Idaho’s four-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher is being challenged by several candidates this November as issues ranging from affordability to the future of the state’s public land holdings are set to be among core issues at the forefront of the race.
Fulcher, a Republican, is facing Democrat Kaylee Peterson, Independent Sarah Zabel and Constitution Party candidate Brendan Gomez. Each candidate is vying to represent Idaho’s First Congressional District, which encompasses the western half of the state and stretches from the Idaho panhandle in the north to the Nevada border in the south.
According to Federal Elections Commission data, Fulcher is in the lead for fundraising. Between Jan. 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, his receipts total more than $662,000. In the same span, Peterson’s receipts are more than $181,000 and more than $81,000 for Zabel. Gomez has not raised money for his campaign, according to FEC data.
Gomez did not respond to a request for comment. Though still on the ballot, he is currently being held in the Ada County Jail on a $500,000 bond after pleading guilty to possessing child sexually exploitative material on Sept. 14, as was reported by the Idaho Capital Sun.
Below are responses from Fulcher, Peterson and Zabel on some of the key issues heading into this year’s general election.
Position on Public Lands
Each candidate advocated for protecting public lands, but with different means of doing so.
Zabel described federal lands as a “public trust” for the United States and spoke against the state either owning or managing the lands, contending the result would be “swamping” state resources with management costs and prompt either a reverting back to federal management or, if the state were to own the land, potential sell-offs.
Zabel instead advocated for the Public Lands in Public Hands Act, which would ban the transfer of federal public lands by the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service to a non-federal entity unless the land is under 300 acres or less than 5 acres and accessible by a public waterway.
“This is the long-term wealth of America,” Zabel said, “and we can’t squander it.”
Peterson similarly said public lands were better off being managed by the federal government, but raised concerns about a “woeful lack of stuffing” at the U.S. Forest Service that has resulted in part from layoffs pursued under the defunct Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Peterson also sought to bring attention to recent Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) agreements brokered between state and federal land agencies that, in addition to facilitating land restoration projects, seek to double timber production in the state over the coming years with the aim of both improving financial returns and reducing fire risk stemming from overgrown fuels.
“We don’t have the environmental review, the public comment, or the oversight to make sure that these logging agreements are actually going after wildfire risk instead of just clear-cutting Idaho lands,” Peterson said.
Fulcher maintained his position advocating for increased state control of public lands, noting the current arrangement has resulted in about a million acres burning annually, in part due to management shortcomings.
“There’s a lot of people that say, ‘Fulcher just wants to sell things off,’” Fulcher said. “No, not at all — I just want the decisions about it made at home rather than 3,000 miles away.”
The congressman issued a letter last year calling for the responsibility for managing these lands to be transferred to the state, positing it would open up “timber, grazing and mining” opportunities and better allow protections from developments like the Lava Ridge Wind Project, which was initiated under the Biden administration and canceled by the Trump administration last year.
“I would like to see the Idaho Department of Lands have a lot of the decision-making,” Fulcher said. “That does not mean that I think that the federal government should be off the hook when it comes to funding. … If we can transition some decision making, I think that’s a good thing, but that doesn’t mean I will forfeit what I believe is rightfully appropriated to our state through the (Department of the) Interior and through the Forest Service.”
Addressing Rising Healthcare Costs
To address high healthcare costs, Fulcher said he has been supportive of the New Health Options Act, which proposes a parallel health insurance market separate from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. Fulcher pointed to continual increases in healthcare costs since the passage of the ACA, but said doing away with this system entirely was sufficiently “ingrained” it made doing away with it entirely “not practical.”
Fulcher said this framework would instead provide a “voluntary alternative to the Affordable Care Act” and allow individuals to receive their tax dollars directly to be used at their discretion for healthcare choices.
“We want to reinsert some market forces,” Fulcher said, “give people some options and, frankly, more control over their dollars.”
Zabel said current healthcare cost issues stem in part from the U.S. having a market-based healthcare system, as competition will be unable to address issues like those seen in rural Idaho, which may only have one healthcare provider in the region.
Zabel has advocated for greater transparency and requirements that hospitals disclose negotiated prices for drugs and the charges to insurers and patients for every service provided. She said she also wants to reverse the consolidation of the industry by enforcing antitrust laws to limit hospitals being able to buy up physician practices.
To reduce prescription drug costs, Zabel advocated for reform of the patent system that can block generic competing drugs from hitting the market and bringing down prices.
“The costs of healthcare are just impossible,” Zabel said, “and neither party has a solution that actually actually works.”
Citing conversations across the First Congressional District, Peterson said Idahoans were concerned about the cost of living and rising healthcare costs in particular.
“The premiums that have skyrocketed for middle-class working-class families has become untenable,” Peterson said. “Deductibles are going up … and then on top of that, Idaho is losing healthcare providers, physicians in rural parts of the state.”
As a solution to these rising costs, Peterson has supported implementing a single-payer health insurance program where a single public agency collects funds and pays healthcare providers, akin to how Medicare currently functions in the U.S. for citizens over the age of 65.
“I don’t think our taxpayer dollars should be going into a private healthcare market that doesn’t work for anyone,” Peterson said, “and I think single-payer healthcare solves that problem.”
Immigration Reforms
Candidates differed on the best approaches to immigration in the country, but each acknowledged ongoing concerns surrounding the visa system and its impact on Idaho’s agricultural industry.
Peterson highlighted an ongoing backlog in U.S. immigration courts, which stands at over 3 million active cases, as a detriment that is raising costs for the nation’s taxpayers. While a shortage of immigration judges and attorneys is part of this, Peterson said a growing issue is the increase in indefinite arrests and detentions being facilitated through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“They’ve created an even bigger backlog than we were dealing with at the southern border,” Peterson said, “and now that’s going to have to be Congress’s job to fix.”
As for reforms in the area of immigration, Peterson said she was in favor of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.
The legislation, which has failed to advance into law, would have established a pathway to legal status for experienced agriculture workers, required the use of the federal E-Verify program to determine work eligibility and altered the H-2A program to allow for year