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Teddy Fikre
Teddy Fikre (independent) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Virginia's 8th Congressional District. He lost in the general election on November 8, 2022.
Fikre completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Teddy Fikre was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He earned a bachelor's degree from George Mason University in 1998 and a graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University in 2008. His career experience includes working as a lead IT project manager and an Uber driver. Fikre has been affiliated with Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc.[1]
Elections
2022
See also: Virginia's 8th Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Virginia District 8
Incumbent Donald Sternoff Beyer Jr. defeated Karina Lipsman and Teddy Fikre in the general election for U.S. House Virginia District 8 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Donald Sternoff Beyer Jr. (D)  | 73.5 | 197,760 |
 | Karina Lipsman (R) | 24.8 | 66,589 | |
 | Teddy Fikre (Independent) | 1.5 | 4,078 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.2 | 503 | ||
| Total votes: 268,930 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Virginia District 8
Incumbent Donald Sternoff Beyer Jr. defeated Victoria Virasingh in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Virginia District 8 on June 21, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Donald Sternoff Beyer Jr. | 77.1 | 39,062 |
 | Victoria Virasingh | 22.9 | 11,583 | |
| Total votes: 50,645 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Republican convention
Republican convention for U.S. House Virginia District 8
Karina Lipsman defeated Kezia Tunnell, Jeff Jordan, Heerak Christian Kim, and Monica Carpio in the Republican convention for U.S. House Virginia District 8 on May 21, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Karina Lipsman (R) | 61.5 | 440 |
 | Kezia Tunnell (R) | 19.1 | 137 | |
 | Jeff Jordan (R) | 15.9 | 114 | |
 | Heerak Christian Kim (R) | 2.4 | 17 | |
 | Monica Carpio (R) | 1.1 | 8 | |
| Total votes: 716 | |||
| = 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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Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Teddy Fikre completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Fikre's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- I am committed to tamping down the divisive rhetoric and disavowing the "us vs them" thinking by speaking to the commonalities of our struggles and our hopes.
- I believe in inclusive justice, only by addressing the pains of all can we advance equity that doesn't leave anyone out of our pursuit of justice.
- I will champion the rights of workers and small businesses and will advocate for the poor.
2. The Theory of Moral Sentiment by Adam Smith
2. Spend more time locally in one's district and less time cozying up with lobbyists and moneyed interests
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Fikre's campaign website stated the following:
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Reorient America’s Economy to Empower We the People For too long, Democrats and Republicans in DC have made it their central mission to enrich multinational corporations and their billionaire patrons at the cost of the people. The “bottom 99%”, as we are called, are being ground into dust while the wealthiest few are living like sultans. It is time to restore fairness and ensure equality of opportunity for all in America. Key Points:
Details: We can no longer afford to indenture Americans with excessive debt and making life difficult for workers and small businesses to benefit multinational corporations and their gilded owners. The discredited policy of trickle-down economics, which both Democrats and Republicans are practitioners of, is decimating Main Street as it enhances the fortunes of Wall Street. We have been sold a bill of goods and conditioned to believe that globalism would eradicate poverty when in reality it is slowly sinking the working and middle-class into financial insolvency. If we are to salvage the American dream and restore hope for our country, we must prioritize the needs of employees and entrepreneurs instead of catering to the whims of plutocrats. The incontrovertible truth is that big corporations like Walmart, Amazon and McDonald’s are not job creators but job destroyers. Instead of giving them preferential treatment to plunder communities by decimating mom and pop shops and turning people into low-wage workers, we must unburden entrepreneurs so they can start small businesses and compete in a truly open and fair marketplace. Multinational corporations have been weaponizing their wealth and leveraging their size and scale to influence legislation and forcing local, state and the Federal government to pass regulations that inhibit small businesses and benefit Fortune 500 companies. Doing so requires:
Today, I’m unveiling the first step towards restoring fairness in America by introducing PayCan whereby Americans pay taxes as they are able and by restoring the top marginal tax rates to 50% on all future earnings above $10 million and 95% on all future earnings above $100 million. Key Points
Details It’s true, there is class warfare taking place in America except it’s not as Wall Street and their globalist oligarchy owners would have us believe. The reality is that the vast majority of Americans—irrespective of the social divides that keep us at each other’s throats—have been targeted by predatory multinational corporations and the billionaire class as they ravage those who are already poor, impoverish the working class and induce a deep sense of anxiety among the middle and upper-middle-class. Enough! We must reorient our economy to empower employees and small business entrepreneurs and stop transferring wealth to the neo-aristocracy. To this end, one of the biggest schemes that further this pyramid scheme otherwise known as corporate-crony capitalism is the Federal tax code. As it stands, billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg pay less in marginal taxes than our men and women in the military, teachers and firefighters. This is not only deeply immoral, it is the main driver of economic inequalities which, in turn, lead to social ills like crime, divorce and suicide. It is time, for once, to alleviate the burdens placed on workers and small business owners, lift people out of poverty and ensure that the very uber-millionaires and billionaires who have been enriching themselves at the cost of the rest of us pay their fair share. By making taxes voluntary for all annual earnings of less than $10 million, we will go a long way to restore fairness in America. This doesn’t mean that we stop collecting taxes, it just means that we allow Americans to pay as they are able and as they are moved by the spirit of giving for the sake of the greater good instead of making taxes compulsory. It has been proven time and time again that people actually over-give when they are convinced that they are contributing to a worthy cause. I believe that Americans, when we feel like we are being treated fairly, feel a sense of hope for the future and realize that our taxes are an investment in America’s future instead of being frittered away by corruption, will step up and pay taxes without being extorted by the IRS. Those who are unable do not have to pay taxes at all. Instead of siphoning the wealth of Americans to DC where politicians and bureaucrats end up enriching themselves and their billionaire patrons, we will be able to retain our money locally and rebuild our communities where we live. There are some who will argue that we can’t afford PayCan, to which I respectfully call BS. Every time Wall Street comes knocking or when the Military-Financial complex text message their buddies in Congress or the White House, our government magically finds trillions of dollars to rain helicopter money on Wall Street but when it comes to our needs, Democrats and Republicans plead poverty. No more! We will not be duped anymore; we demand fairness and for our government to take their boots off our financial throats, PayCan is the first step towards restoring fairness in our country and ensuring equality of opportunity for all Americans. Watch the latest campaign video below to get a better sense of PayCan and why it is imperative for the tax codes to be restructured so that we stop punishing workers and small business entrepreneurs and cease rewarding greed and rank selfishness. “No complaint… is more common than that of a scarcity of money.” ~ Adam Smith
We cannot secure America’s future if families are feeling insecure, only by alleviating the burdens borne by households can we restore America’s promise. Key Points:
I fully appreciate the limitations of government; I am not proposing to expand the already oversized influence of DC in our lives. Some of the most pressing issues of our time cannot be addressed through legislation, to the contrary what we need is for Federal bureaucracies to stop imposing in our lives so that we can arrive at solutions in the communities where we live. Democrats and Republicans have given us decades of corporate paternalism only for their solutions to give us more problems—we need self-determination now more than ever. To this end, the issues I outlined above are not so much dictates to be enacted in DC but a transformation of our hearts and minds that is desperately needed in America. My job as a Congressman, shall my fellow Virginians in the 8th Congressional District entrust me to represent them, is two-fold: advocate for legislation that will benefit all Americans and lead conversations with the aim of changing the tone and tenor of our national priorities. The status quo remains unchanged because entrenched interests have cunningly and successfully rebranded any movement towards fair treatment of employees and entrepreneurs that threatens the preferential treatment enjoyed by multinational corporations and their billionaire owners as “un-American” and “class warfare”. The reality is that there has been an ongoing economic warfare against workers and small-business owners for decades, there is nothing as un-American as decimating the very Americans who are sustaining this country every day with our sweat and tears. By treasuring We the People instead of furthering the treasures of the global oligarchy who are using their wealth to eliminate competition and monopolizing markets, we can restore the American dream and ensure equality of opportunity for all. To do so, we must marshal our energies and resources to relieve the economic anxieties countless millions of families are enduring daily. We don’t need handouts, we just need DC and corporations who own the vast majority of politicians working there to stop burdening us so we can take care of ourselves. We cannot secure America’s future if families are feeling insecure.
America’s greatest resource, what made us a nation among nations, was always We the People. If we are going to maintain our competitive advantage and lead the world into the 21st century, we can only do so by unleashing the innovation and energy of the emerging generation. Key Points
Details The runaway cost of education, the diminishing returns of ungraduated and graduate degrees and vanishing opportunities that have become the new normal are not just issues that concern the younger generation. After all, parents also feel the heat when college costs as much as some homes and we also feel the pain when we see our children unable to make ends meet. For too long, we have been conditioned to accept education not as a pathway towards self-empowerment but as a means of furthering the interests of multinational corporations and their billionaire owners. In the process, we sat back and watched as humans were being turned into resources for industry and for workers to be viewed as assets as long as we are needed and liabilities to be discarded once we are replaced. This type of corporate ideology has subjugated humanity and widened the wealth gap into a chasm, for the sake of future generations, we must break this mindset by investing in our children instead of indenturing them with debt. Our continued viability as a nation depends on empowering future generations; doing nothing as students are saddled with onerous debt only for them to graduate and work at Starbucks is criminal negligence. Consider this, the total amount of outstanding student loans is roughly $1.6 trillion, this seems like a lot of money but considering that Wall Street and the multinational banking swindlers who bled the global economy received north of $3.0 trillion when Federal schemes like TARP, CARS and QE are included, it’s a drop in the bucket. Moreover, the $1.6 trillion that is forgiven by the government will be injected right back into the economy because consumers will end up spending it. Whereas billionaires stash their money overseas, the multiplier effect of forgiving student loans will greatly benefit America. Forgiving student loans is but the first step, we must go further by unshackling and unleashing the ingenuity and energy of the younger generation. We must also make it a priority to listen and empower the Joshua generation. Their innovative approach to tackling issues that have festered for decades and their dedication to justice could turn the corner on the “us versus them” thinking that has paralyzed our politics and instead lead us towards a more inclusive and equitable future. This much is clear, we can no longer lavish riches on multinational corporations and their billionaire owners as poverty and adversities are being trickled down to the rest of us. This pyramid scheme that is robbing many to pay a few is deeply immoral and affects the vast majority of Americans but it especially impacts the younger generation. Millennials and Generation Z will, for the first time in our country’s history, fare worse than their parents did. The American dream is turning into the American hustle as graduates face skyrocketing rent and runaway inflation that is eating into their earning power. This inability to realize their potential and fulfill their dreams is why depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses are reaching crisis levels among the younger generation. It is incumbent for us as Americans to address these issues that matter to students because these same issues matter to all of us. We can no longer afford to let Democrats and Republicans gaslight us as we are being torched by inflation, for the sake of future generations, we must act to preserve the American dream. This requires a reorientation of our economy to benefit Main Street instead of catering to the whims of Wall Street. Consolidation and the restriction of marketplaces on all fronts is creating a society of separate and unequal where the neo-aristocracy feast while the rest of us are beset by famine. Below is an interview I had with Anuja Badeti, the President of the Student Senate at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Listening to her passion and her desire to effect positive change, which is felt by millions of younger Americans, is the reason I am making their issues and interests a central part of my campaign platform.
America has been in a continuous state of war for more than seven decades as Democrats and Republicans keep waging covert and overt campaigns to the benefit of the military-financial complex and to the detriment of the United States. It is time to listen to the will of an overwhelming majority of Americans and say no more to interventionism. Key Points
Details A single AGM anti-radiation missile costs $6.14 million. Think about that for a minute, that is enough money to purchase roughly 200 tiny homes. We could eliminate homelessness in America if we were as determined to eradicate poverty as we are to bomb and occupy countries throughout the world. We have enough problems in America, we should focus our attention on our crumbling infrastructure, tending to the record number of homeless people teeming in towns and a mind-boggling wealth gap that has turned the American dream into a waking nightmare for the working class, middle class and small businesses. Consider this horrific yet avoidable fact, every 72 minutes, a veteran commits suicide in America. This is a direct result of our government’s infatuation with wars of choice. We send our bravest overseas to be broken by wars only to neglect them when they return home. To a lesser extent, the same neglect is being heaped on the vast majority of Americans as We the People are forced to fund adventurism overseas while being saddled with onerous taxes and ravaged by skyrocketing prices. Billions for Raytheon, Boeing and Northrop Grumman while the rest of us are told to eat cake. We must stop allowing the global oligarchy from waving flags and leveraging patriotism to enrich themselves while impoverishing humanity. If the return on investment for the trillions we spend perpetuating wars and arming extremists throughout the world was peace, at least feel good about interventionism. To the contrary, warmongering is creating more problems than it is solving. Sanctions are immoral because they hurt the people and empower dictators. Bombing and destabilizing societies by flooding countries with arms only lead to more body count and do nothing to advance the cause of peace. Weaponizing AID is unconscionable because it punishes the most vulnerable while fostering rampant corruption. The answer is to stop imposing our views and focus on reviving America. Let us heed the advice of George Washington who warned about the perils of policing the world. We are the land of the free, let us live up to this creed by respecting the autonomy of other countries. More importantly, it is time to reclaim our sovereignty by liberating ourselves from the globalist oligarch agenda and chart a course towards empowering workers, encouraging entrepreneurs and ensuring equality of opportunity for all Americans. Watch the video below that I recorded in front of the White House and discussed the immorality of declaring wars of choice while allowing homelessness to multiply throughout America including right next to the White House. The topic of homelessness, especially homeless veterans, is one that hits very close to home given my experience with two and a half years of living in shelters. I pray, for the sake of our conscience and our continued viability as a nation, that we finally say war no more and embrace peace for the sake of collective prosperity. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower[2] |
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| —Teddy Fikre's campaign website (2022)[3] | ||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House Virginia District 8 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on May 25, 2022
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Fikre for Virginia (Congress), “Issues,” accessed August 8, 2022
