With over 20 years of military experience and a background in politics and union work, Democrat Bajun Mavalwalla believes he knows how to represent Washington state’s Fifth Congressional District.
Mavalwalla traveled all around the world to places such as Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan while on active duty in the Army. He served as a recruiter, Russian linguist voice intercept operator, police advisor, was part of the National Guard and spent two years in Iraq as Liaison Officer to the political section of the U.S. embassy.
Some of his assignments included Alpha commander in Afghanistan for the 19th Special Forces Group, a senior operations non-commissioned officer for the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion and assistant to the security officer for the 49th Military Police Brigade for two years in Iraq.
Throughout his military tenure, he learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute, graduated from the captain’s career course, completed three different levels of non-commissioned officer courses and trainings and became a qualified military police officer. His military expertise was in intelligence.
He has been interested in politics since a young age. At just 10 years old, he successfully advocated to lower the speed limit near his elementary school by addressing the Petaluma City Council.
He interned with former Congresswoman Barbara Boxer and served on the Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee. He later ran for state assembly in the county after his initial active military service.
Since retiring from the military, he has managed three political campaigns — Democrat Corrina Robinson in 2012, Democrat Barbary Mulvaney in 2014 and Democrat Bernadine Bank in 2024. Bank ran for Washington’s Fifth Congressional District and earned 11.9% of the votes in the primary election.
He joined the Pile Drivers Union, Local 34, between periods of active duty. He also has experience raising and processing his own livestock and currently lives in a log cabin in Stevens County, where he cuts his own firewood and manages his life.
He attained a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College.
Particularly because of his hands-on experience and the connections he has made that have made him more knowledgeable about problems in the district, he thinks he knows how to take proper action to best help the community.
“We don’t need more lawyers. We don’t need more economists. In Congress, what we need are people that understand working people,” Mavalwalla said in an interview with The Daily Evergreen. “You have to have the capacity academically to understand the larger pictures and the impacts. But you also have to have some hands-on experience, or you’re not really representing your district.”
Some of his main priorities include supporting the military community, including Veterans Affairs, working to improve the agriculture sector and handling the current tariff situation.
Eastern Washington had an 8.4% veteran population in 2024, according to a report by Census Reporter. That equates to over 450,000 veterans, but Mavalwalla does not believe they are receiving the support they need and thinks they deserve full and easily accessible healthcare.
This is in part because the district only has two VA hospitals — both of which received position cuts amid nationwide layoffs last year — and because he says standard hospitals do not provide the assistance needed for some veterans who may be multi-amputeed, struggle with PTSD, have uncommon diseases or severe brain injuries from blast overpressure.
It further frustrates him that the Spokane VA medical center does not offer emergency room services and that Stevens County Auditor Lori Larsen removed references to the county’s Veteran Service Office in the region’s new Veterans Relief Fund policy last year. She also deleted sections aiming to bring coordination between the VSO and other agencies.
Mavalwalla said he suggests the district purchase two Rosenbauer mobile simulation units and turn them into facilities capable of performing surgeries and quick evaluations, among other operations that would help out veterans. He said each truck could be assigned a medical crew and make a schedule of when they are traveling to communities.
These mobile units would decrease the amount veterans have to travel for VA care.
And for the current military situation against Iran, Mavalwalla believes the U.S. is not approaching the struggle correctly. He believes the nation needs a “modern mindset.”
He said we could be spending less than the roughly $890 million we are spending per day on the war by being “on the cutting edge of the right technologies” that are not the most expensive.
He mentioned Ukraine’s use of drones against Russia as an example of an effective, cost-effective weapon.
Having been in the military, particularly while in Iraq, Mavalwalla said he became very familiar with Iran and how they deal with war. He mentioned how resilient Iran is by mentioning how the nation lost hundreds of thousands of people during the war against Iraq but still continued to fight.
“If the United States thinks that dropping a few bombs and firing a few Tomahawk missiles is going to make them surrender and is going to collapse their government, you don’t understand Iranians, you don’t understand Iran, you don’t understand the culture, and you don’t understand the military mission,” he said.
Mavalwalla therefore believes another part of having a modern military mindset is by properly choosing the wars the nation engages in.
To support the district’s farmers and overall agriculture, he calls for a “robust” Farm Bill and bringing better broadband connection to rural areas.
There were 30,000 citizens in Eastern Washington without broadband internet in 2023, according to Broadlinc. The lack of connection has impacted Americans throughout the country, but specifically farmers, as a lot of their equipment relies on data.
Although Congress has increased funding to expand broadband in Washington in recent years, it is still not sufficient for many.
“An awful lot of their capabilities [are] to use…data…to use GPS and stuff like that. And in those dead zones, they’re just a regular old tractor,” Mavalwalla said. “Here’s some…half a million [dollar] piece of equipment, that a lot of the functions on it don’t work, because we have not funded bringing broadband to these more remote rural areas.”
He also rejects President Donald Trump importing Argentinian beef because of how it is putting economic hardship on the district’s cattle ranchers.
He does not back the Trump-imposed tariffs and is an advocate of free trade. He believes that the tariffs have negatively impacted farmers because they have increased the prices of parts and equipment and decreased the nation’s soybean sales to China.
Even though Eastern Washington is not known for its soybeans, he thinks the overall decrease in the legume’s sales has a trickle-down effect.
And Trump reduced tariffs on agricultural equipment to 15% in June. However, Mavalwalla’s other big concern regarding the issue is how other countries are slapping retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., which he believes is only hurting the economy. He compared the current situation to the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, signed into law during the Great Depression.
“Tariffs are bad unless they are very specifically designed to promote trade…on the bigger scale,” he said. “But if you just do what we did and just slap [tariffs] all around, all you do is anger your allies and give leverage to your enemies and adversaries.”
For making life for Americans more affordable, Mavalwalla believes in trickle-up economics. He implied that he calls for an end to the tax cuts given to wealthy individuals and businesses and would prefer more financial aid for working people.
He is a proponent of unions, specifically the growing unionization movement in Eastern Washington, as he mentions on his platform website, and thinks more workers should join a union.
“Unions are