I have been living in Sundance for over five years. I grew up just across the border in Spearfish, SD and consequently spent a lot of time visiting family (I'm 4th generation on my mom's side) and taking in the beauty of the Wyoming Black Hills in my formative years. I've found that there's really not much difference between western SD and eastern WY.

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I am an actor and a singer with a degree in Spanish and History that I parlayed into an IT career. I'm a veteran of the Army National Guard, a substitute teacher, and served a term on a local school board as a young man. I took a 25 year detour to Texas where I met my wife. I've been watching politics in this country for over four decades and as a student of history, I can see that we are on a perilous road right now. None of the other candidates seem to see the danger and you can't solve a problem if you don't even recognize that the problem exists.

Federal overreach is quite honestly the biggest challenge the country has faced in almost a century. The people of Wyoming probably know better than most states what that feels like, but every state is going to be in the cross hairs if we don't elect people to Congress who have the backbone to stand up and say no more. We need to put limits on executive power and hold corrupt politicians to account ("drain the swamp" if you will). This country won't last another 250 years if we don't do something now.

Short of rebuilding and reforming healthcare from the ground up, there are a few things we can do: making higher education more affordable so that medical professionals aren't pressured to make as much money as possible to pay down massive debts; shoring up the Medicaid and Medicare programs that rural hospitals rely on to stay open; improving and fully funding VA and IHS medical systems are just a few examples. Personally, I want to explore opening up federal employee health programs for regular citizens to buy into, since it is already a national system. We need innovation in this arena and we need it pretty badly.

I'm always ready to make things better than they are now, regardless of whose idea it is. It would be really easy to let "perfect" become the enemy of "good" trying to hold out for an ideal that may not even be possible when "good enough" might be easily achieved.

If they are open to it, I think having one of my local offices on the Reservation would be a good step. It is my intention to give good representation to all the people of Wyoming, and so regular town hall style meetings and such would be part of my agenda, especially on the Reservation.

First, by making sure that we have strong protections in place to prevent corrupt dealings like the Teapot Dome scandal that centered around Wyoming oil resources in the 20th Century. Second, we should look into land swaps and other consolidation measures to lessen the checkerboarding that allows private landowners to lock up public land by denying access through the land they own that surrounds public land. The House doesn't have any say in confirming cabinet officers, but I would hope to have at least some chance to weigh in on appointments to make sure only the best and brightest are given such power.

Congress needs to step up and hold the Trump Administration accountable for the incompetence they've shown in their attempts to deal with immigration. Killing American citizens is too high a price to pay for immigration reform. Congress also needs to write sane immigration laws that address the actual problems around immigration instead of jumping at shadows and demonizing hard working people just trying to provide for their families. We need the labor and expertise of immigrants as much now as we did when immigrants were building the American west in the 19th Century. This country was built by immigrants and will continue to be. Immigration is what made America great in the first place. We're not going to make America great again by kicking out all the immigrants we can. Imagine if our immigrant ancestors had met the hate and violence we see today.