A 27-year Army officer with three deployments looked at Congress and decided the problem wasn't which party was winning - it was that both of them were. So Jason Faler is running in Oregon's 6th with no letter behind his name.

Jason walks us through the road from four-generation Oregonian to combat tours in Baghdad and the Horn of Africa to healthcare administrator and professor - and the "frog in the boiling water" moment that finally pushed him to run. He lays out the number almost nobody in Oregon knows: unaffiliated voters went from 22% of the electorate in 2012 to roughly 40% today, which means the largest voting bloc in his district belongs to no party at all. We get into why so many veterans end up in nonpartisan reform, why he won't just run in a primary and take the easy path, and what it actually costs to get on a ballot when your two opponents ran unopposed. 

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Chapters:

00:00:00 – The Parties Are the Problem

00:00:37 – Meet Jason Faler

00:03:17 – What Pulled Him Into Politics

00:07:04 – Independent by Conviction, Not by Default

00:08:28 – From Iraq to Oregon – Why He's Running

00:11:55 – Veterans, the Military & Political Independence

00:15:03 – The Barriers to Running as an Independent

00:19:03 – Clipboard Democracy in the Digital Age

00:24:29 – When Elections Become Auctions

00:27:15 – The Largest Voting Bloc Nobody Knows About