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Amy Chai
Amy Chai (Republican Party) is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Connecticut's 1st Congressional District. She declared candidacy for the 2026 election.[source]
Chai completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Amy Chai was born in Detroit, Michigan. She earned a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1985, an M.D. from the Indiana University School of Medicine in 1989, and graduated from University of Michigan Medical School in 1992. Her career experience includes working as a doctor, homeschooler, published author, lecturer, ghostwriter, and volunteer worker.
Chai has been affiliated with the following organizations:[1][2]
- ASAM
- ABIM
- ABPM
- Connecticut Counseling Centers
- The Presbyterian Church
- NAMI
- United Doctors of America
- The Scribe's Institute
Elections
2026
See also: Connecticut's 1st Congressional District election, 2026
General election
The general election will occur on November 3, 2026.
General election for U.S. House Connecticut District 1
The following candidates are running in the general election for U.S. House Connecticut District 1 on November 3, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | John Larson (D) | |
 | Luke Bronin (D) | |
 | Ruth Fortune (D) | |
 | Jillian Gilchrest (D) | |
 | Mark Stewart Greenstein (D) | |
 | Jack Perry (D) | |
 | Amy Chai (R)  | |
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
Chai received the following endorsements. To send us additional endorsements, click here.
2022
See also: Connecticut's 3rd Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Connecticut District 3
Incumbent Rosa L. DeLauro defeated Lesley DeNardis, Amy Chai, and Justin Paglino in the general election for U.S. House Connecticut District 3 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Rosa L. DeLauro (D) | 56.8 | 137,924 |
 | Lesley DeNardis (R) | 40.7 | 98,704 | |
| Amy Chai (Independent Party) | 1.7 | 4,056 | |
 | Justin Paglino (G) | 0.8 | 1,967 | |
| Total votes: 242,651 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
The Democratic primary election was canceled. Incumbent Rosa L. DeLauro advanced from the Democratic primary for U.S. House Connecticut District 3.
Republican primary election
The Republican primary election was canceled. Lesley DeNardis advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Connecticut District 3.
Campaign themes
2026
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Amy Chai completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Chai's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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She has degrees from the Johns Hopkins U (biology), IU School of Medicine (MD), U Michigan (Internal Medicine), UVA (General Medicine and MS Epidemiology). She is double boarded in IM and Addiction Medicine. She took 10 years off to home educate high school, earning a US Presidential Teacher award and earning a “top ten educational book” in Sichuan Province. Her thesis coined the term “learner-centered” education as she worked with medical faculty and medical education. She has earned a public service award for her volunteer work teaching STEM related material to children in Hartford, CT. She has a deep commitment to caregivers and veterans, as she worked while caring for two sets of parents through end-of-life care, and her father was a war veteran who suffered from PTSD. She also is committed to preventing mental illness and addiction. Her husband is a Taiwanese immigrant, and she has successfully raised two adult children. She has worked with a South Sudanese NGO, has supported physician ministries overseas, and has volunteered extensively with her church groups.
She represents those who sacrifice for their families and for their country, and she is stepping up to serve—not to be served.- Poverty to purpose. We are throwing billions of dollars at poverty and none of it is accounted for or effective. We have more poverty than ever. It is like putting a bandage over a cancer as it festers and grows instead of cutting it out with surgery.
Instead of investing in band aids and lining the pockets of political cronies, I will invest in a scalpel. The root causes of poverty are mental illness, generational trauma, and lack of opportunity. Crime, social ills, and national debt result from bad policy. We hit poverty with the one-two punch of preventing mental illness (it can be done) and returning to evidence-based education with no agenda other than success.
Poverty will dwindle as youth have purpose, opportunity, and healthy minds - Mend the Middle Class. Our tax system discourages work. It increases tax on earned income the harder you work. This hurts average Americans who struggle to stay out of poverty while paying their lifeblood on unreasonable government spends. I would eliminate the self-employment tax. I would shift taxation towards the financial industry and away from earned income. I would work on solutions with small local businesses who are hurt by unfair tax and regulations that advantage larger companies. I would end foreign and venture capital ownership of single-family homes. The housing market is artificially costly because 30% of homes aren’t owned by families. Homes are for families. Socialism isn't the answer. Better capitalism is the answer
- Put the health and the care back into healthcare. With passage of the ACA, the costs of healthcare skyrocketed and doctors worked harder and faster to crank people through the office like sausage in a grinder. People think insurance is the problem, but actually the bigger problem is the for-profit nature of those who extract profit from ownership of doctors. Data from the U.S. healthcare sector indicates that VCs generate huge profits at the expense of providers, clinicians, and patients. The 2.6 TRILLION taken from healthcare by these people dwarfs profits made by insurance companies, who have a profit caps. With caps on profits for VCs that own healthcare conglomerates, we can immediately put the next 2.6 trillion back in your pocket.
Prevention is key to reducing health care costs as well. Medicare spends 200 billion dollars per year on diabetes alone. But we know how to prevent that. Why don't we do that?
I am sick of self-serving liars who do not serve the people that they represent.
Some say that "Honesty is the best policy." But I say that "Honesty MAKES the best policy." I have a master's degree in epidemiology, and I understand statistics. I also know how word games and manipulated statistics can mislead people. This is how bad policy gets implemented time and time again.
Since US Congress is a federal office, it is important to have a deep understanding of federal issues as well as international issues.
I also believe VERY strongly that it is the duty of a US Representative to represent the United States as a sovereign entity and to support measures that maintain US sovereignty at all times. This means that although we support allies, we support America and Americans first. I do not believe that a US Representative should impede the enforcement of border security, ever.
No Representative should ever advocate for political violence, and they should not engage in rhetoric that is likely to incite violence.
I APPLIED for a job as a newspaper deliverer, because I had done my brother's route for years and he was moving up to a position of fry cook at the local mall. When I went to ask if I could have the job, they LAUGHED and said, "Nobody will respect a paperGIRL!" And that is the story of why I never got paid for delivering papers. My brother's route actually helped our family because we were incredibly poor and we needed his money for food.
I intend to lead with ideas that represent solutions, and I intend to craft bills and resolutions that resonate with my constituents instead of acting for dollars.
The House is supposed to actually represent thoughtful and experienced people from all walks of life. Unfortunately, it currently represents cash and TikTok.
Also, the knowledge base of career politicians is frighteningly narrow. And often shallow as well. That is not what we need in politics. We need people who have experienced work and life, who have achieved in the communities that they seek to represent.
How can anyone create legislation or solve problems as a representative when they don't actually know anything?
The national debt is worsened by those who think that taxpayer money is there for the stealing. I am a supporter of DOGE and the cutting of improper spends. I am in favor of the most radical transparency in the history of the US. I would support a dedicated portal with absolutely every dime of taxpayer money accounted for and accessible to citizen watchdogs.
This is America's blood, sweat, and tears. It is not a magical genie that grants wishes in tens and hundreds of billions.
I firmly believe that lack of term limits is the cause of corruption culture and dark money in politics.
Let me tell you a story about a primary care patient. One older woman came in for a visit, and immediately I saw that something was very wrong. I gently tried to get to the bottom of her problem, and I discovered that she was actively suicidal. I had to keep talking to her so that I could determine whether or not to commit her for a 72-hour hold. As I discovered she did not have an effective plan to kill herself at the ready, I spent time trying to determine if the depression was situational. It was. She had been watching TV, and the news was scaring her with a "fearmongering" narrative. We all know that the operatives use fear to motivate voters. Fear and rage are extremely powerful. The narratives are shaped by professionals who understand psychology very well. And it is being leveraged against real people for partisan advantage. She is not the only person who has been suicidal for this reason. We have had families broken up when young people were told that their parents were literal Nazis. The distress of estrangement is fostering huge amounts of damage to MY PATIENTS. This actually fills me with rage. Congratulations, the partisan narrative his making people kill themselves. Politics is destroying real people, real relationships, and real mental health. This needs to stop NOW.
The most important thing to remember is that compromise only "works" when both parties are seeking the same goals. When two parties seek different goals, all bets are off. My goal is to preserve American sovereignty and make life better for all Americans. My goal is not to gain dominance for my special interests. My goal is not to prepare the way for global governance. I will not compromise on those goals. I will compromise on ways to reach those goals.
The investigative powers should be used for legislative purposes most commonly, but also for oversight, as has been the tradition in the past. I think diversity of testimony will greatly improve the quality of the testimony that we receive.
I think that voting should have a maximum of one week of early voting, that ballots should be paper, that election information should be more like Ballotpedia, where representatives are presented with their credentials and ideas, instead of with their cash and sponsors.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
2022
Amy Chai completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Chai's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- Put the UNITED back in the States by putting PEOPLE over politics, and solving wedge issues
- Your viewpoint is a civil right. I will sponsor the Viewpoint Discrimination Act to add "Viewpoint" to the Civil Rights Act
- I will bring transparency, integrity, and civility back to America, and work to restore trust in the democratic process
Parents have a right to the education that they want for their children. Full stop.
I WILL solve the literacy problem (achievement gap) for underserved communities. I will NOT contribute to the "cronyspend" that wastes federal dollars and actually MAINTAINS the achievement gap. Our inner cities deserve REAL change and this will solve the school to prison pipeline (When these patients are in my clinic, their lives are often truly destroyed. SHAME on the system. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure)
I will REPLACE the Green New Deal (top-down cronyspend) with a "Green Future Initiative," a comprehensive plan that trusts Americans to have fun and work together to build local sustainable solutions instead of punishing poor people for driving to work.
I want to TRUST BUST the media. We must restore the independent journalist.
Bowling alone, by Robert Putnam
San Fransicko, by Michael Shellenberger
Better Capitalism, by Knowlton and Hedges
Consent of the Networked, by Rebecca MacKinnon
Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism, by Robert Kuttner
What Happened to You, by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry
The Bible
This must be bolstered with honesty, integrity, and willingness to listen.
I am extremely trustworthy. My word is literally my bond.
I do not actually care about cash money. I am not motivated by money, but rather by how interesting and satisfying a problem can be. I also solve problems in my spare time at night after work.
REPEAT
The representative is about representing the PEOPLE. This is not the same as representing the special interest of a corporation or a political power play or a financial goal for re-election. The PEOPLE. I cannot stress that enough.
The last line is the story of my entire life.
The one I am thinking of was:
"Oh where, oh were have the covid funds gone?" To the tune of "oh where oh where has my little dog gone."
But that way is the dinosaur way. It is the way of the last century and the age of the political machines.
We need to restore trust in each other and we need to work out some normative values. This must be transparent and explicit. We must learn to sit with our differences. We must learn to reach out to each other to find the areas where we disagree.
I also would like to be in the Select Committee for the modernization of Congress. Like I said, we are still using last century's political machines and they do not work in the 21st century.
I also strongly support ranked choice voting and campaign finance reform.
My patients often say, "thanks for treating me like a human being" because literally nobody sees them or treats them as though they are even human. People say "good riddance" when they are dead. I feel sick.
Democrats are blue
Neither party
Gives a (crap) about you!
For example: 1 million sent on pre-school literacy. This ends up saving 7 million on jail costs and drug rehab costs. Your net return is 6 million.
The full monetary impact both positive and negative must always be estimated.
Then the outcome measures must be analyzed.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Chai's campaign website stated the following:
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Freedom What rights are most important to you? Early Americans believed that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness were important. When the Constitution was written, your rights became even stronger. The Bill of Rights was truly revolutionary. But not everyone had the rights they deserved. From the 14th Amendment, all the way to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, your freedoms have grown in America. But people will always try to discriminate. It is just what people do naturally. That is why I want to enhance your freedoms even further, with the Viewpoint Discrimination Act. As an update to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the VDA will prevent your employer from firing you because of your personal views. What right could be more civil than the right to think your own thoughts?
You may have noticed that America is very diverse. Every ethnicity, every religion, and every language has found a home in the United States. You may also have felt that American politicians like to use our differences against us. If they can get us to fight each other, then we won’t notice that they are taking away our power and serving their own interests. One example of this is in voting and elections. The left argues about voter access to the polls. The right argues about transparency of the election process. Both of these are very important issues. But while ordinary people argue over these divisive topics, they don’t seem to notice that neither candidate is worth voting for. Both sides lose. That is why I want to give Americans back their power and unity with the Enfranchise America Act. This act will maximize voter access and maximize election transparency first and foremost. But neither of those things will matter without good candidates worth voting for. That is why the EAA will include campaign finance reform and ranked choice voting. This will help to increase the power of the center and decrease the power of the extremist fringes who currently control the parties on both sides.
I cannot enforce tolerance. But I can model it. I pledge to listen to everyone, and do my utmost to create fair solutions to problems in our nation. Even for people who disagree with me. It is okay to disagree. I do not want to represent a party, I want to represent you. I believe that the role of government is to work together to create solutions that work as well as they possibly can for as many people as possible. I have very strong values. I will never compromise my values. But I understand that other people hold values as well, and if we expect to move forward, we will need to tolerate disagreement over very fundamental issues.
Knowledge disparities exist. Knowledge is power. Therefore, power disparities exist. The future is technology and science. Education in technology and science is being dumbed down in underserved communities. All children can learn, and should be encouraged to do so. Math is a civil right. Freedom of thought leads to innovation. STEM education makes innovation possible. America needs to be the leader in freedom of thought and the leader in STEM education in order to maintain the edge innovative edge in the global marketplace. Parents are the main driver of successful education for children. Parents must be involved and active in the education of their children. Therefore, parents must be given transparency and choice in education for their families. I fully support parental choice in education. I would also support curriculum development for a minimum standard of practical science and technology literacy. I also support open access.
I would like to present a better option for America than the “Green New Deal.” The Green New Deal looks to the past for answers. It looks to big government spending and big government mandates. I believe that those are not ideal solutions for an increasingly complex future. I would like to provide infrastructure support to regions (such as New England) to create their own networks of innovation called, “Sustainability Zones.” These zones would have the ability to close the loop in the event of an emergency or natural disaster with locally sourced and secure supplies of food, energy, and medicine as well as a secure, “local server” based regional communication network. Declining towns could serve as new hubs for regional growth in production and distribution. Local governments would work from the ground up to create sustainability solutions that meet local needs and support local entrepreneurs to innovate for a greener, healthier, locally based economy. I would like to give Americans the opportunity to invest their tax dollars in environmental research of their choice. In return, they would have the first choice to invest in IP that results from the type of research that they choose to support. This would involve open access to grant funding peer review to taxpayers. Hopefully it would spur more interest in innovation and solutions that can be brought to production. I would like to develop small grants for communities who wish to work on projects to solve local environmental problems. Citizens who are able to implement solutions would qualify for tax breaks. I would like to implement evidence-based policy. This means that debacles of spending on failed projects and cronyism would be minimized.
There is a crisis of mental health in America. Most of our social problems, criminal justice problems, the addiction epidemic, homelessness, and health problems—including the obesity epidemic—are directly related to the mental health of our communities. Our failure as a nation to address mental health prevention and treatment is extremely expensive for taxpayers as well as for families. We waste billions of dollars and we allow the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives every year. We need to expand addiction treatment to the Medicare age group. We need to invest in dual diagnosis supportive communities. We need to expand access to mental health treatment. We need to create a framework for the prevention of mental health problems. Mental health is not a place for ideology. It is a place for evidence. All policies must pass the evidence test.
I believe that we need to tend first to our own nation. Just like the message that we hear prior to an airplane taking off, we must attend to our own oxygen before assisting others. I believe that the purpose of an elected representative is to represent the people we have sworn to serve, not to represent foreign interests. I believe in secure borders. I do not believe in “regime change” abroad or proxy wars. I believe in a strong defense force, and would prefer not to deploy it. I support nations that are free and democratic. I believe that the US should become an example for the world once again. Freedom, unity, and innovation should come to mind when people think of America. Totalitarianism, “Social Credit,” and sectarianism will not compare favorably to these American ideals. It should be clear from the above statements that I am not a globalist.
We are printing too much money and borrowing our children’s future. We need to stop. Devaluing our currency in a time of decreased availability of commodities is creating runaway inflation. This hurts the poor the most. The Congress needs to have a cost analysis of every policy. Some things are worth spending money on, such as prevention and innovation. Other things are a waste of money and promote corruption. We need representatives who can tell the difference. We need to eliminate the self-employment tax. It is deeply unfair to people who are working to support their families. Income up to $75,000 ought to be protected from the self-employment tax. We need to implement a tax per trade. People who play the market like a casino are adding nothing to the economy and are simply scraping the cream from the top. Massive trades based on black box algorithms should be discouraged. A tax per trade would not be a burden to typical investors, but would decrease the impact of trades designed to take unfair advantage of brief fluctuations in the market. We need to simplify the tax code for earned income. We need policy that will support the middle class and the ability of families to live securely. The government should not be looking at our bank accounts. It should be looking at wire transfers out of the country, though.[3] |
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| —Amy Chai's campaign website (2022)[4] | ||
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2026 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on August 2, 2022
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on November 6, 2025
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Doc Amy Chai for Congress, “Issues,” accessed October 7, 2022
