Candidate meets critics amid uproar over remarks about tribes

by Shyleigh Gray and Scott Hunter

Republican congressional candidate Jerrod Sessler came to Grand Coulee Saturday amid outrage regarding statements he had made in Moses Lake about the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

Arriving at the Voltage Coffee House Saturday, Sessler was met with extreme disapproval from the small crowd that gathered.

Sessler's opening statements were an attempt to explain himself and his comments.

"Most of what I have seen has been totally misconstrued in terms of what I actually said," Sessler said. "What I'm concerned about is when our government creates incentives that create corruption."

But several people who came to see him at Voltage saw as inflammatory some of Sessler's  statements made during a 4th Congressional District candidate forum at the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center in Moses Lake July 21, as the Kaiser Canyon Fire burned through thousands of acres of the Colville Reservation. 

"What's happening up in Colville right now," Sesler told those at the Moses Lake forum, "if you guys remember, a couple years ago, there was another fire up there, which they don't pay taxes to support. They don't pay taxes for anything, but yet we fight those fires to the tune of millions of dollars, and they got a check from FEMA for $30 million for the fire."

In a public statement the Colville Tribes responded. "If Mr. Sessler has actual knowledge of a specific $30 million check from FEMA to the Colville Tribes, we ask that he provide details as no such payment has ever been received by us."

"We are not just letting fires burn because we want money," Cody Desautel, executive director of the Tribes, told the Spokesman Review last week. "That's a ridiculous thing to say."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency reimburses the Tribes for 75% of its firefighting expenses on major fires. Since 2015, more than 1 million of the 1.4 million acres of the reservation have burned in major fires, the Tribes statement said. The Tribes has received $11.7 million of $13.2 million the tribe spent on recovery costs.

In Grand Coulee, Sessler stated that he did not mean tribal members didn't pay taxes. He instead insisted that he meant the Colville Tribes do not pay taxes. According to a fact sheet by the Colville Tribes, "in a few instances, the Confederated Tribes ... pay property taxes in the respective counties where the property is located."

"Like all citizens, members of the Colville Tribes pay federal income and other generally applicable federal taxes, so our citizens pay for federal response to wildfire events to the same extent as Mr. Sessler and other residents of the state of Washington do," the tribal response noted.

Voltage Coffee House had not been made aware of Sessler's arrival or intention to promote his campaign, manager Dylan Greene stated, nor did the business give him permission to do so.

Sessler claimed that he "had this tour planned well before any of this," referring to the criticism of his statements made in Moses Lake. A poster of his itinerary, put out the day before on social media, listed Mansfield, Grand Coulee, Electric City, Coulee City, Soap Lake, and Quincy as stops on his "Main Street Tour," with the Electric City meeting set for 2:30 at Auntie Dannee's, when that restaurant is closed.

Sessler believes that there is currently a large population of arsonists. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Crime Data Explorer, the amount of arsonists in relation to the population of Washington state has been steadily decreasing since 2022.

"There's an epidemic right now of people who think that arson is a solution to solve some problem," Sessler said. "There is an outrage among certain people who don't like the way things are going in our country ...  and this is a sort of violent way that they can express themselves." 

In 2026, four of the 22 fires in Washington state were human-caused. The only one in Okanogan County was the Kartar Fire, allegedly started by Jerred Brooks. 

When asked further if he believes most of the fires are arson and not caused by things like global warming, droughts, or lightning strikes, Sessler said, "Most of them are arson."

Sessler asked Jamie Holeman, a tribal police department member, if there is currently a problem with arson in the area, to which she responded, "We have literally arrested one person."

During the forum in Moses Lake, Sessler also stated that the "incentive" is "more fires because [they] get free money." 

When asked if he meant that the Colville Tribes had incentive to have arsonists, Sessler denied saying or meaning such a thing.

"What I said is that our system incentivizes corruption, and I think that's the problem," Sessler said. 

By the "system" and "corruption," Sessler elaborated that he believes we have a welfare state that abuses well-intended programs at the cost of the American taxpayer.

"I want all Americans, tribal members included, to be successful and to have great lives here in America. I fully support that. I also fully support the sovereign entities of the tribes to enjoy the reservations or the land that they have for whatever they want to use it for," Sessler said. "My beef is with our government that is ripping us off and creating these incentives for abuse within our system."

Asked if he would like to look at whether such incentives might exist in a wildland fire-fighting industry that relies on private, for-profit contracting companies, Sessler said that's the kind of question he would like to look into in Congress. He said he was skilled at analyzing systems and that he'd spent 10 weeks last year writing a paper proposing to re-organize FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, into regional agencies.

Ruth Dalton, the mayor of Grand Coulee, told Sessler his statements on the Tribes showed "incredibly bad timing."

"You've got to be careful what you do, and when you say it, how you say it, and how it's going to affect all those around you," Dalton said.

Sessler agreed, saying that "the timing was poor, but ... it was totally unintended. I didn't even consider it because I wasn't really talking about the tribes. I wasn't talking about the people. I was talking about the system."

Sessler's claim that he wasn't referring to the Colville Tribes doesn't align with his statements in Moses Lake, however. Pressed on whether the system he was talking about included the tribal system, Sessler stated that he doesn't believe a "two-state solution is ever going to work anywhere," a conclusion he said he came to "as a little kid" watching TV reports on that proposal to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, thinking "that's probably not going to work out very well."

"The government is running over the tribes just like they're running over us individually," Sessler said. "We have to figure out how there can be a really healthy, thriving, cohesive relationship that doesn't feel like tyranny."