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Ritesh Tandon
Ritesh Tandon (Republican Party) is running for election to the U.S. House to represent California's 17th Congressional District. He declared candidacy for the 2026 election.[source]
Biography
Ritesh Tandon earned an B.S. in mechanical engineering from LD College of Engineering (India), an M.S. in computer engineering from Santa Clara University, and an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University.[1] Tandon's career experience includes working as the CEO of Kricel Corporation and as a research fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. Tandon has served as chief liaison officer for Smart Village Movement, as vice-chairman of UPMA, and on the executive committee of the Sankara Eye Foundation.[1]
Elections
2026
See also: California's 17th Congressional District election, 2026
General election
The general election will occur on November 3, 2026.
General election for U.S. House California District 17
Incumbent Ro Khanna, Nicholas Finan, Ha Phan, and Ritesh Tandon are running in the general election for U.S. House California District 17 on November 3, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Ro Khanna (D) | |
| Nicholas Finan (D) | ||
| Ha Phan (R) | ||
 | Ritesh Tandon (R) | |
| ||||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
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2024
See also: California's 17th Congressional District election, 2024
California's 17th Congressional District election, 2024 (March 5 top-two primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House California District 17
Incumbent Ro Khanna defeated Anita Chen in the general election for U.S. House California District 17 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ro Khanna (D) | 67.7 | 172,462 |
 | Anita Chen (R) | 32.3 | 82,415 | |
| Total votes: 254,877 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
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Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 17
Incumbent Ro Khanna and Anita Chen defeated Ritesh Tandon, Mario Ramirez, and Joe Dehn in the primary for U.S. House California District 17 on March 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ro Khanna (D) | 62.9 | 74,004 |
| ✔ | | Anita Chen (R) | 26.8 | 31,568 |
| Ritesh Tandon (D) | 4.9 | 5,738 | |
 | Mario Ramirez (D) | 3.8 | 4,498 | |
 | Joe Dehn (L) | 1.6 | 1,839 | |
| Total votes: 117,647 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
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Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Tandon in this election.
2022
See also: California's 17th Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House California District 17
Incumbent Ro Khanna defeated Ritesh Tandon in the general election for U.S. House California District 17 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ro Khanna (D) | 70.9 | 127,853 |
| Ritesh Tandon (R) | 29.1 | 52,400 | |
| Total votes: 180,253 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 17
Incumbent Ro Khanna and Ritesh Tandon defeated Stephen Forbes, Rao Ravul, and Joe Dehn in the primary for U.S. House California District 17 on June 7, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ro Khanna (D) | 66.0 | 74,892 |
| ✔ | | Ritesh Tandon (R) | 25.3 | 28,730 |
| Stephen Forbes (D) | 5.0 | 5,694 | ||
| Rao Ravul (D) | 2.1 | 2,394 | ||
| Joe Dehn (L) | 1.6 | 1,836 | |
| Total votes: 113,546 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Sarah Katz (D)
2020
See also: California's 17th Congressional District election, 2020
General election
General election for U.S. House California District 17
Incumbent Ro Khanna defeated Ritesh Tandon in the general election for U.S. House California District 17 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ro Khanna (D) | 71.3 | 212,137 |
| Ritesh Tandon (R) | 28.7 | 85,199 | |
| Total votes: 297,336 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 17
Incumbent Ro Khanna and Ritesh Tandon defeated Stephen Forbes and Joe Dehn in the primary for U.S. House California District 17 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ro Khanna (D) | 68.6 | 107,638 |
| ✔ | | Ritesh Tandon (R) | 21.4 | 33,527 |
| Stephen Forbes (D) | 7.7 | 12,110 | ||
| Joe Dehn (L) | 2.2 | 3,523 | |
| Total votes: 156,798 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Campaign themes
2026
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
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2024
Ritesh Tandon did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign website
Tandon’s campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Public Safety & Security Additionally, I will prohibit the federal government to continue allowing unfettered access into our state. Currently, we have wide-open, unsecured borders, and 20% of San Jose residents are undocumented. Meanwhile, our lawmakers are allowing them to vote in elections like Mayor, City Council, or School Board instead of taking action. People are unsafe, and our businesses are broken into very frequently. We cannot let this persistently affect our state. We must rehabilitate our asylum policies and work towards a comprehensive solution to this crisis and stop drug cartels and illegal immigrants from coming to our state. Our border patrol agents are putting their lives on the line, daily, to help keep our country safe. We must ensure our border patrol is fully-funded and return to policies that keep our state out of harm’s way. Protect Silicon Valley Jobs We have to plan for the next century of innovation for the Valley. It must be done with close cooperation from the government, the local universities, and investors. The next generation technologies necessary for the United States are artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and advanced medicine including gene therapies. We must transform Silicon Valley into a behemoth of Bio-Silicon Valley. For this to happen, Congress must act in harmony with the spirit of the valley. I intend to introduce federal programs, tax incentives, and low cost funds to encourage diversification of the Silicon Valley industry start-ups. Silicon Valley has over a century of innovations and start-up history. Tremendous amount of that credit goes to the unique philosophy of Stanford University where it encouraged its faculty members to start companies. It supported the discovery of Audion tubes by Lee De Forrest with $500 funded by the university president David Starr Jordan, in early 1900s. Ambitious guidance of Dr. Terman at Stanford, who did not like the idea of his electrical engineering graduates to migrate to the east coast for jobs, created Hewlett Packard. Close partnership of Stanford with the industry, the military, and its establishment of Stanford Industrial Park to house companies, catapulted this valley to where it is today –a $3 Trillion neighborhood. Factors that made the Silicon Valley successful were to attract highly educated engineers and scientists, and let them experiment freely without the fear of failure. Proliferation of the VC money took risks with thousands of companies, thereby creating an amazing spectacle of new Electronics and Internet related industry formations in the history of this world. The rewards for this pioneering spirit of the valley are apparent. As an entrepreneur and future policy maker, I will encourage sensible regulations for the start-ups, such that the spirit of innovation and the investor money does not stop flowing. We must keep the tax rates low and regulations reasonable in order for new industries to start, grow, thrive and complete worldwide. I want the companies to start here and stay here. We don’t want where, for example, the chip manufacturing, and computer manufacturing completely went overseas. We want key expansion to happen locally such that the IP remains within the valley and rest of the country. Covid-19 crisis teaches us that we need to change tax laws to encourage domestic manufacturing. A 5-10 years tax holiday, along with low interest rate loan incentives, would help establish domestic manufacturing across the country and enhance the middle class living wages. I will introduce such visionary bills in the congress. For us to thrive as a country, we must protect the enormous intellectual property created by the Valley. I will propose strict IP security related bills. Potential candidates are: 1.) All technology transfers to any foreign entities, regardless of ownership, must get a review and an approval. 2.) University admissions of personnel and collaborations from certain countries on key research areas need to be scrutinized carefully. 3.) IP protection laws also need to be examined carefully, particularly, where Patents on key technologies can be copied, or transformed. In and around the Valley, we need Federal funds to acquire industrial parks to kick start companies with low cost facilities during incubation period. In our district, we have many sites for such purposes. I have targeted Milpitas, Fremont, and Newark as candidates for such funds. These towns have land to host variety of supply chain manufacturing support. In order to attract diversity of start-ups and help their employees, the government needs to be creative partner. Start-ups compensate hardworking employees and investors in many innovative ways such as stock options, stock purchase plans, and carried interest to name a few. A flexible tax treatment is required to un-burden hardworking innovators. When companies grow and mature, you still want creative entrepreneurial skill to continue to compete in the world. I would support a program where an “employee dividend plan” is not taxed. This would be amazingly attractive for a continuous industry innovation and expansion. Create better educational opportunities for our children Just to remind my constituents, our incumbent congressman supported race-based quotas in higher education admissions: He fully supported California’s ACA5/prop 16 based racial make up quotas in education, jobs, or public contracts, after promising, in writing, years before that he would not support any such laws. He is a turncoat not to be trusted! Our district is heavily Asian and our incumbent congressman is an Asian, yet his policies have been anti-Asian! I am glad that prop 16 was defeated! Now, Lets defeat this anti-Asian incumbent with his extreme left “Progressive” policies that are regressive – not progressive – and infantile. Lets take our kids back and educate them the way YOU want them to be educated, not the state, not the politicians, not the biased school boards, and not the teachers unions. The reason Virginia parents won and the “progressive?” Governor was thrown out, is because he supported shameful curriculums that 1.) Promote discussion of sexual contents at early age in schools; 2.) Recommends reading of books like “Queer” in high schools, which graphically describes same sex acts; 3.) Encourage racist and divisive messages of Critical Race theories. School Boards that approve and encourage pornographic materials in schools are despicable. These educators are normalizing garbage under the garb of “progressive?” ideas. What is furious is that they don’t want the parents involved in reviewing the materials taught in schools! They obviously know that parents would not allow their kids exposed to such nonsense. Would you tolerate such degradation in our education system? Your incumbent congressman supports teachers unions and educators that are responsible for this degradation! While the world is racing to teach STEM curriculum to their kids, we are teaching pornography and race divisions to them. I would say that it is time to throw out the public school system and make school choice a mandatory law. Progressive democrats like your incumbent support messages of critical race theory (CRT) in our institutions: It is racist and divisive. American value is that we must treat everybody equally and stop talking about oppressors (white race) and victims (blacks) in race relations dialogue – History is history and should be taught with a balanced and forgiving perspective. CRT also is bringing in the “Asian Privilege” in their messages. Most of you in district 17 are Asians and are labeled as privileged. It is because you worked hard and have accumulated money. Therefore, you are must be racists. What nonsense! Teaching our children that racism arises within your skin color, and you are born with it, is totally un-American and unacceptable. Progressives like Ro Khanna support this CRT ideology and its messages. Believe me, it will not help the black community! You want to help the black community with love and care and educational training. They should receive positive encouragement messages of seeing themselves as being equal, and that individual merit counts. Progressives like Ro Khanna should abide by what Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. said to all of the US. Recently, Ivy League college admission policy discriminating against the Asians has been challenged in the Supreme Court. Under the pretext of diversity, Asians – a minority in the US – are refused admissions in favor of other minorities. This practice damages the Asians, who want to excel in life through hard work – an all American value. The economic and psychological damage caused to the hard working Asians children by refusing admissions to top schools is enormous. Hopefully, just like the defeat of Prop 16 in California, this abhorrent practice of diversity based admissions, jobs, government contracts, etc. will stop throughout our nation. We need the discriminatory admissions challenge in the Supreme Court to succeed similar to a victory won by a coalition of Parents in Fairfax county, Virginia. Alexandria, Virginia; February 25, 2022: Today, a federal judge ruled that Fairfax County school officials violated the law by changing admissions requirements at the nation’s top public school to deliberately reduce the number of Asian-American students enrolled. This arbitrary selection criterion of diversity, equity, and social justice allocation is harmful to our nation and federal laws must be made to protect freedom of education, jobs, and business contracts. I promise to work very hard to do just that. All education institutions including high school should gear kids to earn a comfortable living wage. The school choice is a fundamental policy to achieve such an objective. It needs to be implemented throughout our nation. Public school system has failed to achieve this objective! Its record of the past 50 years is miserable, and has done damage to our kids by ignoring their primary responsibility of competitive education for our kids. The STEM education performance has been really poor in our schools. Teaching kids woke culture, pornography, and critical race theories in schools should not be a priority, as it does not make kids earn a good living. It is time to make a radical change in our school and university system, and create competition for the public schools, and the public universities – all tax dollars must go with the student wherever that student wants to go. Additional programs that will help our kids earn a good living are: 1.) Apprenticeships that start at the high school level and continue to all levels of higher education. Focus on K-12 education quality is critical as it is the foundation to succeed for children. Our tax dollars and resources must be utilized in a manner where they are most effective and accountable. Educators must be held accountable and incentivized according to their performance. Tenure system must be reviewed and changed to hold faculty responsible for the outcomes for students. American society must embrace ideals of equal opportunity for all without discrimination or preferences. Our children must adopt values of fair competition and success, which is the only way to make United States shine as an example of a fair society where American dream is possible through hard work alone, and not through political social engineering. I will vehemently oppose quota systems based on race, color, sex, and ethnicity. I will work at congress level to propose bills that will withhold federal funds if any state laws support any kind of preferential affirmative action and quotas. US Education Policy States fund free education up to high school and charge nominal fees for post-secondary education. Post-secondary education has generally been acceptable, but K-12 education has come under critique. For K-12 education, the state department of Education, and local School Boards control the education policy, curricula, and the administrative burden. Funding for education in California for the K-12 education comes from income and property taxes, and was about $102B in the year 2019. K-12 level education system has been criticized for providing less than quality education to the students, as they lack competitive ranking (US is 30th) in basic math and science education compared to many countries in the world. Many educators have argued the lack of funding as the key reason for the quality of education decline in the past 40-50 years. Revenue and Expenses per pupil for K-12 schools in California’s Congressional District 17th Fremont: Exp equals $10,331 Rev equals $12,575 Cupertino: Exp equals $10,574 Rev equals $11,635 Milpitas: Exp equals $10, 472 Rev equals $13683 Sunnyvale: Exp equals $13,572 Rev equals $15,019 Santa Clara: Exp equals $15,125 Rev equals $21,841 California: Avg. Exp: $12, 056 Avg. Rev equals $14,708 USA: Avg. Exp equals $11932 Avg. Rev equals $14, 146 Source: National Center for education statistics Note: California expects the average expenditure per pupil to be around $17K in 2019. Compared to OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation & Development) countries, the US spends about 30% more per pupil at primary and secondary education level, and 93% more at the post secondary level. In our congressional district, schools like Cupertino and Fremont did very well despite a lower than average spending compared to California and the US. So, spending levels may be only a small reason, if at all, for the lackluster educational performance at K-12 level in the US. We have to look at other ways to improve our K-12 education system. History of our shift to the public school system is over 100 years old. Educators have felt that all children are state responsibility, and have pushed for a large and uniform public school system. It resulted in powerful teachers unions, and large administrative burdens. Milton Friedman, a Nobel prize winner economist, argued for more choices in the schooling system, which started the Charter schools and other options. Here is a survey of success of school choice: In 2012, approximately 78 percent of kindergarten through 12th grade students attended the public school to which they were geographically assigned, about 14 percent attended a public school of their choice, and more than 8 percent attended a private school. In addition, among all children ages 5–17, approximately 3 percent were homeschooled in 2012, the latest year for which homeschool data are available. Satisfaction levels are the highest among private school parents, with more than 80 percent of parents saying they were ‘‘very satisfied’’ with their children’s school. Parents of children at public charter schools and public schools of choice also showed levels of satisfaction that were significantly higher than parents at geographically assigned district schools. In today’s rapidly changing economy, it is more important than ever to prepare workers to fill existing and newly created jobs as well as the jobs of the future. However, higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable, and we are enrolling more foreign students to charge larger fees, and also importing highly qualified labor force that competes with the local students for jobs. This faulty admissions and immigration policy is raising the cost of getting good higher education and high paying jobs for our kids. Currently, far too many individuals leave postsecondary schools with unmanageable student debt and with no direct connection to jobs. We have to create comprehensive solutions to help our children compete well and get great jobs in the new economy. Congress, in coordination with the states, must be active in meeting the above challenges. I am a very strong proponent of policies to provide multiple vocational pathways beginning in the high school that help students identify and build upon their unique strengths. I firmly believe that students need to have a full host of options, including technical schools, community colleges, ROCPs, and 4-year Colleges, all with strong apprenticeship programs. I will propose and facilitate bills that will incentivize company apprenticeship programs, and reform the existing ineffective education and workforce development programs. This will help more Americans to obtain relevant skills and high-paying jobs. For example, apprenticeships with companies should start quickly after students join a course of study. Students will benefit from getting trained on the state of the art technology being used by the companies, get relevant workplace experiences and opportunities to develop skills that employers value. Also, this will pay partial living costs and tuition for the students. Federal matching programs can be used to incentivize such programs. These measures will provide affordable paths to good jobs, lesser or no student debt, and ultimately, fulfilling careers. Admissions to the educational institutions must be with total disregard to race, sex, color, and ethnicity etc. All students must enjoy a very open and equal access to education that leads to high paying jobs. Recent defeat of the attempts by California Legislatures to change its constitution (Prop 16) to allow preferential system in admissions based on racial make up of the state, speaks volumes as prop 16 went against the very grain of American value of ZERO discrimination in the society. “Progressives?“ like Ro Khanna Supported Prop 16! Any system of preferential affirmative action, reverse discrimination, and quotas will create sub-par skilled workforce and will corrupt the society. Instead, resources should be made available to underprivileged students at high school and college level so they learn and graduate with excellent skills to enter either higher educational institutions, or enter workforce at comfortable living wages. All Federal incentive programs must be tied to non-quota based admissions to the colleges and universities. My opponent, incumbent congressman Ro Khanna, believes in social engineering of Prop16. Fortunately, it was defeated. Help me defeat his infantile ideas that waste our energies. We must forever discourage this race, color, and ethnicity-based preferences through Federal and state laws. These are totally un-American and regressive policies!! They lower healthy competition, erode societal improvements, and degrade quality of education. I will support bills that create competitive school options like charter schools, and private schools. The tax dollars will follow wherever the kids want to go to school. This will likely also result in creating more uniform and diverse neighborhoods that are less dependent on school ratings. If we are going to achieve educational competitiveness, we must also institute a Teaching Accountability System (TAS), where performance in the teaching is measured. It must discourage below average teaching, and reward good teachers in their pay as well as retirement benefits. With school choice policy where dollars go with the student, we will have smaller administrative costs for our education system. I intend to promote bills that promote such accountability policies. We must bring parents into the education system, as they play a very important role in instilling in their kids the value of a good education. They can promote the ideals of education, which must include good job skills, and subjects of good citizenship. Schools and colleges should have advisory parental councils to make sure that curriculums promote un-biased philosophies of social and political thinking. I will promote federal assistance bills attached to such policies for the betterment of society. Equal Rights for Women Give working families a break Support our Immigrant Community US immigration Policy has been extremely haphazard for the past 50 years. The large increase in illegal and legal immigration has been a very contentious election issue. As a first generation immigrant, I intend to contribute significantly to address this issue in a sensitive and bipartisan manner. I promise to bring this nation a sane, balanced, and implementable immigration policy that is acceptable to a very large majority of the existing population. Immigration to the US is primarily driven by the desire of immigrants to have a better economic life. This must be matched with the America’s need to hire foreign workers legally for variable lengths of time. All other immigration – diversity based, asylum, investment based, etc. – must be small and openly discussed. Prime goals to allow immigration, permanent or temporary, should be clear and implementable. American workers must not be affected adversely by any immigration policy. That is my commitment to you. In the past 50 years, America has been hit with double whammy of outsourcing of many manufacturing and other jobs as well as a five fold yearly increase of legal immigration to over 1M a year green cards now. Illegal immigration has increased to over 1 M a year as well. We must address these Macro problems carefully and in a sensitive manner. I support immigration of skilled workers that have, and can contribute heavily to the success of the American society. Silicon valley is a prime example of skilled workers that not only contribute amazingly, but also integrate appreciatively in the local society. The country-based quota for such highly skilled workers should be eliminated to further enhance start-up culture. It must be coupled with encouragement to bring advanced manufacturing back to the Silicon Valley. I will promote that investment Visas should be used only for such focused purposes, not for any kind of employment creation, which is how it exists today. We must protect our less skilled workers, as they are the most affected by the illegal immigrants. These include workers in many small businesses like restaurants, construction, farms, and other such professions. Now with the Covid-19 disaster, these people need even more protection. I will introduce bills to ensure that we protect our vulnerable workers. A country can’t have porous borders. Many corporates exploit or even promote porous borders, thereby encouraging slave labor conditions for the illegals. Progressive Democrats openly encourage illegal immigration, and constantly introduce bills like the “new way forward ” bill to promote lax implementation of the existing deportation laws. They are even trying to protect criminals from deportation. This is counter to all American interests, and is very disconcerting. Past Democrats were moderate, were sensitive to the average workers needs, and supported eliminating illegal migration. Today’s progressive Democrats like Ro Khanna seem to be working for the wealthy individuals interests who contribute to his campaign. Corporates and wealthy individuals want Democrats to continue to keep and increase the cheaper labor pool. Will that eliminate poverty and wealth gap, and increase wage growth for the average American citizens? No, with these approaches of the so-called Progressives. Migration based on family reunification is important, and it makes sense to allow it for the nucleus family of your spouse and kids. All guest worker programs must be implemented lawfully and tracked carefully with strict guarantees from the employers. Guest workers employment should have a rotational feature that will present economic opportunities to a wider number of foreign workers. Guest worker Program must be complemented with a strong nation-wide job-training program for the jobs occupied by the foreign workers. We must encourage local and cross state hiring programs to get Americans trained and working at good wages. Corporate greed to outsource jobs as well as import of cheaper labor should be curtailed with balanced temporary worker laws that encourage more local hiring. Decent wage growth, thereafter, will increase the welfare of a large segment of the local resident workers, and close the wealth gap that progressives mention often. Progressive’s proposal of taxing the rich, and then redistributing money through social programs, is a wrong way to solve the problem of wealth gap. A sustainable solution is to not give chance to the corporations, and its wealthy shareholders, to first accumulate wealth by opening Flood Gates of illegal and other cheaper labor pools. Government’s increased role in redistribution of wealth will likely corrupt the country like many socialist countries. Let’s just optimize employment of all American people, and give them dignity of good wages earned through good training and a healthy job demand. I will follow the principles of good economics to create good immigration laws. Pass Real Healthcare Reform Cost of a quality healthcare for all is a very important issue and must be addressed now. Our GDP expenditures on healthcare have gone from five percent in the early sixties to about eighteen percent now. Premiums and out of pocket expenses on healthcare are unaffordable for many. We need to address this out of control cost issue at the national level without sacrificing choices, quality of care and its wide accessibility. Unfortunately, this issue has become an idealism war that can only hurt our society. We can’t let that happen. America was built on choices and freedom for our people, not socialism! We must have the courage to implement common sense solutions that work for all. I believe that competition and sane regulations will bring costs down for all. Quality of care in the US is good, and with healthy competition and technology to help, we can achieve even better. I have compiled a list of very sensible paths that can lead us to a very cost effective and high quality health care for all. US healthcare GDP share has grown from around 5% ($27B) in the early sixties to over 18%($3.7T) of the GDP currently – a 136x increase in total dollars spent on healthcare! In inflation adjusted terms it would be about 23x higher expenditures now than in 1960. We have roughly doubled in population since 1960, so in terms of expenditure per person, the expenditures on health would be 3x higher today than in 1960. What are the contributing factors in the cost of increased healthcare costs? And, what have policymakers done in the past many decades to remedy the situation. Some major factors to consider are: Technology, Coverage and intensity of use, Demographics, and cost increases beyond average inflation. Technology has been a significant factor in expenditure increase that includes devices, diagnostic equipment, complex procedures, advanced drugs, etc. A CMS analysis says that roughly a quarter of the expenditure increase is due to the technology factors. The benefit of technology in healthcare is that there is about 10-year higher life expectancy now. However, we need to pay attention to very high costs of newer technologies and procedures. Competition is the only way to create better prices and lower costs. We need to come up with creative ways to reduce costs of drug development, and not have the USA pay for most of the cost recovery. I will promote policies for healthy competition to reduce cost of technology and advanced medicine in healthcare. The inflation in healthcare area has been about 1% higher than the average inflation in the US over the last sixty years. This means that over 60 years, same thing is about 2x more than the average inflation adjusted cost. This is an area to examine for policy makers to ensure that the existing laws encourage competition to reduce prices for drugs, as well services and procedures. I intend to focus heavily in this area. Additionally, due to the shift of demographics in the last 60 years, where we have lesser (36% vs. 21%) percentage of kids, and larger (9% vs.17%) percentage of older people, the total healthcare expenditures have increased. We need to take care of our seniors, and I will support their health coverage with the smallest premiums possible on Medicare. Lastly, another factor that has contributed to higher expenditures per person is the extent of health coverage and its use. The wider coverage and who pays for it becomes important in this context. Before Medicare and Medicaid, which were instituted in 1966, 56% of the US healthcare expenditures were the responsibility of households/individuals, and 14% were contributed by the Private sector. Government paid about 23% of the healthcare expenditures. Today, government pays about 45% of the total expenditures, households at 28%, and private sector at 21%. The role of government has increased 100%, and the inflation adjusted healthcare costs have increased by 100% in parallel. I intend to focus on this area and critically examine the arguments made by my socialist opponent, Ro Khanna, who claims that by going to one-payer system – the government – costs will come down. This claim is highly exaggerated and with unrealistic assumptions. My opponent, Ro Khanna, has NO idea on how to pay for $about 3T expenditure of “Medicare for all” outside of the premiums contributed by the private sector, and or individuals into the government run system. And lot of his stated assumptions on savings from Insurance industry profits are wrong, which made only $28B last year. Even if you add savings from the drug purchases, it would contribute another $20-$30B to the one-payer system. Even taxing the top 1% (anybody making $421K or higher) at 100% rate will not pay for the “Medicare-for all” proposal. It is just a pipe dream with zero understanding of the problem. Most people agree now that the incremental $3T per year cost of “Medicare-for-all” system is not fundable. All it will do is to increase costs, decline healthcare quality substantially, reduce health innovation, and take choices away from you. People must have options in healthcare. We need a system that provides choices at very competitive prices. I want to propose bills that would realize cost goals that will be sustainable. We must look at creating more competition through: streamlining distribution chain of medicines, increase sources of supply of drugs and technology, and increase supply of trained health workers. We must change regulations that suffocate innovation, competition, and services. Specifically, I will pay immediate attention to the following:
Environment Protection & Climate Change Policies International Panel on Climate change has been raising alarm on the climate change for a while now. The 5th assessment report came out in 2014, and set some sobering warnings on disruptions in weather patterns, ocean level rises, acidification of the oceans, and possible some unique disasters. The culprit is the total or cumulative CO2 in the atmosphere since the beginning of the last century. The natural CO2 removal machinery, which is the plants, has been incapable of doing its job since the ever-growing number of humans used more fossil fuels, burnt and removed more forests, and did not notice the increase of surface temperatures rising. In addition to CO2, we also produced more nauseous gases, particulate pollution, and plastic garbage. The world is waking up to those facts, yet the solutions are haphazard and economically non-disruptive direction is unclear. Green new deal supported by my incumbent Ro Khanna is totally impractical, reactive, and shows lack of scientific understanding. I intend to lead environment and climate change efforts by proposing a Congressional Environmental Action Panel (CEAP) to propose a national plan for mitigating the environmental threats. It is a National security issue that needs a 30-50 year plan. We must first understand the weather models suggested by IPCC in finer geographical impact sense. Current knowledge suggest that equatorial Pacific and high latitude areas will have more rain, and mid-latitude plus sub-tropical dry regions will likely see reduction in rain. These models have not sufficiently isolated high impact areas in the world for weather disruptions of storms, and or dry spells. This is important for population preparedness reasons. I intend to Push Congress to have the scientists study this more carefully for impact on the US soil. The remedies suggested by IPCC are at high level, and leave specifics to the governments of each country. Unfortunately, air is a very shared commodity and actions of one nation like China can affect the whole world, as it spews out 25% of the total CO2 emissions, mostly from coal usage. I intend to propose that we work with China and India quickly to affect global change. They have to reverse their increased usage of coal in the past. China is investing heavily in Solar, yet US can help transform their electricity generation and industrial plants to use cleaner fossil fuel sources like natural gas from the US. This can be done fairly quickly and has large impact on the CO2 emissions. It also helps in the trade imbalance problems with China. For mid to longer-term electricity generation, and industrial transformation, we must encourage further research on safe nuclear technology. In addition, we need to encourage a more efficient solar conversion technology for both industrial and home use. Discoveries in both of these areas will enable availability of cheaper and CO2 free energy supply. I intend to have federal programs to encourage such technology development and implementation within the next decade. To transform the land transportation industry, electric vehicle technology is moving forward nicely. As policy maker, I would create further encouragements in battery and storage technology, incentivize cross licensing of such technologies, such that it is adopted worldwide within the next decade. It will create competition and cost reductions, therefore quicker adoptions by people. For quicker impact on reduced carbon emissions, energy use can be reduced through various means like turning the lights off when not needed, and keeping the thermostat within more effective range and not heat or cool unnecessary spaces. Increased usage of good insulation worldwide in living spaces should be subsidized and required by local authorities. These practices worldwide would be useful. As a policy maker, I would encourage such programs and tie foreign aid to implementation of such practices and technologies. In my policy for housing, I mentioned smart cities. It is important that with the federal government help on creative financial instruments, and other tax incentivized programs, states and local governments can direct building of smart cities that have energy self-sufficient buildings with plenty of greenery around. These work, live, play neighborhood concepts will help reduce transportation needs therefore less fuel burning. Within 10-20 years, we maybe see that most cities are carbon neutral and healthier. Reduction of pollution will result in less respiratory, physiological, and cancer type diseases, therefore reduce healthcare costs as well. I will lead programs and laws that will reduce plastic misuse and its careless disposals. We need to keep our landfills and water supply clean. We do not need to see broken down plastic in micro-particle size in our water supply, oceans and in the air. The health affects of such carelessness can be immense. Federal government needs to form a sensible policy on plastic use and disposal guidelines. Help our homeless Homelessness in the US has been increasing at double-digit rates in many cities. As policy makers, we must examine the root causes and create a national policy to eliminate this suffering within our nation. Large metropolitans like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley can’t afford to let their cities deteriorate. We have the capability and means to help homeless get back on their feet and become dignified part of thriving societies around them. As a humanitarian potential policy maker, I have practical solutions that can be implemented in cooperation with the cities and states. Please join me to take care of this important issue for our nation. Millions of immigrants come to this country every year to establish a home. They come because the United States provides an unequaled economic opportunity for them. In the same country, where we have such large amount of resources, we let over 600K unfortunate homeless souls suffer. Why? What are leaders doing to put an end to homelessness? Almost nothing! Out of about 600K homeless people, California hosts about 150K, a very disproportionate number. Large population of homeless people live in the metropolitan areas – NYC has the largest at 80K, and Los Angeles has about 66K. San Francisco, Santa Clara County has about 8K homeless people each. The saddest part is that 40% of the homeless people are youth under the age of 18. There are various causes identified in the studies conducted over the past decade or so. Major causes are: Job loss, alcohol and substance abuse, family disputes, mental health (only 7%), physical health, and incarceration (12%). Only about 40% of the homeless are in shelters, where the conditions are pretty horrific and paperwork for admission is cumbersome. Today, the responsibility to remedy homelessness primarily rests on the county or the city. Therefore, it has been tackled in a haphazard way. It should not be left just at local levels to take care of our suffering populations. This results in deterioration of our large metropolitans. What we need is to understand the problem at deeper levels and correct policies to eradicate this blight on our nation. Consider the following that happened in our Silicon Valley in the recent past. Between 2007-2012, Santa Clara County spent $3B, or $500 million per year, on homelessness issues. Majority ($1.9B) of the money was spent on medical expenses, and approx. $0.8B was spent on Justice system related issues for the homeless people. Top 5% (2800 people) of the homeless people cost the most; about $83K per year. This is an amazing amount of wasted money that can be utilized in a better way, and still take care of homeless situation. Root causes: For us to eliminate homelessness, we have to examine and understand the root causes of the problem. It turns out that most of the homelessness is due to job losses and alcohol or substance abuse which can be a result of a job loss. Many of these situations can be rectified within short period of 3-6 months. I intend to introduce bills where job loss related affordable housing rental projects become tax exempt. I will support similar measures from the State. Expand on Job Loss Protections: For people who lose jobs and succumb to alcohol abuse, and become homeless, they should be encouraged to enroll in tax-exempt affordable housing developments, and must participate in remedial programs at the same time. I will also examine feasibility of tax-exempt temporary job programs for homeless people who are then able to look for permanent jobs. A skills retraining program with nationwide job search programs would be helpful in reducing homelessness. Family Stability and Youth Job Training Programs: For people who are homeless because of family disputes, particularly the youth who are neglected or abused, we need to promote children’s original family support and safety-net ideas, and modify or supplement the foster care programs. It is critical to enroll all affected youth in skill-training programs with job internships, so they can be independent when they leave their parental homes or foster care homes. If they choose not to be in foster care, then a well run living and schooling facility for these homeless youth must be considered. We can’t let our youth go without care and guidance until they are well prepared to take care of themselves. I will sponsor such Federal programs and implement with the cooperation of the States. Mental health Programs: Mental health is a great challenge for our communities. We need Federal and State level cooperation and funds to create well-run places attached to the local hospitals to take care of our mentally ill homeless people. They need clean, hospitable places to live, and not be left on the streets where they catch illnesses and end up in emergency rooms all the time. Post Incarceration Job Programs: Lastly, people who come out of incarceration have a stigma and have hard time finding jobs. We can’t let these people live on the streets and fall prey to gangs and commit more crimes. We need job programs for ex-incarcerated people. It maybe that federal govt., cities and counties govt. employ them in some safe starting jobs, train them, and over time they can gain dignity to be part of the larger society. I will sponsor such programs nationwide. No to Prop 16 (ACA5) In November of 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209, a California State constitutional amendment, providing that government entities “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” (Cal. Const. Article 1, Section 31.) It was March 2014, when the first attempt to repeal prop 209 was made by California State Senate proposition 5, and our esteemed Congressman, Ro Khanna, strongly opposed it! Guess what? A few days ago, Congressman Ro Khanna changed his mind and now thinks that race, color, sex, national origin-based discrimination or preference to UC admissions, public jobs, and public contract awards is the right thing to do. Published on “Opportunity for all coalition” blog site, representative Khanna said, “As a proud member of the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community, I wholeheartedly endorse ACA 5 (Prop 16) — because every single Californian stands to benefit from affirmative action and equal opportunity programs, programs that have never been more critical than they are today.” He continued, “Make no mistake: Proposition 209 was authored by Wall-Street-backed interests who felt threatened by an increasingly diverse California, so they put a thumb on the scale for their own businesses. This hurt countless California communities — very much including my AAPI community. Our enrollment in the UC system has suffered; our ability to build strong businesses has been hamstrung; and our ability to secure good-paying jobs has been undercut. Anyone who says anything different is misrepresenting the facts — because AAPI Californians will benefit from ACA 5(Prop 16), period.” “Lastly,” Rep. Khanna stated, “a generation has passed since Proposition 209 became law in 1996. ACA 5(Prop 16) will give millions of Californians their first opportunity to raise their voice and demand equal opportunity. I’m proud to support this bill, and I will do everything I can to ensure it passes the Legislature and becomes law with a win on Election Day.” Congressman Ro Khanna has really lost touch with the community of the 17th district. He falsely claims that it benefits Asian, Indian, and Pacific Islander communities. Truth is that it benefits only untrustworthy politicians like him, and others who have opposed it. It was legally challenged three times and lost. The lies perpetrated by Ro Khanna, in his statements above, are unbelievably devious. He is misleading the Asian community with false information that they are being hurt by prop 209. He is hoping that they will not do any diligence, and vote for ACA 5(Prop 16). His real purpose for flipping on what he promised in 2014 maybe something else. Truth is that, under existing law, the University of California takes account of each individual applicant’s personal story and achievements. Is this student the first in her or his family to go to college? What is the family income level? How many students from an applicant’s high school have gone to college? The results of the current system have not been unfair. Here are the enrollment rates, by race, the year before UC was ordered to stop considering race, and today: African Americans (3.7 percent then, 5 percent now); Latino Americans (13.4 percent then, 36 percent now); Asian Americans (36.1 percent then, 35 percent now), Caucasian Americans (38.4 percent then, 21 percent now). In other words, the rising percentage of Latino Americans graduating from California’s high schools has been matched by the rising percentage in their admission to UC, and the drop in Caucasian Americans’ percentage of California’s high schools has registered in their drop in UC enrollments. The other races stayed about the same. These numbers do not call out for racist Affirmative action Programs endorsed by Ro Khanna. In public jobs, blacks are already at about 20% . It is 30% higher than their population proportion. ACA 5(Prop 16) actually might actually hurt them. The truth is that Affirmative action Programs, started by John F. Kennedy in 1961, were designed to ensure that no prime federal contractors discriminated against sub-prime contractors based on race, color, sex, and national origin. There was never any intention for quotas, set-asides, etc. Outreach programs to include small businesses, disadvantaged businesses, first-time businesses, minority-owned businesses, is totally fine under Prop 209, as long as all are approached equally, not just targeted to one category. That is why Prop 209 is fair and must stay, and ACA 5(Prop 16) must be defeated.' Congressman Ro Khanna is the one misrepresenting the facts and lying to you when he says that the AAPI community has been suffering in getting fair enrollment in the UC system, in getting good-paying jobs, hamstrung informing businesses, and that Wall Street is involved in prop 209. He has some hidden ulterior motives, which are not clear. Truth is exactly the opposite. Children of hardworking AAPI and other communities will suffer, as they will be stripped of fair competition to enter the UC System for higher education. They will either have to go out of state or private universities that will cost 2-3 times more. The quality and standard of the UC system will decline. We can not trust Ro Khanna, or the state elected people who are supporting ACA 5(Prop 16). They completely misrepresent the facts and lie to get your votes. Let’s vote them out this November! We need honest and responsible representatives. We deserve better! One-click email to all finance committee members + some senators: http://email-appropriations.noaca5.org One-click email to all representatives of your constituency: http://email-representatives.noaca5.org Please oppose and STOP ACA 5(Prop 16). Let us together help children of all races, color, and ethnicity learn better, and prepare them to compete vigorously at national and international levels. That would be a real gift to our society, not a debilitating quota system! Please support me, support my campaign, and help me to fight for you. https://secure.anedot.com/tandon-for-congress/donate I’ve lived the American Dream and will do all I can to assure everyone has that opportunity. Outstanding and fair education practices are a huge part of that. Foreign Policy After the World War 2, the USA supported numerous authoritarian regimes for various short term thinking reasons, toppled democracies to install dictators (Iran), and got involved in four major wars (Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) that it could not win. The Afghanistan withdrawal was disastrous – painful and humiliating. It tarnished our image as the “greatest fighting force in history”, and is probably encouraging Russians to wage the Ukrainian war. China potentially will do the same with Taiwan. These bad policy assessments, and faulty executions of the past few administrations* are very visible now. Obama completely misjudged Russia, and essentially encouraged Russia to do what is happening today. Millions in Ukraine are being displaced and their lives ruined because the Democrats played a weak and unwise game. Trump gave arms to Ukraine, but not enough, and made no attempts to negotiate with Russia, despite the 1994 Budapest agreement*, to secure Ukraine’s integrity, and potentially our and European security. UN was formed to make sure no country invades or threatens security of another country. However, the Security Council structure is questionable to enforce such a charter. We must change it, and the US must take the first step. Other strong nations then must be convinced to follow a non-interference principal for the world peace in future. No nation has the right to invade countries and cause loss of lives and property to its population. We need a new United Nations order to make sure that peace and security is guaranteed to all weaker nations, who are trying to live freely and democratically. In March, UN general assembly warned Russia to cease fire, and withdraw from Ukraine, but their resolution is non-binding! And Security Council permanent members have veto power; therefore, a binding resolution cannot be adopted – therein lays the problem with the UN Security Council structure, therefore the world peace. We need to elect people in congress and presidencies who have some sense of the history, wisdom, and sensitivity to the world’s cultural differences. In a shamefully ignorant fashion, my opponent, and current congressperson of CA17th district, tweeted recently that Ukrainians are Nazis (Putin says that too! The tweet has been deleted since)*** Biden has been intimately involved in the past in Eastern European region, “Reset” relations with Russia in 2009, and its deterioration in 2014, yet his administration was asleep on the wheel since last march when Russia moved 70 thousand troops to Ukraine’s borders. Ukraine needed weapons in 2014 (Crimea annexation), last year (Russia gathered 70K troops), and needs more of them now (active war) to defend it. Besides faulty positions on how to keep peace in the world, as explained above, the US has been weak on trade policies. US, in the past has supported regime changes for trade reasons, and still has vulnerable dependencies on commodities from unfriendly nations. Additionally, for decades now, they have been loosing trade wars with China. Numerous local industries have suffered ever since, and the workers had little real wage increases. Our trade deficits have been unbalanced with most countries of the world. These are serious economic issues that affect our long-term prosperity and national security. Oil dependency was almost over in the last administration, but Biden’s administration reversed many policies to create shortages, apparently to make the alternate energy lobby happier. Just recently, because of inflation and unprecedented gas price hikes, the administration has been forced to allow exploration on public lands to allow increased production. Such naïve and experimental approaches by the administration, and some congress people like Ro Khanna who supports going after the oil companies and redistribute their profits, in managing the country and the world must stop. It is too dangerous and reckless. I, as congressional candidate from Dist. 17 of California, will strongly recommend that our current and future administrations create longer lasting foreign policies based on solid principals of world peace, non-interference, human rights of freedom to choose, fair trade practices, IP protection, balanced world economies, support of smooth changes in energy sources, reduction of pollution, and balanced world populations.
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| —Ritesh Tandon’s campaign website (2024)[3] | ||
2022
Ritesh Tandon completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Tandon's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Professionally, Ritesh Tandon worked on unified communications products for Cisco, starting with engineering and continuing with technical marketing. Then, he managed global strategic alliances for Jabra. Currently, Ritesh is the CEO of the Kricel Corporation.
Ritesh is a Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; his research topic is “How to Revive California’s Economy Using Open Innovation.”
Ritesh worked for two decades for non-profit organizations & served as an executive member of the Sankara Eye Foundation, President of UPMA, & Alliance lead for the Smart Village Movement, helping the underprivileged/common people to live better lives.
After two decades in the Silicon Valley, Indian-American engineer, philanthropist, and businessman Ritesh Tandon run for Congress in the South Bay. He has built a successful career in technology while simultaneously being a leader by helping others through his work with non-profits.- Economy – inflation, supply chain, domestic manufacturing & exports. We are stuck in one of the worst inflation cycles in the last 40 years. The gas prices are the culprit, like in the late 70s. The bad energy policy of Mr. Biden has been at the root of this inflationary cycle, not the Putin war. Lockdown philosophies & unfettered monetary stimulus created inflation. Interest rate hikes are meant to destroy demand. Supply-side economics policies do work. I will vigorously put those together to avoid impending recession & avoid losing individual wages and wealth. We also must heavily promote manufacturing innovation and installation within the US for domestic and export purposes. The US must balance its trade deficits worldwide.
- Security/Hate Crimes - Defunding the police policies & fewer punishments for crimes have escalated crime rates all over. There are more hate crimes against Asians. It is time that progressive elements of the Democrat party do not play with people’s lives & property. The death of George Floyd was wrong! However, rioting & defunding the police are equally wrong! We need safety in our neighborhoods. Poor foreign policies & untimely responses have resulted in the dishonorable withdrawal from Afghanistan & Russian aggression. We could have avoided today’s war situation in 2014 when Russia took over Crimea. We ignored Russian amassing large forces on the Ukrainian border last year. We need to stop reacting & start thinking practical peace!
- Education–Children are the largest & most precious investment for parents. STEM education should be the prime focus of schools. Parental participation is a prerequisite to good education. Family values, cultural backgrounds & religious sentiments are essential & institutions must be sensitive to that completely. No race-based discrimination bills (Prop16). School choice has many benefits, where tax dollars go with the students to institutions meeting defined standards. Competition between public & private schools would allow us to measure performance per dollar. Additionally, the association of good schools with richer neighborhoods will change. We need all communities to exceed in giving their precious children the best education they can.
Also, they make false promises of tuition forgiveness, free healthcare, and much more. These are all empty talks just about getting elected. My opponent raised more than $4.2 Million in the last two years and more than $10 million in the last six years; think, who funds him? In Six years, nothing is done, how long you will wait for change.
www.tandonforcongress.com
Honesty, truthfulness, and transparency are the most desirable characteristics of any elected official and probably the rarest. In most of the world, the words politician and liar are used synonymously. It is used that way for a good reason because they lie, avoid speaking the whole truth, and manipulate messages to win over the masses. Those rare politicians, who are honest and transparent, and relate to the people as people, become better and well-liked politicians over time. This is my first and foremost philosophy, and I intend to become one of those rare species of politicians. I believe that the true form of democracy is where all people's opinions count and policies are made based on a reasonable majority opinion and acceptance. Factual knowledge, appreciation of opposing views, and clarity of thinking in finding a solution that works for a large majority of people are required from a representative. Unfortunately, today's politician has become party demagogue and promotes division instead of exploring unifying solutions. Most people are busy with their lives and working hard to take care of their families. They will respond well and fairly if facts are presented truthfully and balanced. Today, even the media is not independent, so people have become even more divided. We have to change that and make opposing people come together to find as optimized a solution as possible on most issues. I am aspiring to be one of that type of political figure.
I have 24 years of experience working from engineering to CEO level. I have worked at ground level, and I know how to get things done.
By education, I have two master's degrees, and currently, I am working as a research fellow at UC Berkeley (Haas school of business); my research topic is - how to revive California's economy.
Honesty, truthfulness, and transparency are the most desirable characteristics of any elected official and probably the rarest. In most of the world, the words politician and liar are used synonymously. It is used that way for a good reason because they lie, avoid speaking the whole truth, and manipulate messages to win over the masses. Those rare politicians, who are honest and transparent, and relate to the people as people, become better and well-liked politicians over time. This is my first and foremost philosophy, and I intend to become one of those rare species of politicians. I believe that the true form of democracy is where all people's opinions count and policies are made based on a reasonable majority opinion and acceptance. Factual knowledge, appreciation of opposing views, and clarity of thinking in finding a solution that works for a large majority of people are required from a representative. Unfortunately, today's politician has become party demagogue and promotes division instead of exploring unifying solutions. Most people are busy with their lives and working hard to take care of their families. They will respond well and fairly if facts are presented truthfully and balanced. Today, even the media is not independent, so people have become even more divided. We have to change that and make opposing people come together to find as optimized a solution as possible on most issues. I am aspiring to be one of that type of political figure.
Today, we have significantly older political people sitting in the same role for 20+ years. They don't change, nor do they change the US. We need new blood, new thinking, and a creative way of doing things.
Manufacturing (we need to bring manufacturing back to the US)
High taxes/regulation (which prevents competitiveness and innovation)
Illegal Immigration
Foreign Policy Committee
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Campaign website
Tandon's campaign website stated the following:
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Protect Silicon Valley Jobs Supercharge the Silicon Valley to innovate for the next century We have to plan for the next century of innovation for the Valley. It must be done with close cooperation from the government, the local universities, and investors. The next generation technologies necessary for the United States are artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and advanced medicine including gene therapies. We must transform Silicon Valley into a behemoth of Bio-Silicon Valley. For this to happen, Congress must act in harmony with the spirit of the valley. I intend to introduce federal programs, tax incentives, and low cost funds to encourage diversification of the Silicon Valley industry start-ups. Silicon Valley has over a century of innovations and start-up history. Tremendous amount of that credit goes to the unique philosophy of Stanford University where it encouraged its faculty members to start companies. It supported the discovery of Audion tubes by Lee De Forrest with $500 funded by the university president David Starr Jordan, in early 1900s. Ambitious guidance of Dr. Terman at Stanford, who did not like the idea of his electrical engineering graduates to migrate to the east coast for jobs, created Hewlett Packard. Close partnership of Stanford with the industry, the military, and its establishment of Stanford Industrial Park to house companies, catapulted this valley to where it is today –a $3 Trillion neighborhood. Factors that made the Silicon Valley successful were to attract highly educated engineers and scientists, and let them experiment freely without the fear of failure. Proliferation of the VC money took risks with thousands of companies, thereby creating an amazing spectacle of new Electronics and Internet related industry formations in the history of this world. The rewards for this pioneering spirit of the valley are apparent. As an entrepreneur and future policy maker, I will encourage sensible regulations for the start-ups, such that the spirit of innovation and the investor money does not stop flowing. We must keep the tax rates low and regulations reasonable in order for new industries to start, grow, thrive and complete worldwide. I want the companies to start here and stay here. We don’t want where, for example, the chip manufacturing, and computer manufacturing completely went overseas. We want key expansion to happen locally such that the IP remains within the valley and rest of the country. Covid-19 crisis teaches us that we need to change tax laws to encourage domestic manufacturing. A 5-10 years tax holiday, along with low interest rate loan incentives, would help establish domestic manufacturing across the country and enhance the middle class living wages. I will introduce such visionary bills in the congress. For us to thrive as a country, we must protect the enormous intellectual property created by the Valley. I will propose strict IP security related bills. Potential candidates are: 1.) All technology transfers to any foreign entities, regardless of ownership, must get a review and an approval. 2.) University admissions of personnel and collaborations from certain countries on key research areas need to be scrutinized carefully. 3.) IP protection laws also need to be examined carefully, particularly, where Patents on key technologies can be copied, or transformed. In and around the Valley, we need Federal funds to acquire industrial parks to kick start companies with low cost facilities during incubation period. In our district, we have many sites for such purposes. I have targeted Milpitas, Fremont, and Newark as candidates for such funds. These towns have land to host variety of supply chain manufacturing support. In order to attract diversity of start-ups and help their employees, the government needs to be creative partner. Start-ups compensate hardworking employees and investors in many innovative ways such as stock options, stock purchase plans, and carried interest to name a few. A flexible tax treatment is required to un-burden hardworking innovators. When companies grow and mature, you still want creative entrepreneurial skill to continue to compete in the world. I would support a program where an “employee dividend plan” is not taxed. This would be amazingly attractive for a continuous industry innovation and expansion.
US housing market is on fire. Median house prices have jumped 20% in the last year. Particularly, the Bay Area is an expensive place to live. The real estate has increased consistently above the CPI and the wage growth in this area. This makes home affordability in the Silicon Valley a daunting task. It not only affects the professionals working in the high tech industry, but also makes it very hard for the service professionals to live in this area. This vicious cycle has not been addressed properly at all by the local governments. $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction (SALT) in their federal taxes is not helping either. Average home price in the Bay area has risen to such levels that paying property tax has become prohibitive. California State definitely does not need the extra windfall money. Prop 13 needs to be modified, such that tax is no more than 0.5% of market property value, and it does not grow more than 2% per year or less than half of the CPI index, whichever is smaller. It will open up many more homes for sale and encourage construction of new homes.
In Silicon Valley, we have a multicultural society. I will prevent Discrimination against any individual or group and vote for equal work rights for women. Due to discrimination, company performance goes down, growth is hurt and people are impacted, which disturbs their lives. When women are discriminated against, it disturb families, children and hurts social values. In all cases, people goes through stress when they are discriminated and it impacts their lives and it hurts our economy. Especially for foreign companies, there is limited control and structure setup today, where they do wrong things and get away. I will work to fix this.
Responsible opening of the US Economy Post Covid-19 lockdowns Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered as a cruel event in human history, which has killed over a half a million people already. Most western countries were caught unaware, and took a while to react to contain and mitigate the situation. Confusing directives from WHO and CDC did not help. Administration and policy makers reacted in contradictions, which did not help keeping the public’s health safe or the economy protected from the man-made economic disaster of lockdowns. Four months later, we are still faced with a haphazard policy on re-opening of the economy while keeping people’s health safe. We need a strong and clear consensus, which is what I intend to provide as your potential congressman. I have practical solutions that will have a sharp focus on public health as well as open the economy in a speedy, creative yet responsible ways. The economic impact of forced shutdowns and haphazard re-opening of the economies is already proving to be a large burden on the people: Q2 2020 GDP is expected to shrink by 40%; over 35M people are unemployed today. If we don’t reopen quickly in a responsible way, the GDP shrinkage and unemployment numbers will stay high. CARES act has helped a lot, but it is temporary and has an alarming long-term affect of higher national debt, inflation, and income disparities. The higher tax rates would be imminent. The state and local tax revenue shrinkages would cut into services that could have long term affects. USA is about 25% of the world economy, and the next nine countries outside of China (16% of the world economy) – Japan, Germany, India, UK, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada, and Russia – combined are about 25% of the current world economy. This fifty percent of the world economy is getting affected substantially with the Corona Virus epidemic and the shutdown affects. A clear strategy of responsible yet speedy re-opening is a worldwide emergency policy that needs to be thought through carefully. I intend to lead this vital worldwide initiative with the US at the helm of it. Drug and Vaccine discoveries Program: First and foremost, we need to restore a worldwide trust on the Virus cures, trials of appropriate drugs, and correct management of the disease. We can’t rely on the WHO to do that. USA must take a lead role on this war on humanity. We must gather all major drug and vaccine development nodes to cooperate. Major institutions have to accelerate deeper understanding of the physiology and mechanism of Corona Virus infection, which is critical in getting the correct set of drugs and vaccines that work. As a policy maker in congress, I will spearhead this project for humanity. Common sense re-opening Guidance: We must follow a sane policy of reopening. The older and susceptible folks, people with underlying conditions of high blood pressure, heart problems, obesity and immune conditions should stay home as much as possible, or work from home. The younger people and people with healthy underlying conditions can immediately start work with generally accepted precautions of “wash your hands before you touch your face”, responsible social distancing, and wearing a mask in public. New approaches to sanitize work spaces and commonly touched surfaces are emerging including technology solutions like better air flow designs combined with harmless UV-C light applications. Extensive workplace testing: In all industries where people contact is close, there must be 100% testing and often. Lets put a high priority on testing! All companies must test their employees often and submit data to the public health department in an “Open interactive infection maps” format. This mapping and tracing methodology accomplished in cooperation from the people will contain the spread effectively for Corona Virus and any future infectious disease spread. We need to modernize our public health safety capabilities. I want to make sure that in future, all infectious diseases have a swift and consistent response, such that there is little or no harm done to our life and our economy.
Educational Reforms for our children Children are our future, and parents should have a major role in determining that future! This should be the prime principle for our nation. The “progressives?” democrats like our incumbent should be defeated like Terry McAuliffe – the ex governor of Virginia – who proclaimed twice that parents should have nothing to do with education. They think your children are a state property. Are they? This notion is only valid in Communist countries, not in freedom loving democracies like the US. Just to remind my constituents, our incumbent congressman supported race-based quotas in higher education admissions: He fully supported California’s ACA5/prop 16 based racial make up quotas in education, jobs, or public contracts, after promising, in writing, years before that he would not support any such laws. He is a turncoat not to be trusted! Our district is heavily Asian and our incumbent congressman is an Asian, yet his policies have been anti-Asian! I am glad that prop 16 was defeated! Now, Lets defeat this anti-Asian incumbent with his extreme left “Progressive” policies that are regressive – not progressive – and infantile. Lets take our kids back and educate them the way YOU want them to be educated, not the state, not the politicians, not the biased school boards, and not the teachers unions. The reason Virginia parents won and the “progressive?” Governor was thrown out, is because he supported shameful curriculums that 1.) Promote discussion of sexual contents at early age in schools; 2.) Recommends reading of books like “Queer” in high schools, which graphically describes same sex acts; 3.) Encourage racist and divisive messages of Critical Race theories. School Boards that approve and encourage pornographic materials in schools are despicable. These educators are normalizing garbage under the garb of “progressive?” ideas. What is furious is that they don’t want the parents involved in reviewing the materials taught in schools! They obviously know that parents would not allow their kids exposed to such nonsense. Would you tolerate such degradation in our education system? Your incumbent congressman supports teachers unions and educators that are responsible for this degradation! While the world is racing to teach STEM curriculum to their kids, we are teaching pornography and race divisions to them. I would say that it is time to throw out the public school system and make school choice a mandatory law. Progressive democrats like your incumbent support messages of critical race theory (CRT) in our institutions: It is racist and divisive. American value is that we must treat everybody equally and stop talking about oppressors (white race) and victims (blacks) in race relations dialogue – History is history and should be taught with a balanced and forgiving perspective. CRT also is bringing in the “Asian Privilege” in their messages. Most of you in district 17 are Asians and are labeled as privileged. It is because you worked hard and have accumulated money. Therefore, you are must be racists. What nonsense! Teaching our children that racism arises within your skin color, and you are born with it, is totally un-American and unacceptable. Progressives like Ro Khanna support this CRT ideology and its messages. Believe me, it will not help the black community! You want to help the black community with love and care and educational training. They should receive positive encouragement messages of seeing themselves as being equal, and that individual merit counts. Progressives like Ro Khanna should abide by what Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. said to all of the US. Recently, Ivy League college admission policy discriminating against the Asians has been challenged in the Supreme Court. Under the pretext of diversity, Asians – a minority in the US – are refused admissions in favor of other minorities. This practice damages the Asians, who want to excel in life through hard work – an all American value. The economic and psychological damage caused to the hard working Asians children by refusing admissions to top schools is enormous. Hopefully, just like the defeat of Prop 16 in California, this abhorrent practice of diversity based admissions, jobs, government contracts, etc. will stop throughout our nation. We need the discriminatory admissions challenge in the Supreme Court to succeed similar to a victory won by a coalition of Parents in Fairfax county, Virginia. Alexandria, Virginia; February 25, 2022: Today, a federal judge ruled that Fairfax County school officials violated the law by changing admissions requirements at the nation’s top public school to deliberately reduce the number of Asian-American students enrolled. This arbitrary selection criterion of diversity, equity, and social justice allocation is harmful to our nation and federal laws must be made to protect freedom of education, jobs, and business contracts. I promise to work very hard to do just that. All education institutions including high school should gear kids to earn a comfortable living wage. The school choice is a fundamental policy to achieve such an objective. It needs to be implemented throughout our nation. Public school system has failed to achieve this objective! Its record of the past 50 years is miserable, and has done damage to our kids by ignoring their primary responsibility of competitive education for our kids. The STEM education performance has been really poor in our schools. Teaching kids woke culture, pornography, and critical race theories in schools should not be a priority, as it does not make kids earn a good living. It is time to make a radical change in our school and university system, and create competition for the public schools, and the public universities – all tax dollars must go with the student wherever that student wants to go. Additional programs that will help our kids earn a good living are: 1.) Apprenticeships that start at the high school level and continue to all levels of higher education. Focus on K-12 education quality is critical as it is the foundation to succeed for children. Our tax dollars and resources must be utilized in a manner where they are most effective and accountable. Educators must be held accountable and incentivized according to their performance. Tenure system must be reviewed and changed to hold faculty responsible for the outcomes for students. American society must embrace ideals of equal opportunity for all without discrimination or preferences. Our children must adopt values of fair competition and success, which is the only way to make United States shine as an example of a fair society where American dream is possible through hard work alone, and not through political social engineering. I will vehemently oppose quota systems based on race, color, sex, and ethnicity. I will work at congress level to propose bills that will withhold federal funds if any state laws support any kind of preferential affirmative action and quotas. US Education Policy The Education Policy of the US is not a coordinated national policy as the 10th amendment gives the power of education to the states. However, to help the states and school districts, a formal department of education at the federal level started in 1980. The department, with its $60B budget, focuses its mission on supporting the states and school districts in their efforts to provide an equal access to high-quality education to all students, and on streamlining and simplifying funding for college and expanding access to new, high-quality post-secondary options. States fund free education up to high school and charge nominal fees for post-secondary education. Post-secondary education has generally been acceptable, but K-12 education has come under critique. For K-12 education, the state department of Education, and local School Boards control the education policy, curricula, and the administrative burden. Funding for education in California for the K-12 education comes from income and property taxes, and was about $102B in the year 2019. K-12 level education system has been criticized for providing less than quality education to the students, as they lack competitive ranking (US is 30th) in basic math and science education compared to many countries in the world. Many educators have argued the lack of funding as the key reason for the quality of education decline in the past 40-50 years. Compared to OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation & Development) countries, the US spends about 30% more per pupil at primary and secondary education level, and 93% more at the post secondary level. In our congressional district, schools like Cupertino and Fremont did very well despite a lower than average spending compared to California and the US. So, spending levels may be only a small reason, if at all, for the lackluster educational performance at K-12 level in the US. We have to look at other ways to improve our K-12 education system. History of our shift to the public school system is over 100 years old. Educators have felt that all children are state responsibility, and have pushed for a large and uniform public school system. It resulted in powerful teachers unions, and large administrative burdens. Milton Friedman, a Nobel prize winner economist, argued for more choices in the schooling system, which started the Charter schools and other options. Here is a survey of success of school choice: In 2012, approximately 78 percent of kindergarten through 12th grade students attended the public school to which they were geographically assigned, about 14 percent attended a public school of their choice, and more than 8 percent attended a private school. In addition, among all children ages 5–17, approximately 3 percent were homeschooled in 2012, the latest year for which homeschool data are available. Satisfaction levels are the highest among private school parents, with more than 80 percent of parents saying they were ‘‘very satisfied’’ with their children’s school. Parents of children at public charter schools and public schools of choice also showed levels of satisfaction that were significantly higher than parents at geographically assigned district schools. In today’s rapidly changing economy, it is more important than ever to prepare workers to fill existing and newly created jobs as well as the jobs of the future. However, higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable, and we are enrolling more foreign students to charge larger fees, and also importing highly qualified labor force that competes with the local students for jobs. This faulty admissions and immigration policy is raising the cost of getting good higher education and high paying jobs for our kids. Currently, far too many individuals leave postsecondary schools with unmanageable student debt and with no direct connection to jobs. We have to create comprehensive solutions to help our children compete well and get great jobs in the new economy. Congress, in coordination with the states, must be active in meeting the above challenges. I am a very strong proponent of policies to provide multiple vocational pathways beginning in the high school that help students identify and build upon their unique strengths. I firmly believe that students need to have a full host of options, including technical schools, community colleges, ROCPs, and 4-year Colleges, all with strong apprenticeship programs. I will propose and facilitate bills that will incentivize company apprenticeship programs, and reform the existing ineffective education and workforce development programs. This will help more Americans to obtain relevant skills and high-paying jobs. For example, apprenticeships with companies should start quickly after students join a course of study. Students will benefit from getting trained on the state of the art technology being used by the companies, get relevant workplace experiences and opportunities to develop skills that employers value. Also, this will pay partial living costs and tuition for the students. Federal matching programs can be used to incentivize such programs. These measures will provide affordable paths to good jobs, lesser or no student debt, and ultimately, fulfilling careers. Admissions to the educational institutions must be with total disregard to race, sex, color, and ethnicity etc. All students must enjoy a very open and equal access to education that leads to high paying jobs. Recent defeat of the attempts by California Legislatures to change its constitution (Prop 16) to allow preferential system in admissions based on racial make up of the state, speaks volumes as prop 16 went against the very grain of American value of ZERO discrimination in the society. “Progressives?“ like Ro Khanna Supported Prop 16! Any system of preferential affirmative action, reverse discrimination, and quotas will create sub-par skilled workforce and will corrupt the society. Instead, resources should be made available to underprivileged students at high school and college level so they learn and graduate with excellent skills to enter either higher educational institutions, or enter workforce at comfortable living wages. All Federal incentive programs must be tied to non-quota based admissions to the colleges and universities. My opponent, incumbent congressman Ro Khanna, believes in social engineering of Prop16. Fortunately, it was defeated. Help me defeat his infantile ideas that waste our energies. We must forever discourage this race, color, and ethnicity-based preferences through Federal and state laws. These are totally un-American and regressive policies!! They lower healthy competition, erode societal improvements, and degrade quality of education. I will support bills that create competitive school options like charter schools, and private schools. The tax dollars will follow wherever the kids want to go to school. This will likely also result in creating more uniform and diverse neighborhoods that are less dependent on school ratings. If we are going to achieve educational competitiveness, we must also institute a Teaching Accountability System (TAS), where performance in the teaching is measured. It must discourage below average teaching, and reward good teachers in their pay as well as retirement benefits. With school choice policy where dollars go with the student, we will have smaller administrative costs for our education system. I intend to promote bills that promote such accountability policies. We must bring parents into the education system, as they play a very important role in instilling in their kids the value of a good education. They can promote the ideals of education, which must include good job skills, and subjects of good citizenship. Schools and colleges should have advisory parental councils to make sure that curriculums promote un-biased philosophies of social and political thinking. I will promote federal assistance bills attached to such policies for the betterment of society.
US Immigration Policy US immigration Policy has been extremely haphazard for the past 50 years. The large increase in illegal and legal immigration has been a very contentious election issue. As a first generation immigrant, I intend to contribute significantly to address this issue in a sensitive and bipartisan manner. I promise to bring this nation a sane, balanced, and implementable immigration policy that is acceptable to a very large majority of the existing population. Immigration to the US is primarily driven by the desire of immigrants to have a better economic life. This must be matched with the America’s need to hire foreign workers legally for variable lengths of time. All other immigration – diversity based, asylum, investment based, etc. – must be small and openly discussed. Prime goals to allow immigration, permanent or temporary, should be clear and implementable. American workers must not be affected adversely by any immigration policy. That is my commitment to you. In the past 50 years, America has been hit with double whammy of outsourcing of many manufacturing and other jobs as well as a five fold yearly increase of legal immigration to over 1M a year green cards now. Illegal immigration has increased to over 1 M a year as well. We must address these Macro problems carefully and in a sensitive manner. I support immigration of skilled workers that have, and can contribute heavily to the success of the American society. Silicon valley is a prime example of skilled workers that not only contribute amazingly, but also integrate appreciatively in the local society. The country-based quota for such highly skilled workers should be eliminated to further enhance start-up culture. It must be coupled with encouragement to bring advanced manufacturing back to the Silicon Valley. I will promote that investment Visas should be used only for such focused purposes, not for any kind of employment creation, which is how it exists today. We must protect our less skilled workers, as they are the most affected by the illegal immigrants. These include workers in many small businesses like restaurants, construction, farms, and other such professions. Now with the Covid-19 disaster, these people need even more protection. I will introduce bills to ensure that we protect our vulnerable workers. A country can’t have porous borders. Many corporates exploit or even promote porous borders, thereby encouraging slave labor conditions for the illegals. Progressive Democrats openly encourage illegal immigration, and constantly introduce bills like the “new way forward ” bill to promote lax implementation of the existing deportation laws. They are even trying to protect criminals from deportation. This is counter to all American interests, and is very disconcerting. Past Democrats were moderate, were sensitive to the average workers needs, and supported eliminating illegal migration. Today’s progressive Democrats like Ro Khanna seem to be working for the wealthy individuals interests who contribute to his campaign. Corporates and wealthy individuals want Democrats to continue to keep and increase the cheaper labor pool. Will that eliminate poverty and wealth gap, and increase wage growth for the average American citizens? No, with these approaches of the so-called Progressives. Migration based on family reunification is important, and it makes sense to allow it for the nucleus family of your spouse and kids. All guest worker programs must be implemented lawfully and tracked carefully with strict guarantees from the employers. Guest workers employment should have a rotational feature that will present economic opportunities to a wider number of foreign workers. Guest worker Program must be complemented with a strong nation-wide job-training program for the jobs occupied by the foreign workers. We must encourage local and cross state hiring programs to get Americans trained and working at good wages. Corporate greed to outsource jobs as well as import of cheaper labor should be curtailed with balanced temporary worker laws that encourage more local hiring. Decent wage growth, thereafter, will increase the welfare of a large segment of the local resident workers, and close the wealth gap that progressives mention often. Progressive’s proposal of taxing the rich, and then redistributing money through social programs, is a wrong way to solve the problem of wealth gap. A sustainable solution is to not give chance to the corporations, and its wealthy shareholders, to first accumulate wealth by opening Flood Gates of illegal and other cheaper labor pools. Government’s increased role in redistribution of wealth will likely corrupt the country like many socialist countries. Let’s just optimize employment of all American people, and give them dignity of good wages earned through good training and a healthy job demand. I will follow the principles of good economics to create good immigration laws.
smallest premiums possible on Medicare. Cost of a quality healthcare for all is a very important issue and must be addressed now. Our GDP expenditures on healthcare have gone from five percent in the early sixties to about eighteen percent now. Premiums and out of pocket expenses on healthcare are unaffordable for many. We need to address this out of control cost issue at the national level without sacrificing choices, quality of care and its wide accessibility. Unfortunately, this issue has become an idealism war that can only hurt our society. We can’t let that happen. America was built on choices and freedom for our people, not socialism! We must have the courage to implement common sense solutions that work for all. I believe that competition and sane regulations will bring costs down for all. Quality of care in the US is good, and with healthy competition and technology to help, we can achieve even better. I have compiled a list of very sensible paths that can lead us to a very cost effective and high quality health care for all. US healthcare GDP share has grown from around 5% ($27B) in the early sixties to over 18%($3.7T) of the GDP currently – a 136x increase in total dollars spent on healthcare! In inflation adjusted terms it would be about 23x higher expenditures now than in 1960. We have roughly doubled in population since 1960, so in terms of expenditure per person, the expenditures on health would be 3x higher today than in 1960. What are the contributing factors in the cost of increased healthcare costs? And, what have policymakers done in the past many decades to remedy the situation. Some major factors to consider are: Technology, Coverage and intensity of use, Demographics, and cost increases beyond average inflation. Technology has been a significant factor in expenditure increase that includes devices, diagnostic equipment, complex procedures, advanced drugs, etc. A CMS analysis says that roughly a quarter of the expenditure increase is due to the technology factors. The benefit of technology in healthcare is that there is about 10-year higher life expectancy now. However, we need to pay attention to very high costs of newer technologies and procedures. Competition is the only way to create better prices and lower costs. We need to come up with creative ways to reduce costs of drug development, and not have the USA pay for most of the cost recovery. I will promote policies for healthy competition to reduce cost of technology and advanced medicine in healthcare. The inflation in healthcare area has been about 1% higher than the average inflation in the US over the last sixty years. This means that over 60 years, same thing is about 2x more than the average inflation adjusted cost. This is an area to examine for policy makers to ensure that the existing laws encourage competition to reduce prices for drugs, as well services and procedures. I intend to focus heavily in this area. Additionally, due to the shift of demographics in the last 60 years, where we have lesser (36% vs. 21%) percentage of kids, and larger (9% vs.17%) percentage of older people, the total healthcare expenditures have increased. We need to take care of our seniors, and I will support their health coverage with the smallest premiums possible on Medicare. Lastly, another factor that has contributed to higher expenditures per person is the extent of health coverage and its use. The wider coverage and who pays for it becomes important in this context. Before Medicare and Medicaid, which were instituted in 1966, 56% of the US healthcare expenditures were the responsibility of households/individuals, and 14% were contributed by the Private sector. Government paid about 23% of the healthcare expenditures. Today, government pays about 45% of the total expenditures, households at 28%, and private sector at 21%. The role of government has increased 100%, and the inflation adjusted healthcare costs have increased by 100% in parallel. I intend to focus on this area and critically examine the arguments made by my socialist opponent, Ro Khanna, who claims that by going to one-payer system – the government – costs will come down. This claim is highly exaggerated and with unrealistic assumptions. My opponent, Ro Khanna, has NO idea on how to pay for $about 3T expenditure of “Medicare for all” outside of the premiums contributed by the private sector, and or individuals into the government run system. And lot of his stated assumptions on savings from Insurance industry profits are wrong, which made only $28B last year. Even if you add savings from the drug purchases, it would contribute another $20-$30B to the one-payer system. Even taxing the top 1% (anybody making $421K or higher) at 100% rate will not pay for the “Medicare-for all” proposal. It is just a pipe dream with zero understanding of the problem. Most people agree now that the incremental $3T per year cost of “Medicare-for-all” system is not fundable. All it will do is to increase costs, decline healthcare quality substantially, reduce health innovation, and take choices away from you. People must have options in healthcare. We need a system that provides choices at very competitive prices. I want to propose bills that would realize cost goals that will be sustainable. We must look at creating more competition through: streamlining distribution chain of medicines, increase sources of supply of drugs and technology, and increase supply of trained health workers. We must change regulations that suffocate innovation, competition, and services. Specifically, I will pay immediate attention to the following:
In the past 70 years, this world population has grown from 2.5B to around 7.5B, a 300% increase. Concurrent to this growth, the consumption of energy per capita has grown to about twice. The global industrialization, and consumer demands have spiked fossil fuel usage particularly in Asia. Not surprisingly, therefore, the largest green house gases (GHG) are now emitted by China (25% of worldwide CO2 emissions) and India (8% of the worldwide CO2 emissions). In comparison, US, and Europe (including Russia), are 15% each of the world CO2 emissions. To reduce GHG, China must be part of the equation. A prime example of environmental pollution is Plastic overuse, burning, ocean dumping, and plastic micro-particles found all over the planet that can be a health hazard of large proportion. I will lead efforts to implement sensible solutions that will have positive global Impact with minimal or no economic disruptions. International Panel on Climate change has been raising alarm on the climate change for a while now. The 5th assessment report came out in 2014, and set some sobering warnings on disruptions in weather patterns, ocean level rises, acidification of the oceans, and possible some unique disasters. The culprit is the total or cumulative CO2 in the atmosphere since the beginning of the last century. The natural CO2 removal machinery, which is the plants, has been incapable of doing its job since the ever-growing number of humans used more fossil fuels, burnt and removed more forests, and did not notice the increase of surface temperatures rising. In addition to CO2, we also produced more nauseous gases, particulate pollution, and plastic garbage. The world is waking up to those facts, yet the solutions are haphazard and economically non-disruptive direction is unclear. Green new deal supported by my incumbent Ro Khanna is totally impractical, reactive, and shows lack of scientific understanding. I intend to lead environment and climate change efforts by proposing a Congressional Environmental Action Panel (CEAP) to propose a national plan for mitigating the environmental threats. It is a National security issue that needs a 30-50 year plan. We must first understand the weather models suggested by IPCC in finer geographical impact sense. Current knowledge suggest that equatorial Pacific and high latitude areas will have more rain, and mid-latitude plus sub-tropical dry regions will likely see reduction in rain. These models have not sufficiently isolated high impact areas in the world for weather disruptions of storms, and or dry spells. This is important for population preparedness reasons. I intend to Push Congress to have the scientists study this more carefully for impact on the US soil. The remedies suggested by IPCC are at high level, and leave specifics to the governments of each country. Unfortunately, air is a very shared commodity and actions of one nation like China can affect the whole world, as it spews out 25% of the total CO2 emissions, mostly from coal usage. I intend to propose that we work with China and India quickly to affect global change. They have to reverse their increased usage of coal in the past. China is investing heavily in Solar, yet US can help transform their electricity generation and industrial plants to use cleaner fossil fuel sources like natural gas from the US. This can be done fairly quickly and has large impact on the CO2 emissions. It also helps in the trade imbalance problems with China. For mid to longer-term electricity generation, and industrial transformation, we must encourage further research on safe nuclear technology. In addition, we need to encourage a more efficient solar conversion technology for both industrial and home use. Discoveries in both of these areas will enable availability of cheaper and CO2 free energy supply. I intend to have federal programs to encourage such technology development and implementation within the next decade. To transform the land transportation industry, electric vehicle technology is moving forward nicely. As policy maker, I would create further encouragements in battery and storage technology, incentivize cross licensing of such technologies, such that it is adopted worldwide within the next decade. It will create competition and cost reductions, therefore quicker adoptions by people. For quicker impact on reduced carbon emissions, energy use can be reduced through various means like turning the lights off when not needed, and keeping the thermostat within more effective range and not heat or cool unnecessary spaces. Increased usage of good insulation worldwide in living spaces should be subsidized and required by local authorities. These practices worldwide would be useful. As a policy maker, I would encourage such programs and tie foreign aid to implementation of such practices and technologies. In my policy for housing, I mentioned smart cities. It is important that with the federal government help on creative financial instruments, and other tax incentivized programs, states and local governments can direct building of smart cities that have energy self-sufficient buildings with plenty of greenery around. These work, live, play neighborhood concepts will help reduce transportation needs therefore less fuel burning. Within 10-20 years, we maybe see that most cities are carbon neutral and healthier. Reduction of pollution will result in less respiratory, physiological, and cancer type diseases, therefore reduce healthcare costs as well. I will lead programs and laws that will reduce plastic misuse and its careless disposals. We need to keep our landfills and water supply clean. We do not need to see broken down plastic in micro-particle size in our water supply, oceans and in the air. The health affects of such carelessness can be immense. Federal government needs to form a sensible policy on plastic use and disposal guidelines.
Homelessness must not exist in the United States!! Homelessness in the US has been increasing at double-digit rates in many cities. As policy makers, we must examine the root causes and create a national policy to eliminate this suffering within our nation. Large metropolitans like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley can’t afford to let their cities deteriorate. We have the capability and means to help homeless get back on their feet and become dignified part of thriving societies around them. As a humanitarian potential policy maker, I have practical solutions that can be implemented in cooperation with the cities and states. Please join me to take care of this important issue for our nation. Millions of immigrants come to this country every year to establish a home. They come because the United States provides an unequaled economic opportunity for them. In the same country, where we have such large amount of resources, we let over 600K unfortunate homeless souls suffer. Why? What are leaders doing to put an end to homelessness? Almost nothing! Out of about 600K homeless people, California hosts about 150K, a very disproportionate number. Large population of homeless people live in the metropolitan areas – NYC has the largest at 80K, and Los Angeles has about 66K. San Francisco, Santa Clara County has about 8K homeless people each. The saddest part is that 40% of the homeless people are youth under the age of 18. There are various causes identified in the studies conducted over the past decade or so. Major causes are: Job loss, alcohol and substance abuse, family disputes, mental health (only 7%), physical health, and incarceration (12%). Only about 40% of the homeless are in shelters, where the conditions are pretty horrific and paperwork for admission is cumbersome. Today, the responsibility to remedy homelessness primarily rests on the county or the city. Therefore, it has been tackled in a haphazard way. It should not be left just at local levels to take care of our suffering populations. This results in deterioration of our large metropolitans. What we need is to understand the problem at deeper levels and correct policies to eradicate this blight on our nation. Consider the following that happened in our Silicon Valley in the recent past. Between 2007-2012, Santa Clara County spent $3B, or $500 million per year, on homelessness issues. Majority ($1.9B) of the money was spent on medical expenses, and approx. $0.8B was spent on Justice system related issues for the homeless people. Top 5% (2800 people) of the homeless people cost the most; about $83K per year. This is an amazing amount of wasted money that can be utilized in a better way, and still take care of homeless situation. Root causes: For us to eliminate homelessness, we have to examine and understand the root causes of the problem. It turns out that most of the homelessness is due to job losses and alcohol or substance abuse which can be a result of a job loss. Many of these situations can be rectified within short period of 3-6 months. I intend to introduce bills where job loss related affordable housing rental projects become tax exempt. I will support similar measures from the State. Expand on Job Loss Protections: For people who lose jobs and succumb to alcohol abuse, and become homeless, they should be encouraged to enroll in tax-exempt affordable housing developments, and must participate in remedial programs at the same time. I will also examine feasibility of tax-exempt temporary job programs for homeless people who are then able to look for permanent jobs. A skills retraining program with nationwide job search programs would be helpful in reducing homelessness. Family Stability and Youth Job Training Programs: For people who are homeless because of family disputes, particularly the youth who are neglected or abused, we need to promote children’s original family support and safety-net ideas, and modify or supplement the foster care programs. It is critical to enroll all affected youth in skill-training programs with job internships, so they can be independent when they leave their parental homes or foster care homes. If they choose not to be in foster care, then a well run living and schooling facility for these homeless youth must be considered. We can’t let our youth go without care and guidance until they are well prepared to take care of themselves. I will sponsor such Federal programs and implement with the cooperation of the States. Mental health Programs: Mental health is a great challenge for our communities. We need Federal and State level cooperation and funds to create well-run places attached to the local hospitals to take care of our mentally ill homeless people. They need clean, hospitable places to live, and not be left on the streets where they catch illnesses and end up in emergency rooms all the time. Post Incarceration Job Programs: Lastly, people who come out of incarceration have a stigma and have hard time finding jobs. We can’t let these people live on the streets and fall prey to gangs and commit more crimes. We need job programs for ex-incarcerated people. It maybe that federal govt., cities and counties govt. employ them in some safe starting jobs, train them, and over time they can gain dignity to be part of the larger society. I will sponsor such programs nationwide.
Our law enforcement officials put their lives on the line each and every day to protect those of us going about in our daily lives. I will not tolerate the radical liberal policies calling for defunding our police and spewing anti-police rhetoric. As a US Congressional candidate, I will make sure to motivate our police department and protectors of the state of California to enhance public safety and defend the people from significant crimes. Additionally, I will prohibit the federal government to continue allowing unfettered access into our state. Currently, we have wide-open, unsecured borders, and 20% of San Jose residents are undocumented. Meanwhile, our lawmakers are allowing them to vote in elections like Mayor, City Council, or School Board instead of taking action. People are unsafe, and our businesses are broken into very frequently. We cannot let this persistently affect our state. We must rehabilitate our asylum policies and work towards a comprehensive solution to this crisis and stop drug cartels and illegal immigrants from coming to our state. Our border patrol agents are putting their lives on the line, daily, to help keep our country safe. We must ensure our border patrol is fully-funded and return to policies that keep our state out of harm’s way.
Housing in the Valley has been a complexity that is difficult to comprehend and solve. The housing prices in the last two years have gone up to 50%. They have been high since the late seventies, and the wages have not been adequate to afford a resonable house. Since the early 80’s, when the housing price index in the valey was around 35, it has risen to close to 350 now, a 10x increase. Median price of a single family home in the valley today is around $1.4M today. Despite the low interest rate environment household income has to be over $250K to afford this median house. Unfortunately, the median income in the valley is around $145K today, thus creating the affordability gap. Income, interest rates, supply and demand, all play in the affordability of homes. Interest rates, fortunately are quite low now, but have been moving up lately. Even then, the affortability index shows that only one third of people in the Valley can afford housing. California has been short of housing supply consistently since the 70’s. Today, we are short of about 3-4M more housing units. Many of the reasons are decades old including zoning regualtions, environmental restrictions and targets, high cost of land, construction costs and devloper fees, put a severe damper on the housing unit supplies. In the past, section 8 was introduced by the Federal govt to subsidize renters. It is limited in its usefulness, and has multiple years of wait period. California recently passed SB 35 (affordable housing) that is supposed to help in construction of more units in cities that do not meet their assessed housing unit needs. SB-9 is another law that allows lot splits of single family lots. However, afforable housing requirements may complicate it going forward. Supply of the homes or rental units depends on the local zoning and regulations. As job growth puts pressure on housing, cities are very slow to react to the zoning changes. For example, since 2010, 800K jobs have been added in the bay area, and only around 60K new housing became available, thereby resulting in price and rental increases. US Cities and the States need to revise their thinking in a way that solutions implemented are not short term band-aid fixes. Long term planned development of cities is completely missing from their thinking. The smart city planning models are where work, live, and play spaces are closer togther and meet most of the needs of the employment growth. Corporations need to be part of the smart city planning process. In order to create better affordability and quality of life, I will work with the cities and corporations to incentivize large planned developments where living, enjoyment, education, and work are within walk able distances. Such planned developments will reduce traffic, provide safe education environment for kids, and can be very energy and carbon efficient. Cities must change their housing planning guidelines in favor of incentives for people to live, work, educate kids, and enjoy within walk able distances. Now with lessons of Covid-19, we realize that we need to build well-lit ventilated homes and work offices. Open outdoors, sunshine, and protected communities will become more important for the health and well being of the community. Interest rates, Taxes, and Federal programs that ensure favorable mortgages is where the Congress can play a highly creative role to solve Silicon valley and nationwide housing problems for the long run. Congress has immense power in terms of setting up of financial instruments via Fannie Mae and other financial institutions. We need to change the rules of mortgage purchases and guarantees. By working closely with mortgage-backed securities industry, risks can be adjusted such that smart city planned developments get favorable terms, therein modifying city level behaviors and regulations. I will propose innovations in the mortgage industry to help the high cost of home purchases as well as rentals. In Addition, I will support the following:
The new name of ACA 5 bill is Prop 16 and it will be in November 2020 ballot. I oppose Prop 16 and request everyone to vote NO on Prop 16. In November of 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209, a California State constitutional amendment, providing that government entities “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” (Cal. Const. Article 1, Section 31.) It was March 2014, when the first attempt to repeal prop 209 was made by California State Senate proposition 5, and our esteemed Congressman, Ro Khanna, strongly opposed it! Guess what? A few days ago, Congressman Ro Khanna changed his mind and now thinks that race, color, sex, national origin-based discrimination or preference to UC admissions, public jobs, and public contract awards is the right thing to do. Published on “Opportunity for all coalition” blog site, representative Khanna said, “As a proud member of the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community, I wholeheartedly endorse ACA 5 (Prop 16) — because every single Californian stands to benefit from affirmative action and equal opportunity programs, programs that have never been more critical than they are today.” He continued, “Make no mistake: Proposition 209 was authored by Wall-Street-backed interests who felt threatened by an increasingly diverse California, so they put a thumb on the scale for their own businesses. This hurt countless California communities — very much including my AAPI community. Our enrollment in the UC system has suffered; our ability to build strong businesses has been hamstrung; and our ability to secure good-paying jobs has been undercut. Anyone who says anything different is misrepresenting the facts — because AAPI Californians will benefit from ACA 5(Prop 16), period.” “Lastly,” Rep. Khanna stated, “a generation has passed since Proposition 209 became law in 1996. ACA 5(Prop 16) will give millions of Californians their first opportunity to raise their voice and demand equal opportunity. I’m proud to support this bill, and I will do everything I can to ensure it passes the Legislature and becomes law with a win on Election Day.” Congressman Ro Khanna has really lost touch with the community of the 17th district. He falsely claims that it benefits Asian, Indian, and Pacific Islander communities. Truth is that it benefits only untrustworthy politicians like him, and others who have opposed it. It was legally challenged three times and lost. The lies perpetrated by Ro Khanna, in his statements above, are unbelievably devious. He is misleading the Asian community with false information that they are being hurt by prop 209. He is hoping that they will not do any diligence, and vote for ACA 5(Prop 16). His real purpose for flipping on what he promised in 2014 maybe something else. Truth is that, under existing law, the University of California takes account of each individual applicant’s personal story and achievements. Is this student the first in her or his family to go to college? What is the family income level? How many students from an applicant’s high school have gone to college? All these factors above are considered, just not a race, color, sex, and national origin! The results of the current system have not been unfair. Here are the enrollment rates, by race, the year before UC was ordered to stop considering race, and today: African Americans (3.7 percent then, 5 percent now); Latino Americans (13.4 percent then, 36 percent now); Asian Americans (36.1 percent then, 35 percent now), Caucasian Americans (38.4 percent then, 21 percent now). In other words, the rising percentage of Latino Americans graduating from California’s high schools has been matched by the rising percentage in their admission to UC, and the drop in Caucasian Americans’ percentage of California’s high schools has registered in their drop in UC enrollments. The other races stayed about the same. These numbers do not call out for racist Affirmative action Programs endorsed by Ro Khanna. In public jobs, blacks are already at about 20% . It is 30% higher than their population proportion. ACA 5(Prop 16) actually might actually hurt them. The truth is that Affirmative action Programs, started by John F. Kennedy in 1961, were designed to ensure that no prime federal contractors discriminated against sub-prime contractors based on race, color, sex, and national origin. There was never any intention for quotas, set-asides, etc. Outreach programs to include small businesses, disadvantaged businesses, first-time businesses, minority-owned businesses, is totally fine under Prop 209, as long as all are approached equally, not just targeted to one category. That is why Prop 209 is fair and must stay, and ACA 5(Prop 16) must be defeated. Congressman Ro Khanna is the one misrepresenting the facts and lying to you when he says that the AAPI community has been suffering in getting fair enrollment in the UC system, in getting good-paying jobs, hamstrung informing businesses, and that Wall Street is involved in prop 209. He has some hidden ulterior motives, which are not clear. Truth is exactly the opposite. Children of hardworking AAPI and other communities will suffer, as they will be stripped of fair competition to enter the UC System for higher education. They will either have to go out of state or private universities that will cost 2-3 times more. The quality and standard of the UC system will decline. We can not trust Ro Khanna, or the state elected people who are supporting ACA 5(Prop 16). They completely misrepresent the facts and lie to get your votes. Let’s vote them out this November! We need honest and responsible representatives. We deserve better! Please oppose and STOP ACA 5(Prop 16). Let us together help children of all races, color, and ethnicity learn better, and prepare them to compete vigorously at national and international levels. That would be a real gift to our society, not a debilitating quota system!
Lately, the US has lost respect at the world stage because of its questionable foreign policies and failed executions (Afghanistan, Iraq). Going forward, we must restore the prestige and admiration for our country on multiple fronts of foreign policy including conflict resolutions and trade policies. World leadership position is not an entitlement. It must be earned. After the World War 2, the USA supported numerous authoritarian regimes for various short term thinking reasons, toppled democracies to install dictators (Iran), and got involved in four major wars (Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) that it could not win. The Afghanistan withdrawal was disastrous – painful and humiliating. It tarnished our image as the “greatest fighting force in history”, and is probably encouraging Russians to wage the Ukrainian war. China potentially will do the same with Taiwan. These bad policy assessments, and faulty executions of the past few administrations* are very visible now. Obama completely misjudged Russia, and essentially encouraged Russia to do what is happening today. Millions in Ukraine are being displaced and their lives ruined because the Democrats played a weak and unwise game. Trump gave arms to Ukraine, but not enough, and made no attempts to negotiate with Russia, despite the 1994 Budapest agreement*, to secure Ukraine’s integrity, and potentially our and European security. UN was formed to make sure no country invades or threatens security of another country. However, the Security Council structure is questionable to enforce such a charter. We must change it, and the US must take the first step. Other strong nations then must be convinced to follow a non-interference principal for the world peace in future. No nation has the right to invade countries and cause loss of lives and property to its population. We need a new United Nations order to make sure that peace and security is guaranteed to all weaker nations, who are trying to live freely and democratically. In March, UN general assembly warned Russia to cease fire, and withdraw from Ukraine, but their resolution is non-binding! And Security Council permanent members have veto power; therefore, a binding resolution cannot be adopted – therein lays the problem with the UN Security Council structure, therefore the world peace. We need to elect people in congress and presidencies who have some sense of the history, wisdom, and sensitivity to the world’s cultural differences. In a shamefully ignorant fashion, my opponent, and current congressperson of CA17th district, tweeted recently that Ukrainians are Nazis (Putin says that too! The tweet has been deleted since)*** Biden has been intimately involved in the past in Eastern European region, “Reset” relations with Russia in 2009, and its deterioration in 2014, yet his administration was asleep on the wheel since last march when Russia moved 70 thousand troops to Ukraine’s borders. Ukraine needed weapons in 2014 (Crimea annexation), last year (Russia gathered 70K troops), and needs more of them now (active war) to defend it. Besides faulty positions on how to keep peace in the world, as explained above, the US has been weak on trade policies. US, in the past has supported regime changes for trade reasons, and still has vulnerable dependencies on commodities from unfriendly nations. Additionally, for decades now, they have been loosing trade wars with China. Numerous local industries have suffered ever since, and the workers had little real wage increases. Our trade deficits have been unbalanced with most countries of the world. These are serious economic issues that affect our long-term prosperity and national security. Oil dependency was almost over in the last administration, but Biden’s administration reversed many policies to create shortages, apparently to make the alternate energy lobby happier. Just recently, because of inflation and unprecedented gas price hikes, the administration has been forced to allow exploration on public lands to allow increased production. Such naïve and experimental approaches by the administration, and some congress people like Ro Khanna who supports going after the oil companies and redistribute their profits, in managing the country and the world must stop. It is too dangerous and reckless. I, as congressional candidate from Dist. 17 of California, will strongly recommend that our current and future administrations create longer lasting foreign policies based on solid principals of world peace, non-interference, human rights of freedom to choose, fair trade practices, IP protection, balanced world economies, support of smooth changes in energy sources, reduction of pollution, and balanced world populations. *The failed policies on Ukraine surfaced in Obama’s administration. He completely ignored that the fact that one major reason for Russia to annex Crimea and support separatist movement in 2014 was to control the vast energy resources discovered in the Black sea and eastern Ukraine. Obama, along with Biden did not see what Russia was up to. Instead, here was Obama’s response to the question by Atlantic magazine on support for Ukraine: “Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp. And he improvised in a way to hang on to his control there,’ [Mr. Obama] said. ‘He’s done the exact same thing in Syria, at enormous cost to the well being of his own country. And the notion that somehow Russia is in a stronger position now, in Syria or in Ukraine, than they were before they invaded Ukraine or before he had to deploy military forces to Syria is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of power in foreign affairs or in the world generally. Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence. Russia was much more powerful when Ukraine looked like an independent country but was a kleptocracy that he could pull the strings on.” Mr. Obama further said that Ukraine “is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” **In 1994, the US, UK, and Russia signed Budapest memorandum in which they committed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and pledged not to use force against that country. Based on this memorandum or agreement, Ukraine gave up nearly two thousand strategic nuclear warheads and the associated strategic missiles and bombers.[2] |
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| —Ritesh Tandon's campaign website (2022)[4] | ||
2020
Ritesh Tandon completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Tandon's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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As a former President of a non-profit, I see how many Bay Area families are struggling to make ends meet. As a father, I know the $23-trillion national debt is stealing our children's future. As an independent small businessman, I understand the crushing burden of job-killing regulations.
You can count on me to champion smart and efficient health care that will alleviate the financial strain on working-class families. I also support immigration policies that protect us, while expediting the process for law-abiding residents that contribute to our economy. We must also have real education reform that gives our students more choices in school and in the workforce.
I am running for Congress because I am grateful for all this community has given me and I want to serve you. Let's work together, reject partisan politics and find common-sense solutions to ease the burden on all Bay Area families.
I'm thankful for the love and support of my wife of 19 years, Zurica. I would appreciate your vote.
- Economy: Protect Silicon Valley Companies, Less Corporate Taxes, Low Regulation. Give working families a break. No Discrimination at workplace and Equal rights for Women
- Development: Create better educational opportunities for our children, support our immigration community and pass real healthcare reform with support for pre-existing conditions
- California Issues: Solution for Homeless, Alleviate Bay Area Traffic Congestion, Help build more housing and SUPPORT PROP 13 for residence/businesses
@ Education - No for Affirmative actions during college admission. I like every child to compete and get admitted to colleges based on Merit. My opponent RO Khanna tried for Affirmative action, which is highly unfair
@ Immigration -Law-abiding immigrants wait over a decade to receive their green card. We need an immigration system that promotes hardworking contributors and prioritizes reuniting families.
@ Housing and Support Prop 13 - We need to be more efficient, economical and creative in permit issuance, to make life easier for people who like to build. I strongly support Prop 13 for home and businesses, at same time support expanding Prop 13, so people can move without an increase in property taxes, which will generate more revenue and jobs for real estate people, banks and everyone involved in the process
@ Strong Negotiator
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Campaign finance summary
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See also
2026 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House California District 17 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on January 15, 2020 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "bio" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 2.0 2.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Tandon for Congress, “Policies,” accessed February 12, 2024
- ↑ Ritesh Tandon for Congress, “Policies,” accessed May 9, 2022
