Veteran advocate and congressional candidate Smiley pushes for better help for service members

Washington state GOP congressional candidate Tiffany Smiley said that one of her main focuses is getting veterans the help they need when they come home from serving the country and to cut through red tape. 

"It's time to stand up for our country," Smiley said on a Memorial Day special on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "It's time to stand up for those who so graciously served our country and have sacrificed. You know, my first wedding anniversary with Scotty...... we spent apart [because] he was in Iraq."

Smiley married her high school sweetheart Scotty, an Army veteran. In 2005, he was blinded by a suicide car bomber in Iraq. Smiley, who was a nurse, said that the experience was life changing and forced her to see the lack of care veterans and their families get. 

"I would walk the halls in the evening," Smiley said when describing her time at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "I would see soldiers alone. Some had families. Some families left. Some spouses left, and it just broke my heart. You know, I knew I could be an advocate for Scotty. But what about everyone else?"

Smiley is running for Washington state's fourth district and praised former President Donald Trump for his policies and their impact on veterans and their families. 

"President Trump put veterans as the number one priority," she said. "There was a hotline where you could call the White House and have your concerns answered. He understood also, which I think is so important, that it wasn't just the veteran, but the whole family. This affects the whole family."

Earlier this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs put patients’ safety at significant risk with a bungled rollout of its new electronic health records (EHR) system that created inaccuracies in medicine and prescription data, an internal investigation found in the latest black eye for the federal agency that cares for America’s millions of retired armed services members.

In a stinging report, the VA’s inspector general, its internal watchdog, said a complaint about prescription backlogs at a veterans’ facility in Columbus, Ohio led to the discovery of massive problems in the EHR system nationwide and it pointedly warned that some of the issues still persist.

The current congressman representing Washington state is Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wa., who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. 

"The people of the fourth district are not happy," Smiley said. "Dan Newhouse let us down. We are a God fearing fourth district [that] loves America and loves Trump, and they know that his policies work."

Smiley added that Newhouse put the district in a vulnerable position. 

"He is not going to be able to legislate with President Trump and that's exactly why I got in this race," she said. "We have issues in the fourth district that will require executive branch intervention and Dan Newhouse let us down."