Candidate Conversation and Debate

5th District Congress Race

Michael Baumgartner and Carmela Conroy **

The Spokesman-Review is continuing to pilot a format it introduced during the 2025 Spokane City Council races, which removes some of the arbitrary guardrails of a debate or standard candidate forum.

This opening segment ahead of the debate is an opportunity for the candidates to thoughtfully converse about their stances on various issues at greater length than the soundbites normally permitted under strict debate time limits. Both candidates have a foreign policy background, so this seemed like the appropriate theme to base a more freeform conversation around.  

Spokesman-Review City Hall reporter Emry Dinman will moderate

**   The forum is currently streaming on the KSPS PBS YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/hvP2nS94Z7o

and The Spokesman-Review's YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/nt5PG7pw25g