“I think number one, practically, is term limits,” Lauf told the Washington Examiner in an interview ahead of her primary. “When you have members of Congress up there for 30, 40 years that clearly are not representing their districts correctly,” she said, the system becomes disconnected from the people lawmakers were elected to represent.

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But Lauf’s definition of the “swamp” extends beyond Democrats or even career politicians. She argues in her book that entrenched institutions and established interests can become resistant to competition and new ideas, creating what she described as a “self-rewarding system.”

“We need to make sure that we have new people up there,” Lauf said to the Washington Examiner. “The system really rewards sort of the old guard.”

Lauf’s political career has already taken her through Washington. She served in the Commerce Department during President Donald Trump’s first administration before launching her first congressional campaign in Illinois in 2020. She later won the Republican nomination in Illinois’s 11th Congressional District in 2022, but lost the general election to Democratic Rep. Bill Foster.

Her latest campaign follows a move to Florida, which Lauf said offered her family a political and cultural environment more aligned with their values.

“My motivation has always been being a lion in Congress to fight against the radical Left and the Squad,” Lauf said. “My motivation has always been to be a new face and a new perspective, and the next generation in Washington.”

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If elected, Lauf said one of her priorities would be making the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a permanent fixture in the federal government.

Lauf praised the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the size and cost of government, and said her experience inside the Commerce Department shaped her views about federal bureaucracy.

“We need to make sure that Congress fights to have that as a permanent fixture,” Lauf said. “The American people work very hard,” she added, arguing taxpayers’ money should be spent more efficiently.

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She also pointed to term limits and prosecuting government corruption as ways to address Americans’ distrust of Washington.

And despite her strongly partisan rhetoric throughout the book and campaign trail, Lauf said some of those reforms should offer opportunities to work across the aisle.

“If there are colleagues someday that do see the like-mindedness on those certain areas where the majority of the people are for it, then your member of Congress should be able to work with somebody to get those things through,” she said.

Lauf pointed to term limits and elements of the Make America Healthy Again initiative as examples of issues she believes could transcend party lines.

“There’s clearly a disconnect between the swamp and the American people,” she said.

Immigration and the American Dream

Immigration occupies a particularly personal place in Lauf’s politics.

Lauf, whose maternal family is from Guatemala, frequently invokes her family’s immigrant experience as evidence of what she considers the promise of the American Dream. She said her grandmother picked coffee beans as a child and contrasted that experience with her own opportunity to become a business owner and Congressional candidate two generations later.

But Lauf’s immigrant background has not translated into support for a more permissive approach to illegal immigration.

“They worked very hard to come here the right way. They followed the law. They immersed themselves in the community. They learned the language, and most of all, they were proud to be Americans,” Lauf told the Washington Examiner of her family.

Lauf was clear when specifically asked whether she would support the Dignity Act, a bipartisan immigration legislation that has sought to combine enhanced border enforcement with legal status for some undocumented immigrants already living in the United States.

“Once elected, I will not support that bill,” Lauf said. “There are a lot of flaws with it that I do not agree with.”

Instead, Lauf said the immediate priority should be removing illegal immigrants who have committed crimes and continuing the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.

Taking on DEI

In her book, Lauf devotes a full chapter to a popular Republican talking point: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, with Lauf arguing that individual merit and hard work should take precedence over programs that consider race or identity.

It’s an argument Lauf connects directly to her own experience as a Latina and the descendant of immigrants.

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“We need to go back to this idea that you know our own God-given talents and gifts and hard work and grit get us to where we are, and so instead of focusing on sort of the negative that I think the Left tries to push, and the wokeism tries to push,” Lauf told the Washington Examiner.

Lauf rejected the premise that DEI programs are necessary for minority Americans to succeed, pointing instead to her family’s upward mobility.

“It was merit and hard work that got us to where we were,” she said. 

“I’m a living example of that. And my grandmother didn’t even go beyond third grade, and, my mom worked exceptionally hard, and my sister and I work exceptionally hard, and I think that I hope to be an inspiration that … define who you are in this life, and you take your talents and your gifts and how you will help the the community, help in whatever aspect you want, but … the focus should be merit.”

A generational argument

At its core, Lauf said A Time to Choose is intended to introduce younger Americans to conservative thinkers and principles she believes are at risk of being lost.

The book draws on figures ranging from economist Milton Friedman to other conservative and Libertarian thinkers, while mixing political arguments with Lauf’s family history.

“I wanted to take … some of the principles of the past and put them in a backdrop of the present, while trying to encourage our generation to remember our history,” Lauf said.

The title echoes Ronald Reagan’s famous 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech, and Lauf casts the present political divide in similarly sweeping terms.

“For me, it’s really patriotism versus socialism,” Lauf said.

Lauf argued that Americans have become less culturally and politically united than previous generations, placing some of the blame on changes she believes accelerated during and after former president Barack Obama’s presidency.

“We do live in a very different America than our baby boomer parents or grandparents grew up in,” Lauf told the Washington Examiner.

“The Democratic Party is not the party of JFK. For example, it has become very different, and so we don’t live in the same America as we had back then. People were a lot more united. People weren’t fighting over politics and friendships, and so I, being on the campaign trail, I’ve spoken with a lot of people from the Greatest Generation to baby boomers, and they say that America has never been heading into such a divide,” Lauf said to the Washington Examiner.

“And I do, I do feel that it was sort of after Barack Obama and even the Romneys of the world; I think we took a very different turn politically on both sides, and that’s why … I believe President Trump is trying to bring back the American dream and bring back those sense of values. And I think there’s enough of us that do remember what does unite us, but we need to remind ourselves of that for the next generation as well,” Lauf added.

But despite writing a book critical of the government, Lauf’s conclusion is not that Americans should abandon politics. It is that they should participate in it.

“Everybody has a choice to get involved, and everybody has a role in making our republic better,” Lauf said.

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“We can change things,” she added. “We have the power to change things.”

A Time To Choose: Reclaiming Liberty from the Swamp was released on Aug. 4 and can be purchased online and in stores wherever books are sold.