Today I interviewed the independent candidate for the Representative for the 10th District of Texas, Katie Finnerty. To be honest, I walked into this interview expecting to hear a candidate who really didn’t have any solid views one way or the other. She’s an independent, I thought, there’s no way she really has any definitive opinions. This was the candidate who got attacked during the first debate for her middle-of-the-road views by both sides, and her responses to the attacks during the debate did not leave me satisfied. When I sat down to interview her, however, I gave her time to explain what she was trying to say, and I left feeling convinced that an independent is exactly what Washington needs right now. People like Katie Finnerty can bring much-needed relief to the horrible gridlock that is occurring is Washington these days.

      Her views were anything but unclear or underdeveloped as well. We talked about all the issues, and she had policy proposals for every single one of them. She stressed her willingness to compromise in order to achieve progress, and I started to see the genius of the whole concept of being an independent politician.

The first thing we talked about was the minimum wage. Finnerty wants to raise the minimum wage to $9, which is in between where the democrats and the republicans think it should be. She cited the need to consider the risk of inflation when creating policies like these, and how we wouldn’t necessarily want to raise it to $10, as that could cause harm to many businesses. She has considered all the data and all the partisanship that currently surrounds this issue and presented a proposal that if presented well could actually pass in the divided Congress. I applaud her for this.

      The next big thing we discussed was illegal immigration. Her policy is to increase border security, maintain background checks for immigrants, and decrease the time it takes to accept or deny an immigration request. She insists that we cannot make the immigration policy so strict as to make it unnecessarily difficult for people to immigrate here legally, but we also cannot just let people walk across the border and use our services without paying for them. When I asked her why it was important to decrease the time for accepting or denying requests, she replied that this action would “decrease the likelihood that people would try to immigrate here illegally” because they know they could quickly get approved to come here without breaking the law.

      We discussed other things, including her campaign slogan, “People Before Party,” which I thought well-expressed her intentions to bring progress to Washington instead of gridlock. Overall, Finnerty was very professional during our interview, answering each question with precision and grace. I could tell she knew what she was talking about and was passionate about bringing change to our government. She changed the way I think about independents, and she deserves to be considered for the 10th District Representative in Congress.