Jennifer Tang, 30

Jennifer Tang, 30

What career best prepares you for public office? Law? Business? Bloomfield High School teacher Jennifer Tang thinks education. To the Monterey Park native, her city embodies the American dream. She’s running to preserve that environment for the next generation.

What was the best piece of advice you received about running for office?

After the 2016 election, I felt really disheartened and I wanted to do something. I thought: I have to go to all these trainings, I have to have to raise money, I have to do everything! But the best advice I got was really simple: just bring people together in your house. That's all you have to do to be a community organizer. You just have to bring people together. And I started doing that last year; I brought groups together to talk about the issues we are facing locally and nationally. That's been transformational. It prepared me to run for office.

When did the light bulb go off? When did you realize you wanted to run for office?

When I was 12 years old, I thought, “I will run for office someday - maybe when I am 50.” I grew up in the same community as Congresswoman Judy Chu. I grew up where there was somebody who looked like me and was doing these incredible things. I thought, “Okay, someday when I'm her age and I’ve settled down, I'll run for office too.” 

I've been in education for 10 years now, and about three years ago, my friend who had run for office in his hometown said to me, “You actually have all the qualifications you need already. You should just run.” So I started to think about it more seriously, and then earlier this year I made the decision to run when I sat in at a city council meeting. It was awful. It was just really not the way that I wanted my hometown to be represented. And I thought, you know what, I think I can do a better job than this guy. So I'm going to try to take his seat.

You’ve been in public service for a decade now. What first got you involved?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the different moments that drew me to service and it comes back to my childhood. My parents are survivors of the Cambodian genocide, and growing up with those stories, I had a lot of questions about how societies and government could fall apart like that. I always asked those questions, and I never found satisfactory answers. But that curiosity is what led me to start getting involved in public service. 

When I was 21 years old, I went to Cambodia by myself to be a volunteer teacher. After that experience, I decided, “Okay, this is what I'm going to do as a career.” It just made the most sense to me, both for the type of work that I wanted to do in my life and the type of impact that I wanted to have. When I was in Cambodia, I taught four hours a day. My youngest student was 15 years old, my oldest student was 65. The work that I was doing was directly impacting their economic prosperity because if they could speak English, they had more access to resources and jobs. The results were so tangible. That experience has spurred everything else I've done since. 

What are the potholes in your city? What are the issues you feel are being neglected and you want to see addressed in your community?

We have a lot of opportunities at the local level to push for policies that are very environmentally conscious and progressive. The biggest and most tangible issue that people bring up all the time when I talk to my neighbors, especially my younger neighbors is, where is our trash going? Are we recycling? We don't have recycling bins. We don't have composting. And the answer is we have a municipal waste service provider that collects our "dirty recyclables", and separates them at their facility. But there's been a lot of questioning around that recently because China has stopped buying dirty recyclables from the United States. 

That issue in particular ties into larger issues connected to lack of transparency and a lack of trust in the systems that currently exist. So while I bring up environmental issues, I think it's a larger conversation that we need to have about the transparency and the integrity needed in order to build trust. These are largely process-oriented issues, but I think they’re important in a community where working and middle class families, those who are younger and less established, often have their needs pushed to the side.

Young candidates are often dismissed because of their lack of experience. What do you think has prepared you the most for this position?

Teaching is a really underestimated form of preparation for public office. A lot of people who go into public office think that having a law or business background is the most fitting. But actually, having a teaching background is the most fitting because teachers spend all day listening to other people and trying to meet their needs. That’s essentially what we need in a city councilmember. 

I've been a teacher for five years, and I've worked in education for 10 years. My commitment to public service will translate to the city council really well. A lot of people will say “Oh, as a teacher she may not have experience in finance and things like that.” I’ve worked at startups for four years and helped build companies from the ground up. I had to be really lean about resources and pitch to venture capitalists and try to get our companies $2 or $3 million. Those are experiences that really connect with policymaking on city council.  

I also think that because the world has changed so much, having "years of experience" isn’t as important as having a depth of experience, which we as millennials have. We’ve seen a lot of changes that the older generations have not had to deal with, so we’ve had to adapt. I believe that having fewer years of experience but more years of adaptability is super important, especially as our world keeps changing so quickly.

What perspectives do you think are currently missing on your city council? What perspectives do you hope to bring?

I am the only candidate who grew up in the community. A couple months ago, the city council was voting on our citywide bus service. It’s really, really cheap, like 25-50 cents for a ride. They were voting to take it to a one month-by-month contract, which is essentially a step to getting rid of it. Some residents came and spoke against it because it serves as a really important service in our community, especially to lower-income people, young people, and senior citizens. 

Those residents brought up that we haven't changed the routes years. We have this new shopping center in town and the bus doesn't go there, so if ridership is low, why don’t we create new routes?

I sat there thinking, have any of our council members ever taken that bus - like not as a photo op? And the answer is no. Some of them haven't lived here for very long and they all have cars. But I took that bus for years and years with my grandfather. I took that bus as a teenager. And so that's the perspective that's missing - the lived experiences growing up in the city and using these services - going to our library, playing at our parks. These are experiences that some of my competitors, especially the person I'm running against, just don't have.

Most campaigns focus on what’s wrong with a community. Instead, tell me what you love about your city? Why do you want to fight so hard for it?

Monterey Park is SO SPECIAL in the landscape of greater Los Angeles, except no one knows about it except foodies who read LA Times restaurant reviews. Monterey Park is important to me because for my family (and many families in our city), Monterey Park is a symbol of the American dream. 

Before I moved here at age 10, I lived in an apartment where my neighbor got shot in our driveway. And when we moved here, I thought, oh my goodness, my life looks like a TV show now. The opportunity to grow up here meant that I had a really amazing education. It meant I was able to pursue my hopes and dreams, and get opportunities a lot of kids from other communities of color don't get. 

I worry about what Monterey Park will become in the future. It has been a place where young families could thrive, and I want to make sure that continues in the future.

What is the best piece of advice you’d give to another young Dem running for office?

This is hard for me to articulate...you have to keep that sense of staying true to yourself while you are trying to be a public person. When I went public with my campaign, there were people who were political insiders, who've done it before, who may have wanted to have a  particular stake in me, who wanted me to be somebody that I wasn't. Because I'm the type of person who cares deeply about getting advice from people who know better than me, I felt really conflicted in these situations. 

I was put in situations where I felt like I had to make a choice between what is right for a political campaign versus what I felt was right for me. I knew that was going to happen, but when it actually happened in real life, it struck me really hard. I had to take a good look at myself and decide what was right for me. So be prepared for that situation.

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.