SANDPOINT — Sagle resident Kathryn Larson is running for the District 1B House of Representatives seat as an independent in November.

Larson said she is running because she loves the neighborly spirit of North Idaho and feels it is slipping away. She said that there has been a shift away from the region’s values, like local control and community, toward allegiances to outside money and privatization. 

“We’ve got to ask three questions: ‘Who decides? Who pays? And who benefits?” Larson said. “If we look at each one of those issues and go, ‘What's happening here in this policy,’ I think we'd be able to stop a lot more.” 

The idea of local control and trusting city and county governments to operate with independence is a major point for Larson, who said she views it as a fundamental conservative principle. Larson said while local control shouldn’t be 100%, most issues should be solved by the people closest to the problem. 

As an example of the state acting against local control, Larson pointed to the passing of House Bill 583, which completely stripped cities’ ability to regulate short-term rentals. Cornel Rasor, the incumbent to the 1B seat, voted in favor of HB 583 and said at the recent candidate forum that he believed it would increase property rights. 

“What we've done is we've taken local control away,” Larson said of HB 583. “We've pushed more cost onto the taxpayers, because we have to pay to defray the cost for those short-term rental owners, and it's opening it up for people who don't live here.” 

Larson said if elected, she would work to increase the transparency of proposed bills and bring honest math to the state’s budgeting process. As a former business owner, Larson said she wants to focus on the root issues affecting statewide priorities, such as education funding, rural health care and transportation. 

All those issues are ones that Larson said she’d like to tackle and make North Idaho a beacon for prosperity. 

“We had an opportunity with the state money that came in to make our health care system, to really look at the rural health care system and say, ‘How can we create a model for the rest of the country about how rural health care can work?’” Larson said. “Same with the transportation... How can we start to look at ways to be a transportation hub?” 

In the 2024 election, Larson ran against Rasor as a Democrat but said she is choosing to run as an independent candidate this year in an effort to remove the focus on political ideology. She said she feels that the independence of North Idaho is one of the major reasons people have flocked to the area in the last five years. 

Larson said she feels she carries a balance of the two political parties’ ideologies. She added that as an independent, she won’t be beholden to party politics and allow her to be more honest as a legislator. 

“I want to be able to be honest and not have anybody pressuring me to a platform or to a litmus or loyalty test,” Larson said. “I want to be able to look myself in the eyes when I look in the mirror and do what's right. I want to be able to listen to whoever it is and change my mind, if somebody can bring me data that says this is not right, or this is right.” 

As the only independent candidate, Larson has no challenger in the May 19 primary. Her name will appear on the November ballot against the winner of the Republican nomination.