- Nate Blouin, a Democratic candidate, urges Democrats to "fight fire with fire."
- He supports fair redistricting, single-payer healthcare and taxing wealthy Americans more.
- Blouin also addressed past derogatory remarks about Latter-day Saints, calling members a "very important part of our community."
SALT LAKE CITY — Congressional candidate Nate Blouin said Democrats need to "fight fire with fire," particularly in response to President Donald Trump's push to encourage red states to redraw congressional maps to favor Republicans.
Blouin, a Democratic state senator from Millcreek, described himself as a "fighter" in an interview with the KSL and Deseret News editorial boards Tuesday, and criticized large political donors of "rigging things on both sides of the system."
"I would say fight fire with fire, that is the way I would describe it," Blouin said, when asked how Democrats should respond to Trump. "I think we've struggled because we have wanted to follow laws and norms and rules for so long — and we should. That's how government should operate is within those established boundaries."
As Republicans and Democrats have recently traded off on efforts to redraw political maps outside the typical decennial cycle, Blouin said he supports efforts to draw fair maps.
"The logical conclusion of this is every state is going to be solidly red or solidly blue, and I don't think that's a good thing," he said. "I think that's a really bad thing."
Blouin is running as a Democrat for Utah's 1st Congressional District, a blue-leaning district centered in Salt Lake City, the result of a court decision that found Utah's GOP-led Legislature didn't comply with the state's anti-gerrymandering law, known as Proposition 4. The senator said he believes the new district is fair.
Blouin is running as a "progressive" in a four-person field for the Democratic nomination, and says getting money out of politics is one of his top priorities. That could include working "within" Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission — a 2014 Supreme Court ruling that reversed some limits on campaign spending — but Blouin also said he would consider reforms to the high court in hopes of having the 2014 decision overturned.
During the interview, Blouin also addressed comments he made more than a decade ago online in which he used crude language and made derogatory remarks about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Blouin had previously apologized for the remarks and said Tuesday that he believes Latter-day Saints to be a "very important part of our community."
At the time he made the comments, he said he had been "frustrated, because I felt like I had no path forward" after failing out of college and feeling like he didn't have any good job opportunities. Blouin's in-laws are members of the church, and he said he has seen a positive impact that religion has had on their lives.
I think there's a very real place where religion can play a very positive role in people's lives," he said. "You'll see at about the same time I got back into Salt Lake Community College and moved forward, those comments stopped appearing because ... I wasn't taking my anger out at a group or at a religion or anything like that."
While he said he wouldn't choose the term "democratic socialist" to describe himself politically, Blouin said he plans to endorse a democratic socialist to replace him in the Legislature, and said, "I certainly align with those politics."
He supports a single-payer healthcare system, raising the minimum wage and suggests taxing wealthy Americans more to help pay for it. Blouin didn't give a specific threshold of annual income for raising taxes, but said it's "somewhere up above" at least $200,000 per year.
"I think there is a range where you are seeing people take more out of the system than goes back into it," he said. "They're squirreling it away in wealth funds and in investments that don't do anything for the average people. ... I think that's my perspective is, we need to close those loopholes so that we can actually put that capital to good use."
Blouin added that he doesn't think any billionaires are "self-made."
"I think they are benefiting off of the backs of working people," he said. And paraphrasing comments recently made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, he added: "There's only so much money someone can earn, and at some point, that money is made off of our system, off of our infrastructure, off of working people who are getting screwed over, or who aren't getting paid the wages they deserve."
