15. Chatting with Chris Chyung, Indiana State Representative

Hey there! Welcome to Chatting with Asians.

On this episode, I chat with Chris Chyung who recently became the first Asian-American State legislator in Indiana’s history at 25 years old with no previous political experience. He was able to beat longtime Republican State Rep house Lager by 82 votes.

This is such an inspiring conversation where we talked about his winning strategy, how his ethnicity played a role during his campaign, and what he considers his accomplishments and setbacks from the 2019 house session. So here’s my chat with Chris.

Angie: Thank you so much for coming onto the show Chris.

Chris Chryung: Thank you so much for having me.

It’s a pleasure. I wanted to kick things off with the first question, which I know will make me sound like a such an auntie, but your parents are doctors, your sisters are doctors and their husbands are doctors. So why didn’t you become a doctor?

Yeah, that’s still a question I get from my mom like, “You want to go to med school?” and I’m like, no, I’m…I’m good where I am right now. For me, it was just about I don’t like blood, honestly, and I don’t like bodies and I thought I wanted to be a doctor when I was little but after like volunteering at the hospital that was the worst thing ever. So I decided, oh gosh, I need to find something else to do

Great, not blood related, not body related.

Yeah.

So instead you decided to go into politics and you didn’t have any prior experience. So, how did you end up into that world of politics? And what made you ultimately decide to run as House Rep?

It was a meandering kind of path that I took. I studied Engineering in college and then I thought I was going to go work on Wall Street or something, and I ended up not liking that after doing an internship there and learning more about the field. So, I decided I would go back to work in real estate investment in Chicago. And I work for a small-ish kinda medium-sized company that specialize in investing in really disinvested neighborhoods in Chicago like on the far South and West sides and we specialize in bringing in more institutional money and Investments of these neighborhoods that have previously seen no new apartments or anything. And I thought it was a good balance between capitalism but also the social responsibility so I decided to go there. And then all of a sudden that was kind of in the midst of the 2016 election and around that I started paying more attention to politics. Just because it became so inescapable in the news cycle and I wanted to learn more about the electorate and I decided, you know what I’m going to start getting more involved and then I kind of just fell down the rabbit hole and here I am today.

And there you are today. So, you decided to run for house district 15 and I think what’s incredibly fascinating to me is that your opponent was a big dog political veteran house Lager is a long-term Republican, served 10 years as town councilman, served three, two-year terms as a State Rep, you know, he have more name recognition and probably a more significant level of campaign donations so you must have felt like this seat was a seat worth fighting for. What did you think set you apart from him? And what could you bring to the table that he couldn’t?

Yeah, that was a big part of our calculation that my opponent not only had, he’s had such a long record of being in politics in our town and in our House of Representatives, but he also had a very tight relationship with our speaker of the house who controls a lot of the donations coming in to the party and that was something that was very daunting to go up against. At first, a lot of people told us we couldn’t do it and of course like I was a little bit thinking like I was prepared to lose honestly if it didn’t work out because I knew that our odds work greater than 50% and then we ended up squeaking out of win by 82 votes out of 25 thousand cast. So, it was a very narrow election and then that was definitely a big part of our calculation but that’s also one reason why no one wanted to run and why I, as uncontested in the primary, was because everyone was so scared of him. So, we just knocked on a lot of doors and did the best we could and I ended up loving political strategy. I never knew I liked it before ‘cos I never worked on a campaign before but I ended up loving the whole aspect of determining your messaging, determining what you stand for, and finding out how to build consensus around people who have really disparate opinions and in this politically charged climate that’s something that I think is really important to do.

Yeah, for sure and during your campaign did your ethnicity become an issue? And do you think it’s still an issue now as a House Rep?

It’s not an issue at, well, I guess there’s a little bit of both sides to it. So it’s not as big of an issue honestly that I thought it would be. I honestly thought that we would get more racism during the campaign and more racism while I was in office and I’m kind of used to it by now because growing up in Indiana even though we’re like a suburb exurb of Chicago, we don’t have a lot of Asian people in my district at all. And I am really very often times only Asian person in the room, especially at political events, especially at community organizing gatherings and volunteer events in our neighborhood. So, it was something that’s daunting but at the same time I have been so warmed by the warm reception that I received from my colleagues in the House and Senate. I think that me knowing how to be pretty tactful, knowing how to be diplomatic when I’m negotiating with Representatives and Senators who just don’t have any clue what it’s like to be Asian or what, what kind of struggles we deal with in our community and what kind of things are the rights…are the right and wrong things to say, just being tactful at explaining things to them without attacking them has I think gotten me far enough to earn some of their respect and we’re going to keep working on spreading that message so that I’m not the only Asian person in the general assembly and that we have more electives all over the state.

Yeah, that is super fantastic. The 2019 session finished back in April and that’s where Indiana House State reps decided what bills to pass or not to pass and it ranged from energy to education to environment. Specifically, this year’s focus was also on setting a two-year budget of 35 billion dollars. Since this was your first session, which bills did you feel like were your biggest accomplishments?

There were definitely wins here and there for sure I mean setting the budget can be a very fraught process as you can imagine, you have all kinds of interest groups from all over the state clamoring for a piece of the 35 billion dollars and saying that their priority is the most important and, you know, you’ve got to deal with all kinds of reputation management and all kinds of managing people’s interests without, while being diplomatic to everybody, so while I didn’t vote for the budget there were important provisions in there that we did secure and that we thought were good for our region namely a big increase in funding for infrastructure in Northwest, Indiana. We have a very highly trafficked roads that a lot of the trucks coming in from Chicago and going between Chicago and New York. I’ll go across and that we have to get a lot of improvements that have been backlogs for a while because they haven’t been able to find the funding to repave the roads in the last few years, but we were able to pass some big infrastructure reforms, we were able to chill a really bad environmental law that would have put a moratorium on green energy plans in our state. It was something that the coal industry in Southern Indiana was lobbying really hard for, but we were able to come together in a bipartisan way and killed that provision because there were so many people opposed to putting a moratorium on green energy plans. I mean, the economics just make sense at this point. It’s cheaper to have solar and wind energy. The utility companies have been planning for decades to retire their coal fire plans. The business and consumer groups do want to pay the lower rates that you, that renewables will afford them. I mean, you’ve got all kinds of interest groups coming together and I’m passing this in a bipartisan way and then in the last thing I would say that what’s our biggest accomplishment that will will still be fighting off next year is the payday lending industry came into Indiana and they’re really trying to weaken the felony loan sharking statute and really trying to create more exceptions to the loss of that so that they can issue these triple digit percentage APR interest rate products to more hoosiers and they’re really, just all the data show that they’re such predatory products. They’re pretty indefensible. We’ve banded together with the faith communities who have denounced these products as usury and also the veterans community who has been specifically targeted by some of these high-interest loan products. And yeah, we all came together and defeat it that a bipartisan way, but we know it’ll be back in in January, so I’m already working in the summer to fight that next year.

Oh boy, well did you feel that there were any setbacks in this year’s sessions?

Absolutely. I mean, everyone even regardless of party if you’re in the majority or if you’re in the minority in Indiana, you are not able to pass your agenda most of the time not, not nearly 100% of your agenda. So, one thing we’re really disappointed by was that we have the lowest paid teachers in the midwest in our state and we do not issue any direct funding increase for teacher salaries and that’s something that was very disappointing to us because we are sitting on really good macroeconomic conditions. We have a big budget surplus of over 2 billion dollars and mind you that’s taxpayer money that we collected and just haven’t dispersed. So, there’s a, there’s a bit of a push pull in like it’s good to have a budget surplus but only to a reasonable level. I mean, on one hand we’re overtaxing people if we’re not spending the money back on the people who gave us that money so you got to make sure that in future sessions that we can increase our funding to our public schools and make sure that our teachers are no longer the lowest paid in the midwest. We’re also number one in the nation and cuts the teacher pay in the last 10 years so Indiana teachers have been really feeling the pinch and that’s something that is a top priority. And again, that’s what I’m working on in the summer and fall this year as well in the off session.

Well, now that the session is over what are you going to be spending your time doing?

Well, we have to run every two years in the House of Representatives so they’re very short terms and basically as soon as you get in you have to be back campaigning and we’re just letting the community know that I have been working even though I’m a freshman in the super minority and I’m from a swing district and I’m young and Asian, well, I’m the youngest number in the general assembly and the only Asian member, you know, even though I’m in that precarious position, I’ve been working pretty hard to try and communicate to our district that their needs comes first, that, they’re, my door is always open if they have any issues with state government and not even like legislative priorities. But if they have issues with Medicaid, which is administered by the state or if they have issues with a pothole or any local government officials that have been giving them some grief, they are always open to come to my office and we’ve been having many many town halls. In fact, that’s one reason I decided to run and a campaign promise that I made was that my predecessor who I defeated have like one town hall meeting in 2017, which I thought was outrageous.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I thought that was outrageous because he’s, I mean we work for people and we have 65 thousand bosses because that’s how many people live in my district and we’ve got to make sure that we’re accountable to them. So, I’ve had over 14 in this year. We’re hoping that we can definitely communicate to our voters that we work for everybody regardless of who you voted for, if you didn’t vote for me, I still work for you and will still fight for you and that’s what we want to make sure because I think that ultimately will make government better and more friendly and responsive for everybody.

Yeah, definitely. The next question that I have for you is that, well, you’re going to be going to Korea and Japan soon as part of an invitation is for the country’s. What are you looking most forward to and what do you hope to bring back to the States?

That’s correct. So, I’m really excited about my upcoming trips to Asia and I do want to clarify that these are not paid for by the taxpayers or by campaign funds at all. They’re a combination of grants and out of my own out-of-pocket expenses that we’ll be using but what we’re doing on these trips is to Korea we’ll be not only meeting with some other Korean legislators from around the world like Russia and Uzbekistan and Asia and I think there’s a couple in South America and Europe. We’ll be exchanging legislative ideas and priorities that we’ve champion in other parts of the world because we know that more often than not we are united by our characteristics not divided regardless of what country we come from. So, we want to learn from each other and exchanged some good ideas, especially around education funding in particular because Korea has such a strong education system and strong outcomes at the same time. They have things that are shortcomings for their population namely the stress levels and suicide rates of their youth but we still want to be able to crib some of their good ideas and use them in Indiana or in other parts of the country. And then in Japan, in December, we’ll be going as another part of a legislative delegation, me and five other Asian American legislators who are around the United States will be going to meet with some of Japan’s elected officials and exchange ideas on how to increase trade between our states in the country of Japan, increase education as was a priority in our state, and then just learn from each other because building those bridges will ultimately make us, I think, better elected officials overall.

Man, that sounds like such an awesome opportunity. I have one last question for you before we wrap things up here and it’s really about looking back on the past year. How has the experience impacted you and your family, I mean, especially being the only Asian Representative?

Yeah, I mean, it’s been such an eye-opening experience and I always tell people I’m never going to forget this job no matter how long or how short I’m in elected office. I could always get knocked out next year on the election and that, if that happens and whatever, but it’s something that is such a unique role compared to anything I’ve ever done before and I always encourage people to think about themselves and these elected offices and it doesn’t have to be as high as legislature, it can be school board, it can be a park board, Town Council, whatever it is…there are many opportunities where people too often dismiss or write themselves off as being not qualified or not being intelligent enough and really all you’ve got to do is sit down with the issues for maybe a few hours and you can understand a lot of what it takes to run a government and be really observant and ready to ask questions, and then you can probably be an elected office too or maybe help somebody else get into elected office like another Asian person because we are so under-represented across the country and at all levels of government. So, it’s such a blessing to be able to do those quite honestly and I’m, I still can’t get over the fact that I represent 65,000 people in the Indiana house. It’s still kind of blows my mind but It’s something that is so important to making our democracy better. I mean, seriously regardless of party, regardless of what your ideals are, I think if we get more people to run for office who are part of these huge dynasties or, you know, arc from these families that control local politics for years and years and are just kind of fresh faces who just want to do the right thing and not aren’t interested in this being like a stepping-stone or this being some kind of long fulfilled goal that your parents prescribed to you when you were young like, this is just about making government better because, my God, especially nowadays we need government to be better and work for everybody and we’re not going to solve it if people are sitting on the sidelines so I meet with people one on one if they send me an email or if they text my cell that and they’re interested in running for office. I’ll meet with them and explain to them what I did and just try to be really frank about it and what my strategies are. I think that’s that component of the strategy that I really like doing, was very helpful to me and I don’t want to sit on that knowledge and I want to be able to help people across the country get into elected offices and especially Asian people because we’re so under-represented. We are the highest income, I mean, most educated demographic fastest growing demographic in the country yet we are under-represented at every level. So, we’ve got to get more people into elected office for sure.

Yeah, we definitely have to get more people into elected office and on that note I want to say how much fun I had during this conversation. So, thank you again so much for being on the show Chris and for sharing your experiences with us.

Thank you so much for having me in Angie.

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Hope you enjoy listening to my conversation with Chris and thank you so much for tuning in.

This is actually the last episode of the second season and I’m currently working on the third season. But in the meantime, feel free to follow me on Instagram @chattingwithasians.

Music was produced by Paulina Vo. You can follow her on Instagram @vobot spelled v o b o t or on Soundcloud at Paulina Vo.

See you in the next season!

Website: https://indianahousedemocrats.org/members/chris-chyung

Instagram: @votechyung

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