation?
Bond: Well I’m an independent, so I can work with almost anyone. I think that we’ve forgotten how to use our language in a way that helps people work together. For example, you can talk about health care and you can approach somebody with a Democrat leaning, and you can say, “Look, if I can expand health care and I can cover more people, do you really care how that happens or how it needs to be worded?” I think a lot of people are going to say, “Yeah, go for it.” And you can approach somebody who’s got a Republican leaning, and you can say, “Look, you’re paying a lot of money right now, you’re not getting very much coverage and maybe you feel like you’re paying for people to get covered when you can’t even access health care. If I have a way to fix that that costs about the same as what you’re doing now, can I work on that?” And I think you’re also going to get that yes. So I think there’s a lot of goals we have that overlap but we’re just using wording that is adversarial that doesn’t help us come together.
Rooks: Should access to affordable health care be a national priority, and if so, what should Congress do to ensure it?
Bond: I think that we take the law as it stands right now — and that’s just what the law is — and we continually take little bites to improve it. Right now we have the ACA, which has federal intervention and that is the law. So we should be looking at that and every time we touch it find a way to improve coverage, decrease costs, increase access and reimburse providers in a more efficient way that helps them run their practice. And so I don’t think the question is should we have federal intervention or should we not — we already have federal intervention — it’s how do we make that intervention more effective for the average person.
Rooks: What committee or committees would you like to serve and why?
Bond: I’d really like to serve on the Intelligence Committee. I think that would be something that would be very interesting to me personally. But I’m open, I think there’s a lot of different things that cross Maine’s path. I think working in any of the committees that touch environmental issues is something that would be really important. Taxation is something that’s very important to me. Veterans Affairs are very important to me so I would have to see what committee appointments are available.
This interview has been edited for clarity.