The theories of Chris Coulombe

The Republican candidate challenging Congressman Jared Huffman for California's Second District lives in Sebastopol

Republican Chris Coulombe is running for Congress in District 2.

Chris Coulombe of Sebastopol is running against incumbent Congressman Jared Huffman for California’s vast 2nd District, which runs from Marin County to the Oregon border and includes Sebastopol. Huffman has represented District 2 since 2013, and, with the most populous areas of his district being deep blue, he is considered by many to be a shoo-in—but Coulombe has a different idea.

Coulombe was born and raised in Sonoma County. He served in the military for 16 years, eventually rising to the rank of captain and earning a master’s degree in diplomacy from Norwich University. In his final military assignment, he was the most junior Army officer ever selected for a fellowship to the Senator Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), a Department of Defense think tank. He represented the U.S. and U.S. Army to dignitaries and senior security officials from almost every country in the Indo-Asia Pacific, focusing on multilateral and multidimensional solutions to regional and transnational security challenges.

Coulombe currently works as a business consultant. I sat down with Coulombe earlier this week to gain an understanding of his views on the problems most pertinent to the country and our district.

California’s 2nd Congressional District

Why did you decide to run for a national position like U.S. Congress rather than a more local office?

Answer: With 16 years in the military, my background is in national security, understanding geopolitics, and, very specifically, macroeconomics. That is what the focus is on when you’re at the federal level in government. I see so many people get into local politics with no intention of doing anything locally. They’re just ladders to go on to the next thing.

Why do you feel Jared Huffman is not good enough?

I just don’t see him really representing the people. I see him representing specific interests. I think he’s doing what he’s told to do by people like Nancy Pelosi and others in the [Democrat] party. He doesn’t have a connection to the district, and we’re watching that play out. So much of the economic downturn and the economic duress that people are experiencing is because we don’t have anybody that has a macro-regional plan or a vision. There’s nobody that’s coordinating between Humboldt County and Sonoma County to try and create greater opportunity, and so we’re watching places like Humboldt County suffer economically. Mendocino County has a negative 1.5% economic decline year over year for the next five years. [Huffman] has been here for 12 years. Who do we lay that at the feet of? We’re giving that guy a million dollars a year in staff budget. What do we get?

For example, the [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] costs every single district in America $2 billion. Do you think the North Coast is gonna get $2 billion out of the that? I would argue it’s very unlikely that he is doing anything to advocate for federal monies to bring back to this district, which means that we are a lost district. We rarely get anything over $15 million.

So you believe that, as it stands, taxpayers in this district are not seeing their money come back to them? If so, why not?

The job of a representative is to go out and get money for their district, to advocate on behalf of the district to ensure there are major projects that are going to have large scale impacts and that are going to lift all boats. That’s the job of a representative. It’s not happening.

What is it about Chris Coulombe that should make people confident he will not fall into the same trap you mention? That is, of having an allegiance to his party or special interests above the population he represents?

I’ve lost too many buddies who died for an America that is not representing them. I owe them and every single generation that came before me something better than what we have, because, at the end of our lives, when we turn 80, you get to look back and see, “What did you do?” I asked 80-year-old Chris, “Is this the time to get in? I don’t really want to get into politics. It’s a dirty place. It’s not fun, but it’s the only place we can make change.” I knew that 80-year-old Chris would be disappointed that I didn’t have the courage to step in and give my time to this country that has done everything for me. I don’t think that what we can hand the next generation right now is something to be proud of.

The price of gas in California is currently $4.64 a gallon, over a dollar more than all but eight other states. The price of electricity under PG&E has doubled within the last five years. Why has the price of essential goods like gas and electricity gotten so expensive, especially in California?

We’re at the point now where the United States has printed so much capital, so much money—so many debt instruments, really—that our actual dollar is losing its purchasing power. Most of the people that live here think that they’re middle class, but most are not middle class. They’re allowed to buy middle class things, which make them feel like they’re middle class. They can buy middle class TVs and middle class technology because we’ve been able to make the price of technology exceedingly low. But any of the actual necessities—power, water, etc.—are increasing exponentially because the government has failed to solve those challenges. And all the government has done is say, “Yeah, we messed that up. We’ll try that again, but we need a bigger budget.”

But none of these programs are working. What they’re doing is they’re using government programs to infuse the money supply in our economy. And as long as there’s money flowing through the economy, it doesn’t collapse. But in actual economics or in the free market, you have the effective and efficient allocation of capital. That’s not happening, because one of the largest controllers of capital is the government.

The state of California has spent $24 billion on homelessness over the last five years. Why has the problem of homelessness not been improved upon in a substantial way, even though there has been so much taxpayer money thrown at it?

What happens if we solve homelessness? That person who’s making $200,000 to be the executive director of a nonprofit that barely does anything—why would they want to solve homelessness? So the priorities are skewed. You’ve got the government who basically has the perfect marketing pitch and emotional appeal for us to do something to serve and save our fellow humans. We can solve homelessness, but instead homelessness blows up. The government has no interest in solving problems, because, if it solves the problem, it has to find a new reason to exist.

Why has there not been more housing built in Sonoma County?

I’ve been in politics in Sonoma County since 2004, and I’ve been listening to all the conversations. If you look at the developments that were set for approval in Santa Rosa city proper going from like 2006 to 2010, right in the midst of the bubble, the thing that you’ll see is there’s roughly 10 or 11 developments that were approved to be built.

The reason why none of those got built was because one of the conditions for approval from Santa Rosa’s city council was the amount of parking space required and the amount of subsidized units, which made it so that the project was unprofitable for development. This went on for roughly eight years, until 2016, 2017-ish. Then the state started looking at things like SB 8, 9 and 10. Then this whole “homelessness industrial complex” initiative got in motion and what ended up happening, going into like 2022 and 2023, is you had an order that basically mandated that all municipalities produce 10% of their housing stock in subsidized housing.

Now that all these other developers didn’t get any of their projects approved for decades, they all left Sonoma County because there’s no business. Here in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa city proper, we built more units in the last two years than we built in the last 10. You have this whole process that everybody’s like, “Oh, it’s so good that this happened.” But we didn’t watch the other steps. We’re just like, “Oh, it’s a tragedy. Nobody can buy a home here because it’s so expensive.” Why is it expensive? Well, because the government didn’t approve any more developers to do things without them doing it at a loss, and so now you have shortage of housing. Now, you have this housing emergency, which then usurps all of the rules and all of the zoning regulations that everybody else had to follow preceding that. You have guaranteed payments from the state government, whether you have people in there that are meeting the conditions or not. How many billions of dollars is that going to push through friends of the decision makers in the state of California over the next 15 years? Probably a lot, with no oversight.

What do you see happening with increased military spending in places like Ukraine? Is it justified?

The military can make anything happen that it needs to. If we need to exit Ukraine, we can exit Ukraine. There’s no problems there. We can’t, you know, just cut off funding, because we see how that works based on Afghanistan, but there’s plenty of opportunity for us to basically restrict or remove the amount of foreign entanglements that we have.

What’s happening is a brilliant play by China and Russia to basically drain the economic power of the United States by forcing us into multiple regional conflicts in advance of World War III, which we are already in—it’s just that the media is not reporting on it. Russia is only engaging in Ukraine because it knows that we will be involved and that we will commit some significant amounts of money. The Hamas attack was the role that Iran is playing in this continued bleeding of us economically. So we sent $160 billion to Ukraine, we’re spending $94 billion in Israel, and then I want to say another $8 billion on the Red Sea/Houthi attacks.

Now we’re probably going to have something happen in Central America or South America, or even in the United States, which is going to force the United States to commit even more funding and attention. What China wants to have happen is for us to basically engage in a three-front war which allows them the opportunity, both through our command-and-control attention and our financial spending, to walk into Taiwan. We’ve never been in a four-front war before.

There’s basically two decisions when they move on Taiwan. We engage and we go all in, which is going to drain our economic wherewithal even faster, or we have to slow play, which is going to still drain our economic wherewithal. It’s going to take longer, but if we’re spending a quarter of a trillion dollars every month on four wars, all that does is create greater debt, which then reduces the purchasing power of the dollar and decreases the amount of money in the money supply, which then creates a greater argument for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates) to make de-dollarization happen, which is where they create a parallel banking, monetary system. Those things are allowed to happen. The United States would be basically contractually obligated to commit economic suicide because eventually you spend so much money that nobody else wants to use the dollar as the reserve currency or peg their money to the dollar. So you have less people that are holding U.S. dollars, which means there’s more U.S. dollars on the market, which means there’s more supply and less demand, which means the value of the dollar continues to plummet. Now, there are probably solutions in motion to that, but this is the play that’s happening, and, sadly, I think that there are some people in our government that are perfectly okay with watching this whole thing bleed out because they can say that they helped solve the problem by spending money, and they will be gone by the time the consequences come back around.

But if we pulled out of Ukraine, would Russia just give up? How do you see that playing out?

If Russia wanted to do something, they would have already done it. Russia has demonstrated an amazing amount of patience, because everything that the United States and NATO has done to this point, historically, would be severe violations of international norms. There’s a reason why Sweden and Finland were not in NATO. That was an agreement way back. Now they just joined. Now, one of the other terms that basically [Vladimir] Putin said was, “We’re mainly here because we don’t want Ukraine to enter NATO.” Why do we want Ukraine in NATO? What’s the value?

Are you suggesting we are on an inevitable path towards the World War III scenario?

Yes, but to put a better point on it, it is either through incompetence or intent that we are basically walking towards World War III between the United States and Russia. And it’s at this point predominantly because of the actions or inactions of the Biden administration. I think what’s happening is they’re trying to set Donald Trump for World War III, because almost all of the conditions have been met. I mean, think about how many countries are seeing massive unrest across Europe, Africa, South America and Central America, Asia. It’s everybody. There’s a lot of people that are in significant unrest.

So you think the Democrats want Trump to win?

I think that is one of the options that they’re creating in the event that they lose, because their chances of winning changed drastically after the debate [between Trump and Biden last month]. Maybe [the Democrats] did not understand the reality that they were creating when they let Biden go on stage. Many people saw that they had been lied to. They saw that there was a very concerted effort to make sure that the American people were not aware of the cognitive decline and, frankly, abusive conditions that Biden has probably been subjected to as the person who’s supposed to be making the decisions. I think people in Sonoma County are seeing it, but they don’t want to talk about it.

These are lifelong Democrats you are talking about in Sonoma and Marin County, which is where a bulk of the second district’s population is. How can you persuade them to vote Republican?

I don’t think they could imagine voting for Trump, but voting for a Republican is, I think, a reasonable thing for them to do depending on where they are socioeconomically. The ones at the top won’t [switch parties] because they’re not seeing the same problems as the majority of us are. You’ve got the people who will just never change, but even Democrats don’t want to be lied to by their own party. Everything that the Democrats have said that Donald Trump was going to do, they’ve demonstrated that they’re willing to do to maintain power.

What policies would you advocate for regarding illegal immigrant crossings by Central and South American citizens at the Southern border? Do you see this issue as a threat to national security?

You do seal the border, but you also have to basically create immigration intake facilities, and you make those located at embassies around Central and South America. The United States will bring you from the embassy of whatever country that you’re coming from. Now you have the ability to screen and vet people before you bring them into the country. It’s all organized and planned out.

A republic needs immigration. All republics need growth. Most Republicans don’t have an issue with immigration. They have issue with poorly run programs. Because what we have now is not immigration. It’s just people walking across the border. We’re bringing millions of people over for what I can only assume are nefarious reasons. It’s a national security issue. Because you not only have to worry about what’s coming in and what’s being brought in but who’s leaving the country and what is coming out of your country. You don’t have a country if you don’t have a border. We have no control of our border whatsoever.

Would you advocate for deporting the millions of non-citizens that are permanently residing in the country? Are you in favor of a process that brings all of them closer to citizenship?

Well, we’re not going to be able to remove all of them. That’s just the reality. I think the bigger challenge is going to be making sure that they’re educated on the difference between this country and their [former] country. That’s my concern. It’s not where they’re coming from. The example that I can give you is if you’re driving on a road, you can only have so many percentage of people that are on the road at that time that don’t understand the rules of the road. If you change the composition of individuals that are all driving at the same time, and you go from 10% who don’t know the rules of the road to 90% who don’t know the rules of the road, you’re gonna have chaos. You’re gonna look like you’re driving in India, right? If that happens on a political level, where you have somebody who’s coming from a country where they have never understood political rights, they won’t understand the rights of the individual inside a republic.

You’ve called yourself a small “r” Republican. What do you mean by that?

It’s less politically inclined and more institutional. So a small “r” Republican focuses on the institutions and the things that republics are supposed to accomplish, such as protecting the rights of the individual, ensuring that there’s business opportunities and economic opportunities and creating safety and security for the citizenry. All of those things have their rights that emanate from the Constitution. In a democracy, you can vote to take away people’s weapons. In a republic, you cannot.

I think the majority of people in Sebastopol and Marin County are not die-hard liberals. I think they are centrist Democrats, and there are a lot of things where we will align on.

I want to ask you about the war that is escalating between Israel and Iran/their proxies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The United States is, of course, funding Israel, but do you see a point where Iran could escalate things so much in the near future that the U.S. would have to get involved more than it is currently?

Yes, I see it escalating significantly. I think the BRICS countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] have to get the tension to a certain level before Trump gets elected. I think it’s more likely that they do something significant before Trump gets elected because once Trump gets elected, I don’t think they want to play with crazy. I think they’re gonna back off. At least Russia will back off very quickly if Trump gets elected, because even Russia doesn’t like playing with crazy people, and I think Trump’s just waiting for an excuse to blow people up.

Last question: what are experiences you’ve had that you believe prepare you to serve in congress?

I was very lucky to be the most junior officer to be assigned to a Department of Defense Think Tank. I got to meet people from China and from all of these countries and actually talk to them. It’s one thing to write an article on China. It’s another thing to go talk to people in the People’s Republic of China and its army. I got to know about them as a person and their family. I think it was just an eye-opening experience for me because it’s so easy for us to dehumanize. It just tells you that we’re all connected and we all generally want the same thing, but we don’t articulate it well.

I was a high school dropout when I enlisted, and I was carrying a radio for an officer in the Marine Corps one time and I remember thinking, “I can do this better than him.” Then I realized I need to actually try that. So I got selected for an officer program. And I see the same thing here. I look at what Jared [Huffman] is doing and I know I can do a better job than him. I started out in charge of myself and I left [the military] in charge of 1,100 people and advocating for them. I have no problem going to the mat for people. There are people that did a lot of amazing—maybe even incomprehensible—things for us to have all of the rights and privileges that we have. And when I take stock of all of the people that I’ve represented in my unit, I understand that same proposition here. There are people who just want to go about living life and they don’t want to deal with understanding de-dollarization, etc., but that’s the kind of thing that I love doing. I like taking my skills and doing something to benefit everybody.

Find out more about Chris Coulombe here.