The district, though, holds national importance because it includes Fairchild Air Force Base, U.S.-Canada border crossings, the main northern interstate highway, and three of the four Lower Snake River dams. For 20 years, it was represented by Republican Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, a well-respected legislator who was, for a time, near the top of the House Republican leadership.

In 2024, McMorris-Rodgers announced her retirement, and Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA) won the election to represent the district in the 119th Congress. Baumgartner brings to the role a wealth of legislative and life experience, especially regarding foreign policy and counterinsurgency operations.

Baumgartner, during a November 2024 interview as he finished his previous job as Spokane County treasurer, recalled his origin story. He’s from Colton, Washington, a town of around 400 people near Lewiston, Idaho.

He developed an early interest in world travel when his father, a forestry professor at Washington State University, had a year-off sabbatical. Mr. Baumgartner took the family to Europe, including a trip to the Soviet Union during Perestroika, with a middle school basketball team as part of a sports diplomacy program.

Baumgartner found multiple opportunities to go abroad throughout his education, including a trip to Jordan and Syria on a summer tour for teenagers sponsored by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. Upon graduating from high school, he enrolled at Washington State University, where he majored in economics with minors in French and mathematics.

In college, he spent his junior year at a business school in the French Alps. The original plan for that year was to spend half of the time in the West African nation of Togo, but the universities there ended up shutting down due to political instability.

Baumgartner mentioned that he has now been to, he believes, 94 countries. But the one region he has still not been to is sub-Saharan West Africa, after the study abroad program there was canceled almost 30 years ago. During his senior year, he went on another academic trip, this time to Kuwait.

Upon completing college, Baumgartner turned down a job offer at an investment bank in Seattle, instead choosing to spend time doing Catholic missionary work in Mozambique. While there, he taught students, did social work in slums, and coached a women’s basketball team. For a time, he was also the only white player in Mozambique’s national basketball league — an experience he likens to being a conservative in famously liberal Seattle, at the other end of Washington state.

Following this experience, he became interested in global poverty and the question of why some countries are poor and others are wealthy. Upon returning to America, he enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University, obtaining a master’s degree in international development.

After working as an economist around the world, Baumgartner was hired by the State Department in 2007 to go to Iraq and help with the U.S. troop “surge.” At the time, he was with a special division called Joint Strategic Planning and Assessment, involved in long-term planning for the pacification and rebuilding of Iraq. Ultimately, he was the lead coordinator for the embassy’s Mission Strategic Plan, arguing against the United States prematurely withdrawing from Iraq before defeating the insurgency.

Shortly after departing Iraq, Baumgartner went to Afghanistan as a civilian contractor under the State Department, living off base in the Helmand Province. As part of his work there, he became involved in a counternarcotics program designed by a University of Cambridge-educated British journalist named Eleanor Mayne, whom he would later marry.

Upon returning to the U.S., the military brought Baumgartner on to lecture at counterinsurgency courses for the leadership. He was the most influenced by the successes of the Iraq surge compared to the failures in Afghanistan, where there were no viable strategies to defeat the Taliban nor to stabilize the country.

In 2010, he returned home to eastern Washington and defeated a two-term Democratic incumbent in a race for state Senate, a position he held for two terms. In 2012, Baumgartner ran for the Senate on a platform that involved withdrawing from Afghanistan but lost to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). In 2018, he left the state Senate and ran successfully for Spokane Country treasurer, a position he held until joining the House of Representatives early in 2025.

Balanced foreign policy views

Baumgartner, in his interview, discussed foreign policy in an experienced, competent, realistic, and pragmatic manner. When asked about his support for withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2012, he noted that, based on his experience there, the U.S. lacked a winning strategy. He added that bringing democracy and stability to Afghanistan was neither possible nor important to the goal of making America safe at home.

Baumgartner said if the U.S. followed his advice at the time, “There would have been a lot less American lives lost, and a lot less American taxpayer dollars spent.”

At the same time, he is highly critical of the chaotic withdrawal almost 10 years later, on former President Joe Biden’s watch. The artificial deadline did not reflect reality, but it probably sounded good to a policy staffer to leave on the 20th anniversary of the conflict, he added.

Baumgartner promotes a realistic foreign policy but also sees the world as “a big scary place.” He doesn’t want America to withdraw from international engagement and recognizes the dangers of radical Islam thriving in ungoverned spaces.

He has a higher regard for U.S. counterterrorism policies in areas including Somalia and the Sahara, where he says the country has a lighter footprint than its post-9/11 strategy in the Middle East. He advocates a “stronger and smarter foreign policy that doesn’t get us involved in noble but ill-conceived Bush-era democracy projects.”

Regarding concerns closer to home, Baumgartner said dealing with the border crisis is a strong mandate Republicans received in the election. He has traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border. While he believes in letting some refugees into America, such as those who worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan, the situation on the Southern border is chaotic and inhumane, and those coming across are abusing the goodness of America.

Brad Pearce writes The Wayward Rabbler on Substack and is also a regular contributor to the American Conservative and The Libertarian Institute. He lives in eastern Washington with his wife and two children.