If elected to Congress, “I’m not gonna cut my hair,” says Sean Feucht. “I’m not going to stop playing guitar.”
In his current career, the 36-year-old looks the part. He’s active in the evangelical community, a worship leader at Bethel megachurch, founder of two businesses and three nonprofits, author of five books, and contributor to 20 albums.
Now, he’s running for the House of Representatives.
It may seem like an odd jump, but thinking an outsider can’t be in politics is “a little archaic,” he says. The father of four speaks with the language of a worship leader about his “heart” for helping others and creating a better world for his children. But when it comes to his constituents, he’s not planning to appeal only to the religious.
“My heart is to not just represent people of faith, but really represent families,” he explains. “My faith guides decisions that I make, yet at the same time we are a normal family and we have to buy gas every day and have to deal with everything that other Americans have to deal with.”
When he says “we’re jumping into this race,” he includes his wife and four children in the equation because they’re invested too, and his wife is “gonna be a really big part of this campaign.”
Feucht (pronounced foyt) hopes to flip California’s 3rd Congressional District from Democratic incumbent John Garamendi, who has held his seat since 2013. The district rests just outside of Sacramento, and before Garamendi, it sent two Republicans to Washington.
In order to win, Feucht says, he plans to appeal to disaffected voters, “specifically millennials that don’t want to align with either party and are disillusioned.” He’ll need to win a primary in March, and then he’ll have to turn the district red in November 2020.
He hasn’t spoken much of his platform yet, but he has publicly criticized President Trump’s withdrawal of troops from Syria, and he says he’s willing to break from Republican doctrine if necessary.
“I want people to know that I’m a free thinker,” he says. “I think that’s what makes being the outsider and being the guy that isn’t owned and doesn’t have leverage on any political party, that’s what makes my candidacy so appealing.”
Feucht is also concerned about refugees, an issue most people don’t typically identify with the Republican Party. “It gives me a rare insight into the party because I have been with Kurdish refugees,” he says. “Those stories really mark you.”
Not everyone in Congress has run a business, traveled extensively overseas, or even had children, Feucht argues. That ought to count for something. Yet it’s still so typical for people to make a lifetime career out of politics in Washington, which is not the “the way founding fathers set up America,” Feucht says.
All the same, it’s not easy to jump into politics when you’ve spent your life in the private sector.
“I understand now being a couple weeks into the launch why millennials don’t do this,” Feucht says. “You have to raise a ton of money. It takes over your life. It’s a very difficult process. The walls are too high to climb for normal people.”
Even if he doesn’t make it to Washington, Feucht says he’d like to see more young people inspired by his campaign.
“I want to see a movement of conservative millennials that don’t just whine and complain and go to Twitter,” he says. “I want to see people engage.”
At the end of the day, Feucht says he wants people to know that entering politics isn’t impossible. He imagines future activists thinking, “If this long-haired, 36-year-old millennial guy can do it, then I can do it.”
