SHEFFIELD, Mass. — Independent congressional candidate Nadia Milleron says she has found a formula to address the financial pressures leaving many Americans struggling to pay their bills.

 

This "formula," Milleron said, is to bring those directly affected by an issue, along with members of the press, into congressional offices to advance universally supported reform.

 

When her 24-year-old daughter, Samya Stumo, died in the March 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, that's what she and other victims' families did — resulting in the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act of 2020.

 

Milleron is taking on incumbent Richard Neal for the second time as an independent in the general election for the 1st Mass District. 

 

Neal is the ranking member on the powerful Ways & Means Committee and is likely to become chair again if the Democrats take the House majority. Milleron's criticized decisions made by the Springfield Democrat, including his support for trade agreements she says cost local jobs, his handling of Social Security legislation, his votes on housing and tax policy, and his approach to rail procurement and package inspections. 

 

"I think we have experienced decline in our district for the 38 years that Neal has been in office. It is time to reverse that decline," she said during a phone interview from her Sheffield home. 

 

"So, that's what I would ask the voters: please give a term limit to our current incumbent now. We want term limits. This is the time after 38 years — vote for a term limit. Get a new person in who has energy and isn't a career politician and isn't beholden to a party." 

 

Neal is consistent in that what he says and what he does is always different, Milleron said. 

 

"He is a globalist. He is in charge of promoting businesses and wealthy people to have very little tax and very little consequence for their actions," she said …

 

"Whereas, we are consistent in that what we say is the same, and then what we do is the same as what we say." 

 

Milleron describes herself as pro-worker and focused on affordability, healthcare access, and domestic manufacturing.

 

She advocates for eliminating federal income taxes on the first $100,000 earned annually, arguing that it would provide financial relief and boost local economies. This loss would be offset by sales taxes and collecting unpaid taxes from wealthy individuals and corporations

 

According to Milleron, approximately $700 billion in taxes goes uncollected annually, while her proposal would reduce federal revenue by an estimated $315 billion per year.

 

Milleron also condemned the "health insurance denial system" and advocated for direct payments for healthcare to cut out the bloat of insurance companies. She suggested developing a national healthcare trust to directly fund medical care, including addiction treatment, mental health services, and preventive care. 

 

This system could expand access while reducing costs, saving more than $1 trillion annually while preventing over $100,000 deaths, she said.

 

"It is a total travesty, a moral injury on our country that we allow 100,000 people to die every year because they don't get medical care, and some of those people are insured and have paid for their insurance," Milleron said. "And so that is universally supported by the population, and we can mobilize the population to force a vote in Congress on that bill." 

 

Milleron also emphasized her support for domestic manufacturing which she believes would bring back good union jobs, raise wages, and help local workers afford costs of living. Making essential goods in the United States would solve a multitude of issues from transportation to addressing supply-chain vulnerability. 

 

"We have to deal with the fact that in our area in Western Massachusetts, we produce most of the food that is produced in Massachusetts, but for some reason the prices in our grocery store are higher than in Boston," she said.

 

"So that, I think, is the middleman taking as much as they can. We need to have a floor for milk price, a floor for other produce that is produced in Western Mass. And we need to make sure that the farmers are compensated, and that those products go to the consumers in our area that need them, and at a fair price, because right now we're getting products from other states instead of having a good distribution of our own farm produce."

 

During her interview she also expressed her distaste for large companies buying up local housing stock, her support for body autonomy, and her opposition to Question 9 on firearms on the state ballot. 

 

Milleron said the passage of Question 9 could expose law-abiding gun owners who have older guns without serial numbers to felony charges, emphasizing that some rural families rely on hunting for food when groceries are unaffordable. 

 

She said she supports gun-safety measures that target ghost guns and other criminal weapons, but objected to making safety training so expensive that people might skip it. 

 

Milleron pushed back on accusations she's "MAGA aligned" and defended the work of her husband, Michael Stumo, a director in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and former CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America. Stumo's been linked to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a policy blueprint that's seen to have largely been guiding the second Trump administration.

 

She defended her husband's work on industrial policy, emphasizing that his support for reshoring American manufacturing extends across political administrations. 

 

"Industrial policy takes a long time to develop. It doesn't happen in one administration, and he is a premier, you know, developer of industrial plan and improvement in our economy in our country. So, he's nonpartisan," she said, adding that Katherine Tai, U.S. trade representative under President Joseph Biden, has supported similar policies. 

 

Milleron also addressed criticism of her husband's tariff-related writing in Project 2025, explaining that it focused on bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States and that similar language appeared in numerous other publications.

 

"That language was used in a whole variety of publications to try to educate as many people as possible about these issues," she said. "So the fact that it ended up in 2025 is not unique. I mean, it ended up in lots and lots of other publications."

 

She said labor unions support targeted tariffs designed to protect American jobs, distinguishing those policies from Trump's approach, which she characterized as unpredictable and sometimes used as retaliation against countries such as Canada.

 

"In order to have good industrial policy, you have to have a predictable and controlled environment for people to invest and build a factory, but they're not going to invest if you just keep changing the rules all the time," Milleron said. "So, Trump is not using tariffs in a productive way to improve our economy, but they can be used in a productive way, and they have been."

 

Her campaign website can be found here.