What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

I believe with every fiber of my being that the greatest danger in politics isn’t just corruption or incompetence: it’s forgetting. Forgetting why you entered public service in the first place. Forgetting the faces of the people who trusted you. Forgetting that desperation you once felt when you saw a broken system and said, 'Someone has to fix this.'.

An official's initial heart, their values, and principles cannot be lost or forgotten. A person's pursuit of their ideals must be resolute.

We are constantly tested, offered shortcuts and compromises, and as the saying goes: One turns into two, two begets three, and three becomes all. It keeps going

I believe every time you give in, compromise, take a step back, take a kick back, your road does get smoother, but it ultimately amounts to nothing.

It is easy to become lost, forget your initial values, obsess over fame, or get drunk on power and fortune. We see this happen to many, many public officials. Many get mired in their base desires and it erodes away at themselves until they become something unrecognizable. We also see when they lose themselves, no matter how wealthy they become, how great their power, or how loud their name, they're just a puppet to their own desires, easily manipulated by others.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

For someone elected to any office, their core responsibility is to look after their people. To be that public check and balance against the rich and strong, because without checks and balances, the wealthy and powerful will inevitably bring disaster on the poor and week.

Government is not a neutral referee. It’s the only force capable of standing between working families and the unfettered greed of those who would exploit them. When we fail in this duty, we see the consequences all around us:

  • Housing costs skyrocket while Wall Street landlords vacuum up properties

  • Wages stagnate as corporations pocket record profits year over year over year

  • Public services crumble while the wealthy lobby for tax cuts

This isn’t hypothetical. It's not new. it’s history repeating. We’ve seen what happens when government becomes a servant to power instead of a shield for the people:

  • The 2008 financial crisis that wiped out working class household wealth

  • The opioid epidemic fueled by profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies

  • The climate crisis accelerated by fossil fuel giants who lied for decades

Different crises. Same cause.

The job and role of any elected official isn’t to ‘find common ground’ between billionaires and struggling families. It is to be the counterweight.

The moment we accept that ‘this is just how the economy works’ is the moment we surrender to injustice. The economy isn’t some natural force, it’s a set of rules written by and for the powerful. Rules that can be wielded for the working people and rewritten to give them more than scraps.

This is the contract I make with voters: I will never confuse ‘what’s possible’ with ‘what’s right.’ If that means fighting the entire political establishment to stop a single family from being evicted, that’s a fight worth having. Because in the end, the measure of our society is how we treat the most vulnerable among us, not our stock market or GDP.