Shahid Buttar
Shahid Buttar (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent California's 12th Congressional District. He lost in the general election on November 3, 2020.
Buttar completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.
Contents
Biography
Shahid Buttar was born in London, England. He pursued his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago, Harold Washington Community College, Northwestern University, and Loyola University Chicago; he earned a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003. Buttar’s career experience includes working as a legal advocate and the Director of Grassroots Advocacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization.[1][2]
Elections
2020
See also: California's 12th Congressional District election, 2020
General election for U.S. House California District 12
Incumbent Nancy Pelosi defeated Shahid Buttar in the general election for U.S. House California District 12 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate |
% |
Votes |
||
| ✔ |
|
Nancy Pelosi (D) |
77.6
|
281,776 |
|
|
Shahid Buttar (D) |
22.4
|
81,174 | |
|
|
Total votes: 362,950 |
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 12
The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House California District 12 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate |
% |
Votes |
||
| ✔ |
|
Nancy Pelosi (D) |
74.0
|
190,590 |
| ✔ |
|
Shahid Buttar (D) |
13.0
|
33,344 |
|
|
John Dennis (R) |
7.7
|
19,883 | |
|
|
Tom Gallagher (D) |
2.0
|
5,094 | |
|
|
DeAnna Lorraine (R) |
1.8
|
4,635 | |
|
|
Agatha Bacelar (D) |
1.5
|
3,890 | |
|
|
Total votes: 257,436 |
2018
General election for U.S. House California District 12
Incumbent Nancy Pelosi defeated Lisa Remmer in the general election for U.S. House California District 12 on November 6, 2018.
Candidate |
% |
Votes |
||
| ✔ |
|
Nancy Pelosi (D) |
86.8
|
275,292 |
|
|
Lisa Remmer (R) |
13.2
|
41,780 | |
|
|
Total votes: 317,072 |
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 12
The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House California District 12 on June 5, 2018.
Candidate |
% |
Votes |
||
| ✔ |
|
Nancy Pelosi (D) |
68.5
|
141,365 |
| ✔ |
|
Lisa Remmer (R) |
9.1
|
18,771 |
|
|
Shahid Buttar (D) |
8.5
|
17,597 | |
|
|
Stephen Jaffe (D) |
5.9
|
12,114 | |
|
|
Ryan Khojasteh (D) |
4.6
|
9,498 | |
|
|
Barry Hermanson (G) |
2.0
|
4,217 | |
|
|
Michael Goldstein (Independent) |
1.4
|
2,820 | |
|
|
Total votes: 206,382 |
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Chase Demasi (R)
Campaign themes
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Shahid Buttar completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Buttar's responses.
Who are you? Tell us about yourself.
Shahid embodies San Francisco's values, and has actively represented them in both San Francisco and Washington as a legal advocate, national non-profit leader, grassroots organizer, and movement musician. Through his work building movements for peace, immigrant rights, black lives, and the Occupy movement, Shahid dedicated his career to public service long before running for public office. An early advocate for marriage equality for same-sex couples and a prolific organizer in the movement to end warrantless surveillance, Shahid most recently built a national grassroots network for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the organization's Director of Grassroots Advocacy. He has been building social movements and speaking truth to power for two decades, and graduated from Stanford Law School in 2003. In addition to LGBTQ rights, privacy, and the right to encryption, Shahid's work has advanced immigrant rights, campaign finance reform, government transparency, international human rights, and police accountability. His writing has explored issues from the right-wing attack on reproductive freedom to the erosion of voting rights, and from effective counter-terrorism strategies to counter-cultural activism leveraging art & culture. More information about his background and previous advocacy before running for Congress is available at https://shahidforchange.us/more-about-shahid-buttar-pelosis-leading-2020-challenger/
Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?
What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?
Shahid's writing for Huffington Post, Truthout, the Burning Man Journal, Tech Crunch, Project Censored, and academic legal journals addresses a wide range of issues, from foreign policy and counterterrorism to human rights and torture, from transparency and drone strikes to voting rights and tax law, from the crisis in executive power and corresponding threat to democracy to the bait-and-switch surrounding police body cameras.
Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?
I look up to former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, for two particular reasons. First, I admire his willingness to cast the sole dissenting vote against the passage of the USA Patriot Act under the Bush administration. It takes tremendous courage to do the right thing in the face of an opposing consensus, especially when the recognition of what "the right thing" requires may be elusive to so many others. I also admire Senator Feingold for his work enacting the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2003, which aimed to take corporate soft money out of politics. I've had opportunities to work on each of these issues, which has offered the chance to examine his legacy in two distinct arenas. We need more public servants like him.
Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?
I take my marching orders from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he exhorts his supposed allies to demonstrate solidarity with communities most impacted by oppressive institutions. Many centrists expect support from more radical and marginalized voices, failing to understand that, until they demonstrate solidarity with those communities, they have no reason to offer their support, or their votes, or their volunteer hours. Our campaign, and my work as an advocate and organizer long before running for Congress, are defined by solidarity.
What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?
Even without a seat in Congress, I've done the job of representing San Francisco's voice in Washington before. When I organized the first impact litigation seeking to establish the right of consenting adults to marry the partner of their choice, I did that while working as a young lawyer in Washington, where I was organizing grassroots resistance to Bush's wars at night. I listen actively. I empathetically strive to understand the experiences of my neighbors and would-be constituents. Over the course of my two decades advocating for civil rights and civil liberties, I've come to wield both history & theory to place current policy proposals in a broader context. A big part of that understanding of history & theory relates to intersectional feminism, post-colonial liberation, and democratic Socialism.
What is your favorite book? Why?
"The Autobiography of Malcolm X," as told by Alex Haley. Haley's work is a masterpiece, and Malcolm's life was a remarkable reflection of resilience, adaptation, leadership, and loss. His later years, when he sought to cultivate international support for human rights within the U.S., remains an inspiring aspirational project with relevance well beyond Malcolm's own movement. For instance, the central strategy that he developed has guided much of the contemporary environmental movement.
Do you believe that it's beneficial for representatives to have previous experience in government or politics?
On the one hand, previous experience can lend itself to an understanding of the political process and the policymaking process. On the other hand, experience in a system steeped in corruption can also be stultifying. Thankfully, I wield two decades of experience as a national advocate for civil rights and civil liberties, without the stain of having bent my vision to accommodate the limits of an era committed to abusing human rights.
What do you perceive to be the United States’ greatest challenges as a nation over the next decade?
I'm very deeply concerned about climate chaos, our military-industrial complex, and the intersection between them. In particular, I'm concerned about both accountability for the fraud, waste, and abuse that pervades military contracting and so-called intelligence activities, as well as the way we use those activities to facilitate corporate fossil fuel extraction. human rights abuses by the CIA, in particular, are a stain on our nations conscience and mark the sacrifices of veterans who fought and died to establish human rights in the week of the second world war. The co-optation of career Democrats (many of whom are demonstrably complicit in executive secrecy) by the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us to fear threatens our republic as much as a Kleptocrat in the White House.
If you are not a current representative, are there certain committees that you would want to be a part of?
I would be most excited to serve on the House Judiciary Committee, though I would also be eager to serve on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, or the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2020 Elections
External links
- Search Google News for this topic
- Official campaign website
- Official campaign Facebook
- Official campaign Twitter
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on January 15, 2020
- ↑ Shahid Buttar for Congress, "Shahid's History," accessed March 30, 2020
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