Christopher
David, a candidate for Henry Waxman’s federal House seat in
California’s 33rd District, who I interviewed for my book

Ron Paul’s Revolution: The Man and the Movement He
Inspired, tells me he came into the Ron Paul world in 2007
from the left, attracted to the only candidate speaking a
believable antiwar message. At antiwar rallies during the Bush
years, he recalls, he was “surrounded by lefties holding signs for
every left cause under the sun, which got me thinking  I guess
I was a leftist; I didn’t see anyone else vocally opposing 
the warmongering of the Bush administration.” David figured early
in the last race he’d vote Obama; he couldn’t vote Kerry in ’04,
thinking him just “Bush lite.” 

Then he saw Ron Paul’s famous
moment (the moment at the start of Ron Paul’s
Revolution) at the May 2007 South Carolina GOP presidential
debate, speaking intelligently and passionately about blowback and
9/11 and not backing down when Rudy Giuliani bullied him about it.
“It was the first time ever I heard any elected official use the
term “blowback” and know what they talking about,” David says. “It
was amazing to me, and the fact on that it was a Republican doing
it was just shocking. That got me looking into Ron Paul, because I
knew that took courage for him. Getting familiar with Paul and his
philosophy, within two months I was the card-carrying libertarian
spouting Rothbard to anyone who would listen.” He was part of the
army of youth campaigning for Paul in the blistering cold leading
up to the 2008 Iowa caucus.

David went on to live for a while in the Free State of New
Hampshire “in a house with seven other Free Staters in the middle
of the woods with a firing range in the backyard” and to work with
the Paulite youth group Young
Americans for Liberty (where he tried to launch a national
“Year of Youth” campaign to encourage young people to not just help
other candidates but to run themselves, advice he’s now following)
and launched the Paulite new media site Revolutimes and moved out to
Los Angeles, from which he is running for Henry Waxman’s House seat
in the 33^rd district as a Republican. (Among
his competitors are Libertarian Steve Collett and Democrat Bruce Margolin, famous for
his work as a defense attorney in pot cases.)

Reason: Tell us about yourself.

Christopher David: I am a 25-year-old
entrepreneur and activist running for the U.S. House in
California’s 33^rd congressional district, which spans
the coast of Los Angeles from Malibu to Palos Verdes and includes
Beverly Hills. A number of factors brought me to run, one of the
biggest is that I believe there are too few advocates in Washington
for the kind of real systemic transformative change that I think
voters really want, and despite an array of very flawed candidates
they have been trying to send that message that they are looking
for something completely different. We saw that in 2008 with Barack
Obama and the beginning of the Ron Paul movement, saw it more in
2010 with the Tea Party and I think we will see it even more this
year. I think the action this year will be with the liberty leaning
candidates, candidates inspired by Ron Paul.

It’s completely obvious if you look at Romney and Obama that
there is a huge absence of excitement, excitement that only really
Ron Paul is channeling, and so I think Ron Paul will go out with a
bang at the Tampa convention. This will be a year of Ron Paul
passing the baton not to any one person but to a whole movement.
The great strength of the Ron Paul movement has been its very
decentralization and though it’s obvious Rand Paul will probably be
a candidate in 2016 for president, you’re going to see an explosion
of people inspired by Ron Paul entering.

Reason: I saw you are being
directly attacked in some direct mail by an independent
opponent, Bill Bloomfield.

David: A closet establishment Republican
running as an independent. He is a wealthy guy spending a lot of
his own money, probably well over a hundred thousand, to get out
that mailer with my picture on it, so he sees me as his greatest
obstacle. I know from talking to people who went to one of his
private meet-and-greets that he trashed me as someone who “channels
Ron Paul,” and attacks me for being an inexperienced kid who is new
to California.

This represents a gambit by the establishment Republicans to
adapt to California’s
Prop 14 [which has created a system with one general primary
for all candidates out of which the two top winners go to the
general election in November]. A lot of establishment Republicans
are backing Bloomfield either privately or publicly. The state
Republican Party did refuse to endorse me despite the fact that I’m
the only Republican on the ballot. The county party endorsed me, I
have pretty good relations with the county party. But former

Gov. Pete Wilson is sending out letters paid for by Bloomfield
against me. This will be a great case study for using the liberty
grassroots to overcome the structural disadvantages of being a
young liberty candidate with no establishment support against a
cynical political move to hide one’s status as an establishment
Republican who had given over 25 thousand to the national
Republican establishment including NRCC and Boehner–will that
cynical move [of running as an independent] to fool voters into
thinking that this fellow is actually independent work?

I blasted out an email to the Republican Party of L.A. County
Central Committee attacking Bloomfield and am about to send out
mass emails to individual Republicans all over the district, taking
Bloomfield to task for being a coward because he did not show up at
either of our two debates, most recently at
UCLA, he’s just hiding in his house spending money tearing me
down. He’s too afraid to make those accusations in person while
he’s trying to buy the race.

Reason: How has the Republican establishment
treated you?

David: The county party has
been very cordial to me. They endorsed me. I’m not sure to what
degree that’s because I’m the only Republican in the race. I made
it clear to the party establishment I’m here willing to work with
them, I’m a big tent kind of guy even though philosophically and
historically I come to the GOP because of Ron Paul. I see it as a
big exercise in discovering ways to talk about Ron Paul’s ideas and
build coalitions that could actually have political power to
implement his ideas, though it’s definitely an incremental
process.

I’m placing economic issues front and center, specifically the
debt, an issue that very quickly leads to a conversation about how
America is in dire need of really systemic transformative change
because the current path is unsustainable. America has a political
class motivated not by what’s best for America, certainly not
what’s best for my generation, but feathering their nests and
guaranteeing themselves a nice retirement if they kick the can down
the road, so they expect my generation to clean up their mess. If
people ask me why I’m running for Congress right now, why don’t I
start at the bottom with local office, I say my generation does not
have the luxury of waiting 20 years to clean up the mess that the
political class is leaving for us because we may well not be a
constitutional republic in 20 years. I believe youth deserve a
voice on the national level. If we demonstrate that we can unseat
incumbent politicians who have been there for years with a new
generation of leaders that will put the fear of life into them.

Reason: Was it a given you’d run as a
Republican, given your antiwar background?

David: Though my main issue has been antiwar, I
also embrace most of the liberty platform as endorsed by Ron Paul
and I really value what Ron Paul is trying to do to restore the
ideas of non-interventionism and limited government to the
Republican Party. So I wanted to run not just for my own sake but
to help advance the movement that Ron Paul started.

I do think there is room for liberty candidates with the
Democratic Party though. My campaign is all about transpartisan
coalition building. The powers that be are so powerful because they
keep people divided into red and blue teams and the only real way
their grip on power will be lessened is if more people realize that
the true battle is the people vs. the establishment. I am open to
strategies that build bridges between groups supposedly at odds—I
have a huge opportunity to do that because I’m running as a
Republican in a very Democratic district, but because of Prop 14
primary system I am only the only Republican in the race, so I have
been already in talks with a few of the other candidates from
opposing parties and since only one of us is going to make the
general against Waxman it allows for a meaningful team effort
against the incumbent.

Reason: What does it involve, running for
office?

David: Being mentally willing to put yourself
on the line, to give up a lot of business opportunities, and
 just being willing to take the slings and arrows going up as
a newbie republican against the Democratic machine of Los Angeles
that was
named after the guy I’m running against. It’s a very David v.
Goliath scenario and I embrace the role of underdog. But I’m
confident that aligning myself with rising libertarianism and
making use of the cutting-edge political technology and
Internet-based tools will give me significant traction.

You need phone banking, I’m about to start walking door to door,
online advertising, YouTube video advertising to people in my
district. To win the primary I have to rely on Republican votes so
I’m going to lots of GOP events and debates. You have to be
prepared to do a lot yourself if you aren’t able to attract or
afford expensive campaign consultants. But you just file your FEC
forms, put up a website and Facebook page and start to spread the
word.

Reason: How’s fundraising?

David: Against a guy like Waxman who is so
entrenched it’s not easy, especially as a total unknown in the
district and also what people perceive to be a 25-year-old kid. But
enough for basics like literature and basic advertising. I think
people are waiting to see who comes out of the primary to face off
against Waxman and then the money will flow more easily and I have
some cool tricks for leveraging the power of the Internet like Ron
Paul did. But I’m willing to put the time in door to door and pound
the pavement every day.

Reason: How about media?

David: Normal media? Short answer, no, almost
no media coverage or interest in this race at all. In 2010 there
were five Republicans in the GOP primary and the winner of that did
not even get Waxman to seriously engage him, Waxman ignored him and
still won by 32 points. But if he faces me in the general I will be
pulling a Rick Santorum [in terms of diligent retail campaigning]
for five months, and I would love to force him to have to really
campaign.

Reason: Advice to anyone thinking of maybe
running for office?

David: Just run. You will learn so much in the
process and if you can learn the basics of running a conventional
campaign and learn how to combine that with the best organizational
dynamics of the liberty grassroots, whether in this cycle or a
future cycle, learn how to turn that combination into a strong
competitive edge in a lot of districts could be enough to pull off
an upset. We need new leaders to pick up the baton Ron Paul is
handing us so the best way to learn is by doing.

David’s campaign video: