Hello everyone and thank you for watching Northwest Public Broadcasting's Vote .. coverage of the 4th Congressional District primary in Washington State.

That fourth district has been long held by Dan Newhouse, but after announcing in December he would not seek reelection.

That left a seat open for one of 11 candidates on the primary ballot.

My name is Matt Loveless.

Today we at Northwest Public Broadcasting in collaboration with AARP of Washington State and the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties and the League of Women Voters of Yakima County are helping you get to know some of these candidates.

Some newcomers, some familiar challengers, and we have some questions for them.

This is not a debate nor a forum.

We have taken the opportunity to schedule time with the candidates one-on-one.

We'd like our viewers and listeners to consider this a bit of a video voter's guide where we've collaborated on a series of questions.

Each candidate will get all of these same questions and the same opportunity to answer.

We'll time the responses here in our NWPB studio on the WSU Tri-Cities campus.

We thank you for watching.

Continuing our coverage now in Washington's fourth congressional district with another candidate on this primary ballot.

A familiar name in Washington politics is Senator Matt Boehnke serving in the 8th Legislative District since 2023.

Yes sir.

We appreciate that service.

A state representative before that as well, welcome to this Q&A.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for WSU Tri-Cities for setting us up for you and the staff being here.

I think it means a lot about building this process we call democracy and as candidates go through an election cycle to get this out there, to answer any questions, to try to build more information I think around candidates forums.

And like you mentioned, this is like a digital pamphlet of what our backgrounds are in this race.

So I appreciate the opportunity.

Well, it is five questions, quick ones and not always easy solutions, but certainly one of them that's top of mind for people right now is cost of living.

Yes.

And affordability.

And including older adults here facing rising costs for things like utilities, healthcare, gas.

What would you do?

What kind of policy would you support to help alleviate that for Our Americans?

I think one of the biggest questions is the e.. and how everybody's impacted by whether it's gas prices, food, transportation of goods and services to and from.

It's on the rise the last six, seven months.

In the state legislature, I'm the only candidate that's fought for this in the Senate and as you mentioned in the House where it's state to federal policies that are causing some of these rate increases to where we can alleviate one of the big issues is maintaining accountability where our funds are going and make sure that funds are actually there and they're staying solvent.

When we talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, a lot of those different infrastructures I believe are really impacted by people who think they can go ahead and budget by different means.

As a congressman representing the Fourth District, I've heard a lot about individuals who are saying we need to keep our gas prices down.

I believe if we build more in our state, in the Fourth District, we have opportunities to reduce that, to allow the market to do its job of being a capitalist market that we can have.

Have more services here locally instead of other states or other nations.

Instead of the long lead time that we're worried about a Strait of Hormuz or a national security issue.

I have the only background in the military of 22 years of worrying about that global supply chain to make sure we can be resilient.

Build out a critical infrastructure here locally.

Reducing costs gets the services here.

Building up jobs brings that in there and I think inspires the next generation.

Kids who are going to WSU and other colleges, they have the jobs they look forward to, to build into Washington State in the Fourth District.

All right, thank you very much.

And our next question about voting and we talked about WSU off camera.

We're talking about trying to get people out to vote and certainly Washington has a mail-in voting option.

They try to make it of multiple options available for people.

So the question is since voting and the way we vote is at top of mind right now is how do you maintain that access while ensuring public confidence in the election process?

Yeah, I have this old school kind of mantra that I believe it should be a national holiday.

I think we should get out the vote.

Should be everybody takes time off of work no matter where they're at, any place, anytime.

Go ahead and vote.

And have the exceptions for military veterans that I served overseas to allow them to have the mail-in ballots, the people who have disabilities, to get that exemptions, to make sure they have the information, to be open and honest and transparent about candidates, to be available to the information about each candidate and what we are running for and getting that information to individuals to be trustworthy.

As a cybersecurity expert, a lot of people are worried about hacking in the systems over the last couple cycles.

I believe the impacts of what I've worked on in the state with Secretary of State Hobbs and other places that we can secure the data.

When your vote is counted here in Benton and Franklin County, it's moved up to Secretary of State.

It's collaborated and it's being held to be transparent.

It's not being hacked into a man in the middle attack or some other person is changing that ballot from the time you voted to the time it was received in our computer system.

And I think overall that builds trust back in our society.

We've lost that for some reason on both sides.

I'm here to be a candidate, kind of unite this front to build trust back in our systems, build trust back in our democracy.

So your vote and every vote does count and that individual should build more than 30, 40% of the apathetic turnout that we've had in the past.

Reach out to other people to encourage them to vote, to get out to the youth, to our senior citizens, to make sure every vote does count.

Well, you talked about cybersecurity.

Let's turn it to Social Security.

And you just mentioned senior citizens.

I'm not always that good at segues there, but um-That's good.

We want to talk about Social Security because it.. with some future decisions on it coming up.

But also protecting it for future generations.

Where do you stand on that and how would you strengthen or protect it?

I think social security is a big aspect of our society.

I believe everybody has an options of going out, whether it's a private or public market to ensure retirement security at itself.

And that has an option of where Social Security has been rated.

The fund itself has been swiped multiple times.

Number one, I would stop that.

I think it's clarity that money is being put into an account like we do in the state.

It should stay there.

It shouldn't be swiped to fill gaps or holes in other accounts.

Second, I think it needs to be solvent to ensure that sustainability for future generations to where we can maintain that level of credibility that the money that you put into this is going to be there.

I mean, it's a basic premise that you've worked your whole life.

You supported this program.

That money should be there at the end of the day that you're counting on.

And then if you want to go into the private market of the IRAs, money markets and things, even the stock market, that's on you.

That you should have a lot of those assets out there and protect that from a federal regulation.

And again, on the cyber front, when we see cryptocurrencies, digital currencies kind of go into the market to make sure you are aware that these are markets that we're putting our money and our investments into.

I'm on the state pension policy committee and we maintain that area to where we have solvency across the board.

We have an issue right now with our firefighter pension being swiped to another account.

That scares me.

And as a congressman, I want to maintain that we keep those funds solvent.

We keep them reliable and we maintain that commitment for future generations that that money you put in will be there when you want it.

Well, And in our collaboration with AARP here, you see a lot of these questions are about retirement and end of life care.

And one of the concerns is for the ability of caregivers to have time, to have the opportunity to have the money.

How would you ensure that opportunity for people who are providing care?

I got to tell you that's near and dear to my he.. because my family just went through an issue with my father passing because of cancer.

I can't thank people locally enough for the long-term care facilities we have.

This question comes to mind with me that we got to get this out to rural communities.

Up and down the Fourth District, a lot of them have to drive so many distances to see a loved one that's being cared for the right services that are out there.

Having the right nurses, doctors, the individuals to do that care from U of W Medicine to WSU with the facilities that have the technology upgrades to identify whether it's cancer, whether it's a area of lymphoma, where we can identify the mass and we can go after that in a critical timeline to do it.

We talk about preventive medicine when we're going into pancreatic cancer.

The more we can see certain things ahead of time, we can get people to care quicker, faster, better.

I think a big piece too is my background as a college professor.

We got to incentivize the workforce of the future, working with our nurses, doctors and lawyers to providing those outreach and leveraging the technology we have, whether it's remote care, but get them the right care to it.

My concerns in some of that space is about artificial intelligence and the concerns we're seeing that they're giving bad information that is not medically behind the scientific knowledge.

Individuals are taking this and going committed suicide in other areas that are harming our kids or our senior citizens.

We need to get the right information to the individuals and allowing that in our different areas up and down our rural communities.

Well, our last question, speaking of rural communities, but communities within this district, tribal communities.

And where do you stand on your role in, you know, those government to government relations as you would join a Congress?

I think it's really important, especially in the state of Wa.. We worked a lot in the Senate and the House as ranking member on the energy and environment technology to build more things in the State of Washington.

We talk about rate payers worried about utility costs going up.

That increases the cost of groceries or transportation or gas.

Working with the tribes, it allows us to build throughout the state of Washington.

Whether it's going through the IFSEC process, the energy siting facility, permitting, siting, advanced nuclear power, keeping our hydroelectric system is key, I think, to success with that and working together with our trial partners to ensure we have success for the future.

They're a big piece of their concerns about fish, the waterways, and how we leverage those along the Columbia, Snake and other tributaries.

I do believe we're at a great point to where they are at the table.

They're respected individuals at the table to these discussions.

They're transparent about what we're doing making those decisions and I believe that should continue at the congressional le.. When we're on a fight in the global scale of small modular reactors, hydrogen, new innovation with fission, fusion.

I'm the only candidate that has a, a background in these different areas and we should be incentivizing and fostering our research and development out of a great jewel in the desert we call PNNL, Pacific Northwest National Lab right here.

The next generation should be inspired to build that next light bulb.

We have a Hanford 2.0 plan that I think I'm the only candidate that incentivizes what we're going to do out at Hanford, building out the other infrastructure.

Key is to clean up now.

We need to support that fund to keep that funding going, but build out the rest of it for the next generation.

All right.

Matt, thank you.

Thank you very much for being here.

We appreciate your time, candidate for the 4th Congressional District.

Thank you, sir.

Thanks for having me.

We want to thank everybody for watching these conversations with candidates in the 4th Congressional District of Washington.

And a reminder, ballots go out beginning the 17th of July.

That begins an 18-day period to vote.

We encourage you to vote early as the top two candidates in this primary will move on to the general.

The official primary election day is August 4th.

On behalf of the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin County, the League of Yakima County, and AARP of Washington State, we thank you for watching Northwest Public Broadcasting and our Vote 2026 coverage.