Service Over Politics: My Commitment to CA-45

My name is Aditya Pai and I'm running for Congress. Yes, I'm still running for Congress.

You may have read about me “suspending” my campaign. That email was not intended to be sent and I’m not quitting this race.

However, the frustration you saw is real. Our political system is broken by excessive influence of corporate money, extreme partisanship, and self-dealing.

Public service is awesome. Politics sucks.

For corrupt politicians, including Michelle Steel, politics is simply saying one thing and doing another. It’s using insider information to trade stocks. It’s voting against the Inflation Reduction Act and turning around to take credit for its investments in our community. It’s saying the right things about reducing the cost of prescription drugs and then voting against capping the price of insulin. It’s about jumping from office to office and ladder climbing without doing the job voters hired you to do.

For Michelle Steel, politics is taking party line votes and raking in corporate cash – all while ignoring the needs of people in CA-45. And how could she do any better? Michelle Steel doesn’t live in this district and never has. She didn’t grow up here, either.

I’ve grown up here since I was eight years old, ever since my parents and I left formerly-socialist India in search of opportunity.

My family raised me to care for others and taught me to use my privilege to give back to a community that welcomed and nourished me. I certainly would not be running for Congress without having received help along the way.

My parents bought their first home with federal mortgage assistance. My mom couldn’t work on her H-4 dependent visa until President Obama managed to change some of our broken immigration rules a decade ago. I was lucky to be issued a green card just in time to receive Pell Grants to attend college.

I’ll be forever grateful. And that gratitude inspires me to give back.

It’s why I volunteered with the Orange County Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity. It’s why I’ve done thousands of hours of pro bono legal work. I’m running for Congress to address the very failures in public policy that I saw impact the lives of my clients.

Public service is my life’s calling, and it gives me joy. Serving in Congress will give me an opportunity to help more people in CA-45 than I would be able to help as a pro bono attorney.

I’ve seen first-hand the positive impact selfless and hardworking public servants like my former bosses Senator Mark Warner and Governor Steve Bullock can deliver.

Public servants put people first.

Politicians, like Michelle Steel, put themselves first.

In Congress, I'll be laser-focused on offering world-class constituent services while fighting for common-sense policy solutions like banning members of Congress from trading stocks, codifying the privacy protections in Roe v. Wade that were ripped away (supported by Michelle Steel’s amicus brief) by an ethically-compromised Supreme Court, and making housing more affordable.

Running against a well-funded incumbent is hard, even when that incumbent is doing a bad job serving the people that elected her.

Our campaign finance system was broken even before the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for unlimited dark money to influence our elections. Candidates like me spend an inordinate amount of time and energy calling people and asking them to financially invest in the campaign. It’s time that isn’t spent listening to voters or working on solutions. Voters are worse off for it.

Our path to victory is an uphill climb, but together I know we can make it happen. And if we don’t, I’ll go right back to hosting free legal clinics and finding other ways to give back.

That’s the difference between a politician and a public servant.

I’m not a politician.

I’m running because Michelle Steel isn’t working for any of us and we need to make a change.

Let’s get to work.

-Pai