Todd Bloom

Lisa Bryan

Todd Bloom (R) is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 6th Congressional District Courtesy Todd Bloom

At the encouragement of friends and associates, political newcomer Todd Bloom of Tacoma is in his first-time bid to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 6th Congressional District. He feels confident his experience as a veteran Navy officer and reservist, combined with his professional and business acumen, brings the skill set needed to be an effective congressman.

“The economic recovery has been incredibly uneven,” Bloom said. He sees a need for responsible fiscal stimulus and congressional control over the Federal Reserve, believing strongly that federal tax cuts and tax reform would be appropriate to restore growth not seen since before the Great Recession.

“With my significant tax background, including many years in public accounting and a master of laws in taxation, I’ve got the wherewithal and specific knowledge to inform policy discussion and favorably impact that issue,” he said.

Before moving to Tacoma in 2002 with his wife and two sons, Bloom lived and worked in Louisiana, where he specialized in oil, gas and natural resource policy. He came to believe that regulatory reform is needed not merely in the energy industry, which he says has been fairly hard hit recently, but in other areas of the economy as well. “I tend to believe we are overregulated,” he said.

“I think I will be well suited and experienced to be able to impact those deliberations and try to figure out how to tailor our regulations to be effective and less burdensome on business and achieve policy objectives to lessen the negative impact on the economy,” Bloom said.

“You’ve got the environmentalist interests of the Wild Olympics Campaign that wants to put more land under conservation, off limits to economic development, and you’ve got the interests who’ve said our logging industry has been decimated but who say they can do this in an environmentally friendly way that preserves our interests without imposing on private property rights,” he said. “Our country was founded on free enterprise and the protection of private property rights, so it concerns me when I see regulatory ham-fistedness in that regard.”

Bloom sees partisan divisions within the 6th Congressional District.

“There has been so much along partisan lines that we can’t even have a discussion that isn’t part of an approved line of thinking and one gets branded as this or that or the other thing,” he said. “Marco Rubio tried to work in bipartisan fashion in the Gang of Eight, which shut down his ability to participate on issues of immigration. I’m not encouraged when I see Republicans reach across the aisle and get in trouble for it.

“I like to hope I can work that way, but I’m not really convinced I’ve advanced the football in that regard. In the military, a lot of what I’ve done is apolitical, where you work on something in a framework of what is.”

Bloom believes voter dissatisfaction supports the idea that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

“Ultimately, I think all this hand-wringing over Trump’s presidential demeanor is just a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks trying to discredit him,” he said. “I think he may not do everything he’s said in his campaign statements, and that maybe some people took him too literally, but I guess I’m not really that concerned. Even though he wasn’t my first choice, I’m able to support him and we don’t have a lot of good options at this point.

“In the 26th Legislative District, we went from having three Democrats to having three Republicans in office after the last election. I hope that voters will take a good look at me and see a viable alternative to the status quo,” Bloom said.