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Amy Phan West is pledging to find common ground, without compromising an inch, if elected this fall to represent California’s newly configured 47th Congressional District.
The Orange County Republican is likely to discover that achieving her goal is even more difficult than two immediate challenges: outpacing Republican Scott Baugh in California’s top-two primary on June 7 and, if she were to advance to the November ballot, ousting incumbent Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA). The 47th Congressional District was drawn to elect Democrats, and Porter is a rather popular and well-funded Democrat. As of May 18, the congresswoman reported accumulating $18.7 million in cash on hand to spend on her reelection bid. Phan West? $9,916.09.
Amy Phan West, a GOP candidate from California, is seen in this campaign photo.Baugh, meanwhile, is the Republican running in Tuesday’s primary with the name recognition, institutional support, and crucially, the resources. The former state assemblyman minority leader also had $1.1 million in the bank as of the Federal Election Commission’s May 18, pre-primary filing period deadline. Yet despite all of that, Phan West believes victory lies ahead, just as sure as she is convinced she might find common ground in the House of Representatives with all those Democrats and centrist Republicans she does not think very highly of.
“Finding common ground means sticking with your core values. I’m not going to compromise or be bought out by special interest lobbyists,” Phan West, 41, told the Washington Examiner. “I will be the voice of the people.”
“We just need someone who has backbone,” she said.
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For instance, on the issue of gun rights, that means opposing red flag laws, designed to prevent mentally ill or unstable people from obtaining firearms.
Some Republicans in various states are supportive of such legislation, and other restrictions, such as raising the age to purchase certain firearms from 18 to 21. Bipartisan negotiations on such proposals are underway in the Senate. But Phan West said mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, should not serve as a predicate for chipping away at the Second Amendment. Rather, Phan West would like federal education dollars to fund security guards in schools to keep children, “our most precious cargo,” safe.
“We have security guard for everywhere. Why can’t we have security guards for our children?” she said. As for her solution for preventing mentally disturbed people from obtaining deadly weapons: “If you see something, say something. People are not doing their civic responsibility.”
As a child in the mid-1980s, Phan West fled Vietnam with her family. After a couple of years in refugee camps abroad, Phan West’s family was admitted to the United States, settling in Orange County, where other Vietnamese immigrants had landed. And like so many others who fled Vietnam’s communist regime, Phan West would end up identifying as a Republican in part because the Republicans in the latter years of the Cold War, led by President Ronald Reagan, were staunch anti-communists.
Phan West is now married with three young children and living in Huntington Beach with her husband, with whom she runs a small business that rents cars and specialty vehicles to consumers. So, why disrupt her American dream with an underdog congressional campaign?
“I’m sick and tired about what’s going on in our nation. Especially escaping from a communist regime, I see the writing on the wall of what’s happening here,” Phan West said. “I realize the RINO establishment and the Democrats are wheeling and dealing and servicing their masters behind closed doors.”
Phan West doesn’t much like the Democrats. She is convinced they’re communists intent on silencing dissent, same as the Vietnamese authoritarians her family escaped years ago. But she seems to hold even more contempt for so-called RINOs, or Republicans in name only. Phan West said she would not vote for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for speaker if the GOP wins the majority, preferring Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). However, Phan West did not rule out supporting McCarthy if he is the only Republican who seeks the gavel.
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“He is establishment,” Phan West said of McCarthy. “They want to ride the red wave — the RINOs. We the people will be smarter.”
