Nation's Youngest GOP Chair Explains Gen Z | David Chan

Most people, they're not interested in politics. People just want to be able to raise their family, be able to afford to put food on their table, pay their bills, and be able to just live life normally. And because of our government, and because of the lack of accountability we have here in California, every single life is being affected. And that's why you see so many people say, this is not what America is. This is not what we signed up for. It's very clear we're living in a broken system. And if we don't have young people that are going to step up, take on this system, and change it, we can expect California to continue to fall apart. And that is the pathway that we're on. Hello and welcome to Bay Area Innovators. I'm your host, Steve Espas. Our guest today is David Chang. David started his own non-profit company in his sophomore year in high school. He is currently in his third year at UC Berkeley studying political science. What is different about David other than his passion for driving positive change through policy? As of January of 2023, David was elected as the chairman of the Alameda County Republican Party as the youngest GOP chair in national history at age 20. He also oversees 34 college Republican chapters at universities here in California. David, welcome to our program. Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It's great to have you here. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here. So you know, you're such a young age, you've been involved in politics already for a few years. You're the youngest GOP elected official. What motivated you to get involved in politics? Well, you know, I think for me, it really starts back from my roots. It starts with family. You know, you mentioned I'm pretty young. That's really one of the biggest questions that people ask me is just, why are you involved? And for me, it's really two things. I think first off, like I mentioned, it's my family. My family roots, my dad, my mom, both immigrants. My dad comes from a family of nine other siblings and parents that had to escape and flee from China and from Vietnam. They're very lucky to have come to America and to be able to have made it here. It's the same thing for my mom. Her dad had to flee from North Korea during the war. Like many other Koreans share that same background. And I think that for a lot of people, when they ask, why do they care so much about America? It's really because we have a greater perspective on what the rest of the world deals with. And that's why we carry such great appreciation for the opportunities and especially the freedoms that we are able to not just afford, but we're guaranteed here in this country. So I think that kind of leads into my second point, which is we have these freedoms. We have these guarantees. Why don't we really see them anymore? Why don't we see the same American opportunity the same American dream that my parents were able to have? Growing up, my dad's a small business owner. I look at what he deals with. And in the state of California, what we've dealt with over the past couple of years are draconian regulations. Take a look at what happened with COVID. Take a look at the fact that some cities experienced 40% of their small businesses just like that disappearing. Just because we decided that we needed to regulate our businesses to the point where they're shutting down. I think now we take a look at what's happening with the minimum wage that's currently being risen to $20 an hour. And at first it sounds great, right? Because that theoretically would mean more money back into the pockets of the people. But if you really understand and look at the economics, small businesses now have to pretty much fire people and let them go because they cannot afford it, right? This tax, I mean, the minimum wage rising really benefits the government the most. They're taking an increased amount of taxes. I think that if you take a look at the reason why you see more people like myself getting involved, it's simply down to the fact that America is not the same country that it used to be. And it's really because of the change in culture and the change in regulations that our government is putting forth onto the people. How did your parents feel when they realized that you're 20 years old, you're the youngest GOP chair in national history? How did they feel about that? Well, I can imagine that any parent is gonna, they're probably gonna feel a little scared for their kid. I know that if I was a parent and I saw my child really jump on the deep end of the pool in terms of the political arena, I'd be worried. But I think that they've come to understand, like many people have come to understand that this is all greater than all of us. This is greater than any individual. What we need to see is a revitalization and a restoration of common sense policy in especially the state of California. Without that, it doesn't really matter what any of us do as individuals or even if we succeed as individuals. It's about our society. It's about our future. It's about our kids. And when we look and we see that we have the worst literacy tests and we have the worst math results, we look at the billions of dollars that we're pouring into our education system here in California. It's very clear we're living in a broken system. And if we don't have young people that are going to step up, take on this system and change it, we can expect California to continue to fall apart. And that is the pathway that we're on. So I think that parents have, my parents have come to the realization that this is a big mission. This is a fight that we have to take on and we can't be afraid to back down. Was there one single event that made you decide to serve the community in politics? I think that the way that our state has responded to crisis is probably what's pushed me the most. And I would say that it's not a singular event. I don't think that for most people it's a singular event. I think it's the constant slap across the face that the American people have been receiving from our government over and over again. It's the sudden rise in the gas tax. It's the fact that San Francisco spends $2 billion a year on homelessness. And if anything, homelessness has grown. 100,000 per homeowner. Yeah, it's completely unreasonable. Our government has pushed us to the point where, they've even said that they're not even done taxing the American public. I think that we've reached the point now where people are starting to stand up and say that they really had enough. And this goes on both sides. This goes on the Democrat side and the Republican side. Here in Alameda, a good majority of the people that we interact with and even work with on a political basis are Democrats that are upset with their party and the lack of accountability that the party has within the state. And I think that seeing the repeat of draconian regulations that they're putting on the people. So when I look at this, I see a disparity. And I see a disparity not in race. I see a disparity in elitism. And it's this level of elitism that's gonna get people off their seat and say, enough, this is not what America is. This is not what we signed up for. And there's nonpartisan. And this is nonpartisan. This is what I'm hearing on both sides, the Republican side and the Democrat side. And this is not just from the older generation that tends to vote. These are attitudes that I'm hearing from my generation, from generation Z. Gen Z is absolutely fed up. I have friends that are graduating from Berkeley with computer science degrees. Some of the best degrees that you can pursue. And they can't even find jobs right now, Steve. I have friends that are actually lucky enough to get jobs and look at what they're going through. They're paying more than half of their income in rent. How is it ever going to be possible for someone young, from someone in our generation to be able to save up enough for a down payment and then eventually be able to buy a house? Especially when we have massive corporations out there like BlackRock that are pretty much buying up all of the single family homes. It's a huge issue. It's a crisis that we're facing within our country, within our state. And our government has done absolutely nothing to fix these issues for my generation. If anything, it looks like it's almost being done on purpose. And right now, whether the government intends for it to happen or not, we're seeing a complete elimination of my generation from being able to actually own property. And we take a look at other taxes out there, like if your parents want to pass down any funds to their children, that's going to get a massive tax. The government is taking everything from the people and we're already left with funds. Let's talk more about the interests and concerns of Gen Z. Because it's still a minority, even in politics, people in the media, people don't know much about what the young people are really thinking about. What are some of the other concerns? You mentioned already a few. Sure, I'd love to share. And I think it's good for me to preface, Steve, that this isn't Republican, this isn't Democrat. This is what Gen Z is looking for. I'm talking about at least 70% of Gen Z. And just to clarify for our audience, we're talking about 12 to 27 years old. Right, yeah, exactly, exactly. And we all know that Gen Z is going to be the biggest voting bloc that America is going to have. I think it's good for the public to understand what this generation is looking for. And I think that they'd be pleased to find out that it really follows the lines of common sense policy. You're a Californian like me, you live in California, you're looking at the housing issues. For some reason, the massive housing developers just keep building and building and building. The state lets them. And we're seeing a mass exodus out of cities like San Francisco and LA. We're seeing gentrification happen. Where they're tearing down most of the affordable buildings and building these massive luxury skyscraper apartments that focus on densification, which obviously we find does not work here in the state of California. So we need to really sit back and we need to figure out what is the best thing that we can do to be able to fix massive statewide issues like housing. And that comes down to local control. Who's in charge of allocating housing and figuring out what is best for the city? Is it the state that doesn't know the city? Or is it going to be the mayors, the city council members? Is it going to be the local elected officials that share the same restaurants, the same schools as everyone else? They're the ones that really know what's best for their city. They're the ones that understand what the city needs. And unfortunately, because of legislation like SB9 and SB10, we don't see those local electeds being able to practice that level of authority for their city. It all comes down from the state. So I think that one of the biggest issues that Gen Z wants to see is more local control. We want to be able to step into local positions and be able to regulate and run and be able to implement what is best for our cities at the local level. It's logical. Gen Z is very focused on, additionally, environmental efforts. And I know that our Republican friends are not going to like to hear this too much, but from what we've been able to discover, having talked to countless college students from 35 plus schools all over the state that we have access to, Gen Z is in wide support of nuclear energy. And I think that that's something that we found to be pretty interesting because that's not something that the Democrats obviously are willing to invest in. Governor Newsom shut down two of our nuclear power plants that we have here in California, but it's not exactly something that the Republicans are campaigning or owning either. But nuclear energy is definitely something that the next generation is focused on. It's clean energy. It's clean energy, right? It's understanding. And it's also understanding that we're not going to be able to make a drastic switch. Our economy right now is still very, 80 to 90% of our industries are still reliant on natural gas and oil. And we need to be able to make sure that our economy is going to be able to sustain any type of transition. And that's why people look at what President Biden and what Governor Newsom are pushing and Governor Newsom's banning of gas cars by 2035. And we look at it as completely unreasonable, right, we will say. I think that one of the things that we'll also take a look into in regards to Gen Z is the end of terror from Big Pharma. We have medication prices that are not disclosed whatsoever. We have a complete monopolization of our pharmaceutical companies. And Gen Z is taking a look at the rest of the world, right? We take a look at Korea or even Canada's healthcare. And we understand that they're not the best systems, but there is no way that we should be paying the insulin prices that we do here in America. It's completely unreasonable for people to have to sell their entire homes and lose everything if they catch something like cancer. So I think that Gen Z wants to be able to make sure that we're able to step in and make sure that things like prices for these medications, that they're transparent, right? And these are all very logical policy issues that Gen Z is advocating for. Everything from being able to make sure that we keep those medication prices transparent to banning massive corporations like BlackRock from being able to buy up single family homes throughout the country. How do you determine the interest of Gen Z? Is it through your friends? Give us some examples of how you identify the problem and how you solve it. Yeah, I mean, it's everything from talking to certain organizations and groups that we're able to reach on campuses to talking to people that just walk by. It goes from specifically talking to certain school government elected students that help represent what the student body is looking for, to even polling students as they walk by in the middle of campus with their table, asking them what type of policies appeal most to them and what is it that they're looking for? When it comes down to it, students are looking out for their future. We look into the future and we see that people are making less money proportionately to how much everything costs. And we look at the impossibility of being able to afford a home. And it's terrifying. It's scary for kids. And I think that's why you see so many people within this generation start to give up. They've added trillions and trillions of dollars in debt at the national level that our generation's gonna have to pay for and take care of. And at the same time, we're launching new and starting new wars outside of the country. And where is this all leading to? What is this all bubbling up to? That question is well beyond the scope of any of us. But the one thing that we do know for a fact is that every single day that this continues under this type of leadership where there is a lack of accountability, where we are passing initiatives and measures like Prop 47, which incentivize crime. And if we don't fix anything soon, I mean, it's gonna get like this but worse. So I'm really looking forward to a big change this coming year. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of these frustrated younger individuals step up and actually vote for change. 2024 is an election year. A lot of things going on. Tell us your thoughts about what changes you expect and what's your party gonna do about it? Well, of course it's important for us to preface that California is of course a very blue state. But I can definitely see that we are inching away from the leftism that has entrenched our state. It's not gonna be an overnight shift. California is not gonna turn red overnight. But what I am noticing is that not just from the older generation, but from my generation specifically, we're starting to see more and more people get politically involved. And that goes to show right here in the Bay Area where we are seeing, I would say, almost a historical amount of younger people that are actually stepping up and running for office. And they're making it. We have Bruce Lowe that's now running against Pelosi, having defeated six other candidates, going up against a Democrat machine. That's in the general election. And that's in the general election. And he's only 27 years old, right? Right here, you have a 26-year-old female, Anita Chen, running against Ro Khanna. You're only gonna really start to see these young people start to pop up, I believe, now. And it's because they have the same perspective that I do, which is we look at the state, we look at this country, and we realize that we are declining at a rate that we cannot just neglect. This is our future. We want to be able to own a home in the future, be able to raise a family, and be able to just live life normally, right? And we want to be able to continue to build generational wealth. And that's the whole reason why our parents immigrated to this state. And I think looking into the increase of Gen Z within politics, we're seeing more Gen Z run for central committee now than before. We're seeing them step into party politics and actually take party control so we can actually start to implement the things that we want to see. Because I think a good amount of Gen Z on both the Republican side and the Democrat side, they don't trust the establishment. That is definitely one thing that I think most Gen Zers, whether you're on the left or you're on the right, they just don't trust the establishment. And I think that's why you start to see people like Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump that tend to lean on more populist attitudes, why they tend to take a lot of the attention of the younger generation. Would you say even compared to four or five years ago when you were in high school, it's been a much larger percentage of younger people involved? Absolutely, absolutely. Through the California College Republicans, we are always constantly, actively, proactively talking to students on our campus, those on the left and those on the right. And I would say that we have a very, very solid understanding of where college students in general stand. And what I think gives me a lot of hope, I think that we are going to definitely see more and more Gen Zers step up and run for office. And they're going to be running on very, very common sense platforms that really focus on what the average American is looking for. Most people, they're not interested in politics. Most people don't want to involve themselves in politics. People just want to be able to raise their family, be able to afford to put food on their table, pay their bills, and be able to go on a vacation every once in a while and be able to genuinely love living life. And because of our government, and because of the lack of accountability we have here in California, every single life is being affected. And that's why you see so many people say, I'm willing to sacrifice. I'm willing to sacrifice my own time, my own energy, my own finances, to step up and to fight for something that we all know is what the American people want. And it's pretty obvious what the people want at this point. It's even the Democrats have come out and even Pelosi herself, they're starting to retract on their support for initiatives like Prop 47. But in the time being, the American people need to understand, and this is something that I think my generation is understanding really well, which is we're being deceived. And if we continue to allow this deception, we'll only get taken advantage of and we'll continue down this rabbit hole. My generation is looking for something authentic. We're looking for something real. And we just want some common sense policies that will restore the state. You know, there are critics saying that, you know, people are good once they get into politics. How do you stop that to happen? You know, the fact that, you know, once people get into politics, they get corrupted and they get, you know, their moral standards go down. Well, I think you and I both see this in every single country. There's always going to be corruption. And we want to be able to eliminate that and be able to mitigate that as much as possible. The first thing we need to do is cut the perks. Why is insider trading still legal? But guess who's going to be the one to ban insider trading within Congress? It's going to be Congress. So until we see our current slate of elected representatives step up and actually take responsibility for themselves and be able to eliminate corruption amongst themselves, we can advocate all we want and we can push all we want. But in the end, that is going to come down to the representatives that we have in office. And it is up to the people, like I mentioned earlier, to hold our representatives accountable. It is our moral, our ethical obligation as citizens of this country. If we're not doing our due diligence and figuring out who is our local representative, who is our congressional representative, looking at how they vote and holding them accountable for when we obviously see them do things like insider trade, then that's actually on us. That is on us as the people, right? I have so many people that ask me, why are there no term limits on Congress? There's no term limits on Congress because we are supposed to replace them when they mess up, when they do not vote, when they are not delegates on behalf of the people. Unfortunately, that's just not the case in America when over 90% of our incumbents are elected over and over and over and over again. So in order to stop corruption, it starts with the American people and it starts with civic engagement, which unfortunately the American people is running away from, not running towards. But people are frustrated with corruption. I am frustrated with corruption. And my message to everyone is, if you want to stop that corruption, you need to get involved yourself and we need to vote for new leadership because that's the only way to hold them accountable. And that's the only way we can get people in who will actually stop the corruption from happening from the inside out. Next, I would like to change gears and talk about the Chinese Communist Party. It's been a few years that you've been involved with the CCP atrocities. There was an event in Berkeley that you were hosting. Please tell us your experience or what your knowledge is about the CCP affecting policy in the Bay Area. Well, we all know that policies, especially the ones that affect us the most, are always going to come from our state and local level. Let's talk about the APEC Summit, right? When Newsom and the rest of the American CEOs, the most powerful people in the country, all gathered here in San Francisco and when they brought Xi Jinping out, look at what happened on the streets of San Francisco. Everything was clean. All the homeless were moved. There were no drugs on the streets. There were no needles. There were not human feces laying around like they usually do. For some reason, when the leader of the Chinese Communist Party comes to California, comes to San Francisco, they clean the streets. They roll out the red carpet, right? Why are we not doing that for our own American people? Why are we not actually taking care of our streets and taking care of the public? We have to ask ourselves, who's really in control here? Is it the people? Or is it someone like Xi Jinping and the CCP? All we have to do is look at what our representatives do. We have to look at who pays them and we have to look at who do they respect. They obviously have zero care and consideration for the American people or San Francisco would always look like how it did during that summit. But I guess it takes a communist leader to get San Franciscan leadership off their ass. David, I want to ask you about social media. It's a huge part of Gen Z and young people. How do you feel about social media and specifically about TikTok, which is being banned currently? Are you guys still using it? I will say that TikTok is, of course, very popular amongst my generation. I blame apps like TikTok for the reason why our generation's attention span is so short. But I do think that TikTok is not going to be something that government's going to be able to just get rid of super quickly. If TikTok is replaced, it's going to come back in the form of an app created by Meta or by an American company. I think the ban that's happening in TikTok, the ban happening on TikTok right now in America is definitely not going to make my generation happy. But I do think that in terms of social media and the role that it plays within politics, social media is going to be, and it could be utilized as the greatest get out to vote effort. Unfortunately, it's not something that the Republican Party knows how to really tap into. But for at least the candidates, the younger generation candidates that we see running, they are able to weaponize social media and utilize it as a way to reach people. Because let's be honest here, emails are oversaturated. No one wants to pick up the phone because half the time they're scams. It's just people don't feel comfortable opening up their doors anymore since COVID. And I think that we are entering into a new era where social media, unfortunately, unfortunately, in my opinion, is going to be the main way that people communicate, the way that they even participate or engage civically. And it frustrates me when we see platforms like Instagram, for example. Instagram recently implemented a political filter across all accounts. And it will filter out any new political content from your feed. From either side. Well, that's what they claim. In reality, we don't really know, of course. But we see the way that these very left-wing media platforms skew what people see and what they decide to fact check or not. But it's the same story over and over and over again. Conservative views censored and conservative platform creators, influencers, candidates completely censored. So personally, I think that any type of censorship that happens, whether it's for both the left and the right or even just the right, it's completely unwarranted. It steps on the voices of the American people and the free dialogue that we are supposed to appreciate as Americans. That's how we learn. That's how we grow. That's being eliminated from social media so that they only feed us what they want us to see. And we see that exact same theme within our college campuses. So I think that's something that the American public really needs to wake up to and they need to put their foot down. This is happening across every single one of our platforms. The censorship is real. And unless we step up and actually say or do something about it, they're going to continue to filter out content that they don't want us to see or they'll continue to suppress it. And that's what happens to so many young content creators, influencers, or even people that just make videos on YouTube like Michael Wan. They're all shadow banned. They're all censored completely. And this is what disrupts freedom of speech and the dialogue that keeps our society healthy. We cannot survive with just one perspective. On either side, we need free-flowing discourse, dialogue, and the most important part, we have to appreciate that diversity. We have to appreciate that diversity in thought just as much as the Democrats appreciate diversity in color and diversity in race. What makes us special as people and humans and what will make America thrive is that discourse. And we need it. And they're eliminating it. So that's something that absolutely my generation knows is happening. And we're going to stand up and we're not going to let that continue to happen. David, thanks so much for your time. Any last thoughts, any messages to the younger generation? My message to the younger generation is pretty simple. I don't think that I have to tell them anything new. I think they feel it and they see it for themselves. Especially if they're a college student like myself and they're looking for internships, they're looking for jobs, they understand how oversaturated the market is for everything. And they understand how things are getting more expensive and things are becoming... And then we're making less money as individuals. There's less and less opportunity. There's less and less money for us. And I think that you just have to stop and ask yourself, why? Why? Is it because, I mean, are you going to listen to the news media that's just going to tell you that this is just the normal climb of economics and that this is something that we're just going to have to deal with? Or are we going to acknowledge the fact that we're sending billions and billions of dollars overseas We're still spending billions of dollars here in California with zero results. Domestically, we don't have a spending issue because taxes keep increasing. We have an accountability issue. And if we're going to recognize that we have an accountability issue, what are we going to do about it? And it's simple. We vote and we vote differently. We vote for new leadership and we vote for the people that are actually going to start to represent what the basic American people are looking for, which is common sense policy. And I think that is something that both Democrats and Republicans will be able to get behind because it's what we're looking for. It's what the American people want. And I think my generation is, I think we're going to put our foot down and we're not going to allow this to continue to happen. David Chen, thank you so much. 21 years old, very refreshing. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Steve.