This is not your Daddy’s congressional candidate.
Quoc Ba Van, born 1983, had barely finished two years of law school last summer when he started walking Florida’s 8th congressional district around the cities of Sanford, Ocala and Orlando, and personally collected the 6,000 voter signatures required for ballot qualification.
A Valedictorian from Sanford’s Seminole High School, an honors graduate from Georgetown University and an almost-graduate of Emory University School of Law (commencement is May 12), Van is no nerd: He’s a champion weight lifter.
He’s the 2007 National Collegiate Champion in weight-lifting for his weight class, and the assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Emory University Varsity athletes during 2006 and 2007. As a high schooler, Quoc Van won two state individual titles and broke two state records.
And his plan to win the congressional race – as he told the Bolsavik in a phone interview this morning – sounds like something straight out of a coach’s handbook: “I’m just gonna outwork them.”
Ah yes. Outwork them. The Asian motto.
Well, outwork them he will need to, because Van sure as hell can’t outspend them. His latest financial disclosures show total contribution of just over $2,000, including $200 from his Georgetown coach and another $200 from a Sanford friend. The rest is out of his own pocket.
Of course, in the land of opportunity, money is no object. But having money is always better than not having money. So Quoc Ba Van, whose campaign committee is called “Van for rebuilding America,” ended his interview with a call for contribution: “Please tell everybody, go to my web site (vanforcongress.com), and help out. Any help possible, just contribute.”
Van’s election message focuses on 3 main areas: Crime, education, and the economy.
And he has an overarching theory about these 3 areas. (His major at Georgetown was gvernment and economics, and his minor was philosophy.)
His theory is, we have become isolated and we have “no personal stake in our community,” Van explained in the phone interview.
And to get people less apathetic, to “tie people down to their community,” Van proposes to “promote more ownership of property.”
Crime in public housing areas, Van thought, could be reduced if people are given assistance so they could buy the apartment they live in.
Van told the story of when he walked the district collecting the 6,000 signatures, “I saw a lot of kids, 4 or 5 years old, answering the door and their parents weren’t home.”
He proposed funding public service day-care, giving kids the value of family, but also require people who participated to give back by getting involved in community projects, “build their community.”
In Van’s vision, a community of involved citizens will be rid of crime, enhance its economy and promote education.
Van also has an interesting proposal for public education — something that falls just short of a full voucher program (which he opposes) but still has some element of parental choice.
Florida public school students are required to take a series of tests called the FCAT, Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. All kids from grades 3 through 11 are required to take them, and the schools are graded based on the students’ score. School funding is based on these scores, and schools that chronically score low can see their funding cut and closed down altogether.
Van sees something wrong with that picture. “I went to a C school,” he said, “and got a very good education. There are deeper underlying problems, sometimes students can’t score high and it has nothing to do with the teachers.”
The problem with grading the schools, says Van, is that it affects kids from the low ranking schools won’t do well when applying to college. Van relates a story from his own college days. “At Georgetown, I met students who came from Exeter Academy, and kids from the bottom half of that school went to Georgetown. And then there are the schools that are low ranked, and kids from the top of those schools couldn’t get in to the Ivy League or any of the top 50 colleges!”
Van’s solution calls for a way for students to choose their public schools. Short of a full voucher program, Van proposes that the choice is only for students of low-ranked schools, only to enroll at another public school, and only those students who can prove they cannot enroll at another public school can they use public funding to enroll in a private school.
Van is competing in a field of 5 Democrats seeking to take this seat from the incumbent Republican, who himself has drawn an opponent in the Republican primary. Radio talk show host Todd Long is challenging Rep. Ric Keller in the primary, accusing the latter of reneging on his promise to limit himself to only four terms. On the Democratic side, Van’s competition includes Charlie Stuart, a businessman and Sunday school teacher who lost to Keller by 6 percentage points in 2006.
Van contends that Keller “doesn’t implement policies that benefit people.” He thinks Keller is too close to the largest business in town: “He caters to Disney and their objectives.”
Van’s campaign web site is VanforCongress.com, and as he said, he’d appreciate any small help anyone can give. Florida’s primary election is August 26.
