Multiple election challengers to longtime incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson say they are focused on lowering the cost of living for Idahoans. 

On Nov. 3, Democrat Ellie Gilbreath, independents Tripp Hutchinson and Emre Houser, and Libertarian Will Johanson, will face Simpson, who’s in his 14th term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He represents Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District, which covers much of southeast Idaho. 

Simpson’s campaign did not respond to multiple emails and voicemails requesting an interview for this story. Houser also could not be reached, and Constitution Party candidate Carta Sierra Law, known as the Idaho Lorax, who registered to run in the race, died in June, the Idaho State Journal reported. 

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Simpson said on his website his top priorities included stopping illegal immigration, supporting agriculture, and opposing the Biden-era climate initiatives in the “Green New Deal,” which he called “overreaching and ambiguous.” 

Hutchinson said he wanted to run because he saw a “cost of living crisis for the working people of Ketchum” and Blaine County. 

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“We work as hard as we can at the municipal level to address the challenges, but having sat in the seat, it became very apparent early on that a lot of these issues are systemic, all the way up to our federal government,” he said. 

Gilbreath said her top priorities would be protecting public lands, lowering costs for Idahoans, and “raising up rural Idaho … Which includes standing with our Idaho agriculture.” 

“I think we’ve abandoned rural Idaho as a country, but also in Idaho,” Gilbreath said. “So we need to expand our federal funding for rural hospitals and healthcare, and then focus on trade school parity.

Johanson said he’s running to “give voters an alternative.” He said Simpson seems to be “out of touch with our concerns over affordability and the endless wars that we’re fighting around the world.” 

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Hutchinson said the biggest challenge he hears about from Idahoans is the high cost of healthcare. 

“I’m a strong believer in capitalism and the philosophy of capitalism, but at the same time, I’m a strong believer that some sectors of our economy should be moving away from the profit motive,” he said. 

He said the country’s anti-trust and anti-monoply laws need to be enforced more heavily in the healthcare industry, including against pharmaceutical and insurance companies. He said, eventually, he wants to see the nation move to a single-payer healthcare system, often called Medicare for all. 

“I’m running to represent Idaho for a two-year term, and I don’t think this is manageable in a two-year term, but I think it’s a goal that’s worth having for our country well into the future,” he said. 

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Gilbreath said she wants to restore the cuts to Medicaid implemented in the federal “big beautiful” law approved by Republicans last year, “or find an alternate solution.” She said the bill’s $50 billion Rural Healthcare Transformation Grant, of which Idaho was awarded $186 million in the first year of the five-year program, was “a game of smoke and mirrors, whether intentional or not.” 

“They threw the net so wide, just calling it healthcare, so it was really difficult for our rural hospitals to get any of that,” she said. 

Johanson said a lack of competition and over-regulation have driven up healthcare costs. To address this, he proposed allowing Medicare to negotiate lower pharmaceutical prices. He also said he supports some healthcare deregulation, such as eliminating requirements for needs assessments for opening new hospitals and eliminating requirements on how insurance companies must use premiums they collect from clients.

He’d also like to see an increase in direct primary care, in which patients pay physicians a regular membership fee to access services instead of going through insurance, to “cut out the middleman.” 

Simpson wrote in the Sun’s 2026 Primary Election Voter Guide, that he supports “legislation that offers common-sense, market-based reforms to lower health care premium costs, expands access to quality care, provides every American with more options and flexibility to choose coverage that works for them, and brings greater transparency to America’s health care system.” 

He said he supported “strengthening rural health care access and protecting Medicare and Medicaid for those who rely on them while rooting out waste and improving efficiency. I also support expanding association health plans and reducing costly regulations that burden providers and small businesses.” 

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Gilbreath said the immigration issues the country faces are “solvable.” 

“Both sides are guilty of not really attempting to solve the problem,” she said. “It’s become this very convenient tool to battle the Democrats against the Republicans.” 

She said she supported efforts to secure borders as well as expanded migrant work visas. She said the agricultural work visa program H-2A should be expanded so year-round industries, such as dairy producing, could access laborers year-round. The H-2A program is currently only available for temporary, seasonal work and can’t be accessed by year-round agricultural businesses.

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She said expansions to the program should be “industry-specific and job-specific,” limited to only producers that need the different requirements. 

“As I’ve traveled around the state, there seems to be consensus around that sense of strong borders and secure borders, and also a legal pathway for people to be able to to run their ag businesses and have their neighbors here at legal capacity,” Gilbreath said. 

Johanson argued that the H-2A program depresses wages in the industry, despite requirements around minimum wages in the program to try and reduce adverse effects on wage rates. Johanson said the excess labor coming into the jobs keeps the wages low, and said he’d support limiting the number of visas in the program that are administered. He also supports strong border enforcement, he said. 

“It’s often argued that ag workers do jobs that you know native-born Americans don’t want to do, but I suppose the most clear counter is that native-born Americans don’t want to do these jobs or simply can’t do these jobs because they pay wages far below what we would call a living wage,” Johanson said. 

Simpson wrote on his website that he supports stopping illegal immigration and securing the nation’s border and that he’s “deeply concerned over proposals that would grant amnesty to illegal immigrants in the United States.” 

Simpson in 2021 co-sponsored the bi-partisan Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which among its many immigration changes would’ve granted temporary legal status to some longtime undocumented agricultural workers that meet certain requirements. Those who obtained this temporary status would have the ability to eventually apply for permanent legal status. 

This year, Simpson signed on to another legislative package, called the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act, which would update the H-2A program, allowing it to be used for year-round work and would create a visa pathway for undocumented agricultural workers. The bill does not include a permanent legal status pathway. 

“I have also worked closely with our farmers and ranchers that depend on guestworker labor to explore options to reforming this program,” Simpson said on his website. “Idaho’s economy depends on agriculture labor, and without a legal means to solve this outdated system, we are doing our farmers a great disservice.” 

Hutchinson said he supports “properly funding” a pathway to full citizenship for migrant workers. He argued the visa system creates “secondary class that is more easily exploited, accepts lower wages, and creates much bigger profit margins for some of the most powerful people in our country.” 

He also supported “a properly funded presence at both of our borders,” because he believes climate change will drive global mass migration and the country should be prepared. 

Three candidates don’t support transferring federal public lands to state. One does. 

Simpson in 2025 co-sponsored the “Public Lands in Public Hands” Act amid efforts to sell off large swaths of federal public land to pay for extending tax cuts in the big beautiful bill. Simpson told the Idaho Press he didn’t support transferring ownership of federal lands to the state, because the price tag would be too much for local land managers. 

Nearly two-thirds of Idaho’s landmass is federal public land. 

Hutchinson said that much of the federal land that is permitted to ranchers for grazing should be sold to those ranchers and privatized. 

“The vast majority of federal land is not this sort of appealing, pristine natural beauty,” he said. “It’s more of an austere grazing land or land that’s just kind of rocky. Land that people wouldn’t really think twice about.” 

He also supported moving ownership of national forests to the state and “getting that decision making closer to the voters that are affected by it.” 

Gilbreath and Hutchinson also told the Sun they didn’t support transferring ownership or management of the land. 

Gilbreath added that the federal government should enact limitations on putting data centers on public land. 

“… Negotiations need to be transparent and the public needs to be involved, and it needs to be local control and local benefit to that data center,” she said. “Not just some big tech company that thinks that Idaho is a great place to be able to just come in and take some land and exploit it for their own benefit and value, not those of the citizens.” 

Hutchinson said selling off or blocking off access to the land would “be looked back on as one of the biggest mistakes in our country’s history, and a complete slap into the face to the people over 100 years ago, like Teddy Roosevelt, who had the foresight to to protect these spaces with the highest form of government for the future generations of our country.” 

Simpson and Gilbreath lead in fundraising 

Simpson’s campaign this year has collected over $1.1 million and spent nearly $800,000, through June 30, which is the most recent Federal Election Commission data available. More than $600,000 of his contributions have come from political action committees or PACs, such as the Freedom Fund, National Rural Water Association Political Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee PAC.   

Gilbreath’s campaign has garnered nearly $107,000 and spent around $35,700, as of June 30 FEC filings. Over $35,000 of that has come from ActBlue, the Democratic National Convention fundraising platform. Her campaign did not report any contributions from other PACs. 

Hutchinson’s campaign has reported just over $7,500 in contributions, and spent about $1,600. All of his contributions come from individual donors, according to the report. 

Houser and Johanson didn’t have reported contributions or expenditures in FEC filings. 

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