Bijan Mohseni, 27
27-year-old Bijan Mohseni is running to replace one of the most conservative legislators in the California State Assembly. If elected, he’ll become Orange County's first openly LGBTQ legislator. He’s striving to bring forward a bold new vision for the state’s working families.
What was the best piece of advice you received before you ran for office?
Before I made the decision to announce my campaign, I met with a mentor of mine. I rattled off the pros and cons. One of those cons had to do with potential candidates. She stopped me mid-sentence and said “You can’t control that. At the end of the day your focus has to be on your campaign and what you want to achieve for your constituents.”
That's been something that I've reminded myself everyday. A campaign is a marathon. And if I’m going to win and change the political landscape in California, I have to take it day by day and remain focused on what I plan on doing for my district once I'm elected.
When did the light bulb go off? When did you realize you wanted to run for office?
You might say I’ve always had a political bug. It's certainly something that’s been on my mind for a long time. Going into law school, I knew that I might eventually go into politics, but I didn't think it would be this soon. A lot of people go to law school to be attorneys, but others end up in policy or politics. Woodrow Wilson summed it up saying, "The profession I chose was politics; the profession I entered was law. I entered the one because I thought it would lead to the other.” About a year ago I started thinking about the possibility of mounting a campaign. A few months later, I left my firm. I took time and went abroad for a bit. But while I was out of the country, I couldn’t shake this feeling that 2020 was my year to run.
I researched the Assembly race passively, but that research became more and more aggressive. The more I learned, the more I saw a path to victory, which in turn encouraged my thinking that this was the time to run. Not only the perfect race to run in, but also the perfect time for me to run, because I’d be able to focus my time on the race.
I spoke to mentors who helped me realize that any fear telling me that it wasn’t the right time was just an excuse. The timing couldn’t be more perfect and my experience couldn’t be more qualifying. So I jumped in. And that's how I made the decision.
A campaign isn’t about one person. For me, it's a cycle of good ideas and good people. The more good people that jump on board, the more those ideas spread.
Orange County is a historically conservative area. While the congressional seats were all flipped in 2018, it is still a very Republican area. How do you hope to flip this seat and what do you see as your path to victory?
A campaign isn’t about one person. For me, it's a cycle of good ideas and good people. The more good people that jump on board, the more those ideas spread. From the start of this campaign, I knew it was going to be a grassroots campaign. I knew that we’d have to build name recognition, that rejecting corporate money would make fundraising and fancy endorsements harder to obtain. But I was also determined to run a campaign on my values and knew that in order to win we’d have to build an army of people that are excited to spread common values and common ideas. While Orange County is blue at the federal level, it's purple at the state level, and red at the local level.
Where I’ve found support from voters on both sides of the aisle is in sharing common values with them. I got into this race for working people. When I was 13 my dad passed away and my mom took on four minimum wage jobs and worked 15 hour days to keep a roof over our heads. The sad reality is that her story isn’t unique. California has a long way to go in protecting and empowering working families. We have to improve education at all levels from preschool to college, we have to deal with our homelessness and poverty crises, and we have to ensure that families get the healthcare they deserve. Those aren’t red or blue issues. Those are people issues.
I’ve never thought that my path to victory would be easy. We are the underdog. But we are also the only campaign with an actual platform of ideas and solutions to help people. We’re the only campaign to openly reject corporate money. Neither can be said for the other Democrat, let alone the Republicans. When I say I’m in this race for people, I mean it. I might be the only candidate that’s open about their values, but because I reject that money, I’m free to run on those values. It’s how the people I represent will know that every vote I take is for them, not corporations or special interests.
A major tenet of your platform is addressing homelessness and poverty in Orange County. Orange County is one of the wealthiest counties in the state, if not the country, yet as you've highlighted, one in three children in your district lives in poverty. How does a community as wealthy as this one fail to address these problems? What solutions would you hope to implement?
That statistic comes from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California and reading that report honestly broke my heart. I empathize with those kids because after losing my father, I was one of those kids.
What some people fail to realize is that democracy isn’t about winning, it’s about promoting the common good.
Orange County is one of the wealthiest places in the U.S., yet we have a pervasive problem of homelessness and poverty predominantly affecting people of color. How we got there in terms of homelessness has a lot to do with affordable housing. We have one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country. Low supply and high demand means high prices. So we not only have to build more housing, but we have to ensure that that housing is affordable low- and middle-income housing.
But that’s not where the problem ends. It's also about healthcare, social services, and education. For example, the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is healthcare. It’s crazy to think that we are the only western country in the world that views healthcare as a commodity and not as a human right. For me, a cancer patient choosing between chemo and rent or a diabetic dying because they were forced to ration their insulin is a moral outrage. It’s why I believe in a single-payer healthcare system.
Issues of homelessness, child poverty, education, gender equality, etc. All of them are intersect and overlap. Unless we address affordable housing, unless we address a single-payer system of health care, unless we enact universal preschool and student debt relief, any other legislation is going to just put band-aids on the problem. We can lift people out of poverty, we can put people in houses, we can solve these crises, but it takes action and it takes bigger and bolder ideas.
It's not a question of if we can, but rather are we willing to?
Young candidates are almost often dismissed because of their lack of experience. Have you felt anyone has doubted you because of your age?
Early on, many in the county party told me to "wait [my] turn," and repeatedly pushed to “drop out of the race” up until the moment I filed my candidacy. One person even said, "You don't have a shot in hell." But frankly, that’s the response I expected because I realize my candidacy challenges the status quo.
Democrats claim to be a party of the people. A huge part of that platform is fighting against voter suppression. For a Democrat it doesn’t matter if you vote for a Democrat or a Republican, the important thing is that you vote. A Democrat will support and defend that right. A Democrat fights to keep voters engaged. So why shouldn’t that logic apply to candidates running for office? I’ve always believed that democracy is better served when more people are engaged. Even if there were 5 or 100 others running in this race, I would still believe democracy is better off.
What some people fail to realize is that democracy isn’t about winning, it’s about promoting the common good. You cannot achieve that good in a culture that deprives voters of choice, and forces them to vote for a mediocre candidate that was selected by some committee of unknown names. That top-down style is what has disappointed me the most in the Democratic Party of Orange County and it’s something that must change. If we want better leaders, we have to do better.
“Our country was founded in part by young people.”
But as for my experience, after graduating from Los Alamitos High School, I received my B.A. in Political Science from Chapman University. I then went to UCLA for law school where my primary areas of research were Constitutional Law, particularly surrounding the Second Amendment. I worked for Judge Josephine L. Staton of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and Justice Brian M. Hoffstadt of the California Court of Appeal. Following law school, I joined a global law firm, where I engaged in civil rights work. I aided asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking in obtaining permanent status, helped individuals convicted of low level offenses overcome barriers to employment, and worked with members of the transgender and nonbinary community change their names and gender-markers. I also fought in the United States Supreme Court against the Trump-Pence Administration’s ban on transgender service members in the military and advised the Office of the Governor and the California Attorney General's office on strategies to protect transgender rights.
So while people might say I am too young to run for office, the fact of the matter is, I've spent my life preparing for this job.
A legislator is someone that writes laws, these days those are rare. We don’t need someone that's just going to rubber-stamp laws, passively vote, or just collect a paycheck. We need an individual thinker that’s willing to champion the platform they are advocating not someone unable or unwilling to craft a platform of their own.
So it surprises me that in this race, I’m the only candidate that has a platform. The solutions that I have are all issues I will act on. I’m open and honest with what I believe in. The other candidates have yet to make that basic level of effort. All the while, they expect voters to elect them and pay them a six-figure salary? It honestly amazes me. Like I said earlier, a campaign is about good people with good ideas that meet more good people. Knocking on doors and sharing those values is what excites me. It’s also the reason why voters are excited about our campaign!
If elected, you will be Orange County's first openly LGBTQ legislator. Many of the young people we interview are the first of something. But how do we make sure you wouldn’t be the last?
Another surprising fact that I learned, but maybe it's not so surprising. While Orange County has never elected an openly LGBTQ+ legislator, it has a very vibrant LGBTQ+ community.
Equality demands representation. One of the most important aspects of being a member of a diverse class is remembering the intersectionality of it. The LGBTQ+ community happens to be one of the most intersectional communities. Take me for example. I'm half Mexican, half Persian. I am a first-generation college grad, and first-generation American. There are multiple different communities that I belong to, but I also belong to the LGBTQ+ community. And you'll find that intersectionality is very common, especially in this district.
But while it's important to be the first, it’s more important to make sure that there is a second and a third, and so on. I'm not doing this to be the first. I'm running to make California a better place for working Californians. But I can tell you that once I'm elected, I don’t want to be lonely. I’m committed to reaching back, finding, and recruiting other qualified young and diverse people, other gay people, other trans people, other women, and encouraging them to step up to the plate.
What I’m trying to say is, for every rung of the ladder that you step up, it's important to reach back and lift up the person behind you.
What's the best piece of advice you'd give to another young Dem considering a run for office?
Do it. Do it. Do it. If you can see a path to victory, there's no reason not to run.
Young people have so many great ideas and I think some of the best advice for young people recently came from Barack Obama. I’m paraphrasing, but he said you can be on Twitter, you can be on social media yelling and complaining. But unless you're actually doing something, you're not doing any good.
For young people considering a run for office, that's doing something. That's the height of doing something. That’s pushing the conversation forward because all of a sudden you have a platform to advocate for progressive policies that you can normalize and actualize.
Our country was founded in part by young people. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Marshall, Betsy Ross were all under 25 when the Declaration of Independence was signed. For a young person considering office, there's never going to be a more perfect time than now. So run.
The views expressed in this interview are those of the candidate, and do not reflect the beliefs and views of Ballot Breakers or its staff.