Dr. Kathie Allen, Democratic Candidate for Utah’s 3rd Congressional District

Hillary Koellner- “Dr. Allen, as your title states it, can you share how or what got you involved with politics coming from the medical field?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “Frustration and anger after the direction things were going after the election, and I thought the only positive way to take action was to get involved. I started to become increasingly frustrated with Jason Chaffetz, I had asked him in multiple ways to investigate Trump, he never responded to a single thing I sent him. I actually used to be a congressional aid in college, I recognized what a good representative does, even if you don’t like him. Then when I went to the town hall, I was so frustrated. I wanted accountability for the truth, I didn’t see that in Washington D.C. and in all of the months since I declared my campaign, it has confirmed in my mind that we are so far away from the values, from the truth, data driven solutions and science. All we will have is heart ache and ruin, because if we don’t honor the truth, that’s the only path.”

Hillary Koellner- “And amongst all of the frustration, what was the moment that clicked for you that actually led for you take the action of declaring you would be running for the 3rd district seat?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “Probably at the town hall, the Huffington post asked me for my opinion and if I was going to be running for office, and I replied yes, so I was being called to this. It was simply the right thing to do. I cultivated my message and things just kind of clicked into place. My career as a physician had wined down a little bit, I’m down to working only two days a week and now I work on the campaign the rest of the time.”

Hillary Koellner- “How would you say that being a physician affects your decision making?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “The skills that a physician uses for decisions are that you have to analyze, take what the patient told you, you then collect all of the data and come up with a healing plan. I’m that person to heal a sick congress.”

Hillary Koellner- “Now that you have built a long career for yourself, can you share with us what was your first job and what it taught you?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “I was working for the U.S. congress. While I was a senior in college, my congressman was killed in a plane crash. After he died in a plane crash, his widow ran for his seat and I helped in her campaign. She hired me as a congressional aid. She had specific goals she was trying to meet, my job was mostly to handle constituent problems that they had with the federal government. We don’t talk about this now, the problems that people have with different congressional agencies. I had a little book where i would call if they had a problem. A good public service solves people’s problems and is responsive to what the constituents are saying to them and I don’t see much of that happening at all right now.”

Hillary Koellner- “That’s a very interesting story and not a common action of a widow of congressman, thank you for sharing. Kathie, can you think of a personal failure in your life and not just what it taught you, but how it affected your future?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “Yes, unfortunately my father was a family physician who became addicted to prescribed drugs, which is a huge problem in our society, it definitely marked my adolescence- the difficulty of the shame, and dealing with the problem. When i was 17 years old I took my sister, who is three years younger than me and ran away in the family car and we called a minister from the phone book and he came to pick us up. I didn’t want to embarrass my father, but we wanted to get away. I was frustrated with my mother because she wouldn’t’ stand up to him. That is something that shows who I am, I want to take action, thoughtful action. In doing this he started to do better with his addiction problem. Throughout my life I’ve observed addiction problems in my family, patients and colleagues and opioids problems are important to me.”

Hillary Koellner- “Dr. Allen, what would you say are some magazines or newspapers that you read, and how do they shape your view of the world?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “I read a lot, every day, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Hill, I read a lot about healthcare reform, I’ve written my own articles about it and they’ve been published. The money that came to my campaign of the $180,000 came to me before the iPhone comment Chaffetz made. In the first two weeks of my campaign, I had already raised way more than my two competitors had raised in all these months. My platform has been up since February. I’m trying to read some new books, but it is very difficult to find the time. There’s a book and articles about the difference between the conservative and liberal mentality and how to see things so that you can see where they are coming from that I’ve read the articles but I want to read the book to get a better input of us all working together.”

Hillary Koellner- “Would you say you have created a good relationship with the community?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “I’ll be out in the community a lot, I’ve already gone to different areas in Utah and I went out to the reservation recently and I met with the health clinic and veterans in the reservations and I learned a lot about their problems, how difficult it is for them to vote. A fun activity we did, Jackie Ortin, she runs a camp every year for Navajo children and my husband took all these musical instruments there and took them to the kids and let them play with them and they were joyously playing and they all just mobbed them, i was teaching them some doctor skills and I did the reflex hammer, they all thought it was very funny. Then we started doing some basic CPR. I had all these kids just playing doctors, it was wonderful. Yet I learned about the healthcare, veteran and education issues there.”

Hillary Koellner- “That sounds like quite the fun time, now Dr. Allen, who would you say is the smartest person you’ve met and why?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “That i’ve met…let me think on that. I think I would have to come back to it.”

Hillary Koellner- “Do you believe that a single person can change the system?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “Oh absolutely, look at Gandhi or look at Nelson Mandela. They are rare, they have to have a combination of the right ideas for the time and the personality to carry those ideas forward.”

Hillary Koellner- “Polls show that American’s have lost trust in the political system, what would you do to change this?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “Number one is you listen, you listen with compassion and sympathy and try to understand the other side. A study shows women get more of this, so we need to elect more women because of our unique outlook at things in a different way. We don’t have it in congress. We need that fresh approach. We need to unseat a lot of people we have there right now, people that will willingly accept lies as the truth, they really don’t deserve their position in government. One thing that a family doctor encounters quite a bit is denial in their patients, you say you have diabetes and you can control it or it controls you. You have that choice and yet there’s always some people that want to pretend that the disease is not there. What happens when you deny the disease, is that you don’t have a way to fix it. That’s what I see in our country, denial of the truth that will not fix the problem and Jason Chaffetz was definitely one of those people who refused to stand up to Trump. He failed in his duty to his constituents and America deserves better than that, who will look at reality and find real solutions to those problems.”

Hillary Koellner- “What’s one thing you would like people to know about you?”

Dr. Kathie Allen- “That I am a student. I like to learn. I’ve been learning a lot because this is a new adventure for me. My love of learning and my capacity to be open will serve me well and i think that i would bring some very unique and positive things to the 3rd district if they elected me. I think I could find a lot of common ground, many people care about healthcare, I am for universal healthcare for everyone and everyone deserves a good public education and many people care for public land. I can reach across to more conservative voters and there’s lots of ways i can meet you half way or all the way on these things. I think lots of times the other party…when they’ve abandoned ethics it gives someone a new opportunity. They are just human values; the party isn’t what keeps you up in the middle of the night. Those who have voted republican may want to re think that and I hope that they will be open to my message.”

By Hillary Koellner