At a virtual event hosted by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs Wednesday evening, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang ’96 sat down with Tom Perez ’83, chair of the Democratic National Committee and a Watson Senior Fellow, to discuss Yang’s trajectory from Brown to the political arena as well as the political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event, titled “Insights from the Campaign Trail,” was hosted over Zoom and streamed through the Watson Institute’s website, attracting more than 600 student attendees. During the event, students had the opportunity to ask Yang and Perez live questions via an online chat moderated by Director of the Watson Institute Edward Steinfeld P’20. Several students also asked pre-selected questions over video.
As a student at the University, Yang spent his first year living in New Pembroke 4 and eating at the Verney-Woolley Dining Hall. Yang never could have imagined that nearly 30 years later he would be running for president of the United States.
“My main pursuits were the Taekwondo club, going to the gym and playing video games,” Yang said. “It’s pretty normal stuff, no one was like ‘that guy is going places.’”
Still, the University’s “ethos of self exploration” played a huge role in defining what his passions and future endeavors would be, Yang said. He pointed to classes like POLS 1050: “Ethics and Public Policy,” POLS 0220: “City Politics” and ECON 1310: “Labor Economics,” which are still currently offered at the University, as influential to many of his policy positions, including his token universal basic income platform.
Yang also added that he always admired the University's unique “entrepreneurial DNA,” in which students tried to find solutions to real world problems by considering more than just “raw financial issues.”
“The truth is that our country lost its ways because everything revolves around money and I feel like Brown did not have that message at all,” Yang said of the University’s emphasis on social impact.
Yang said that this socially-minded aspect of the University motivated him to enter many startup endeavors and later fund his most well-known project — an education nonprofit called Venture for America. While working on this project, Yang often returned to College Hill because Providence was a major hub for the project.
After running Venture for America for six years, Yang realized that the problems he was trying to solve “were so much bigger” than the scope of his organization. Yang said that he realized that the only realistic way to address these issues was to “rewrite the rules of the economy” through involvement in the government. For Yang, that meant entering the 2020 presidential race.
Part of Yang’s motivation for entering the presidential race was increasing political engagement and visibility for Asian Americans, a historically underrepresented group in American politics.
“Certainly growing up as the son of immigrants, I did not get the message that politics was for us,” Yang said. “The hope was to raise the sights and sensibilities for Asian Americans to say, ‘Wait, we can run for president, yes. We can run for city council, we can run for school board, we can run for congress, we can do all these things.’”
Yang said he entered the race as a political outsider, since he was one of the few Democratic candidates that were mostly unknown to the public. Rather than weakening his campaign, Yang believes that his status as a political outsider contributed to much of his success as a candidate.
“They saw I was running as a human being, they saw that I didn't have a political ladder to climb. My goal was simply to solve these problems that affect us all,” Yang said.
According to Perez, one of the most impressive aspects of Yang’s campaign was his ability to bring people from different sides of the political spectrum together.
Yang believes that he was able to garner support from both liberals and conservatives because instead of making ideological arguments, he talked about “problems in an objective, data-driven way.” Yang added that this helped him gain support for initially unpopular policies like universal basic income.
Yang said his campaign also saw success because of his attempts to appeal to young voters through vast social media campaigns.
Following lackluster finishes in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, Yang dropped out of the Democratic presidential race Feb. 11, because he did not see “a viable path to the nomination,” he said.
Yang has now thrown his support behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in a concerted effort to defeat President Donald Trump. “The reality is that Trump will be our president for another four years, unless Joe Biden defeats him,” Yang said. “If you are, like me, repelled by the idea of one more day under President Trump, we have to do everything in our power to make Joe win.”
Following their conversation about Yang’s unlikely political path, Yang and Perez also discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic could affect the political atmosphere in the U.S.
The COVID-19 pandemic could help establish universal basic income as an important solution for unemployment, Yang said. As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, millions of Americans are slated to receive $1,200 checks from the federal government.
“The brutal truth is that of the ten million … jobs that have evaporated (during the COVID-19 pandemic), many of them are not returning,” said Yang. Many companies are already looking into reducing working capacities and automating their processes, which further emphasizes the need for universal basic income, he said. Universal basic income is “one of the few practical things we can do to give Americans a more secure path going forward.”
Among other political consequences, Yang said that the COVID-19 pandemic could increase political awareness among Asian Americans due to the coronavirus-related racism that many Asian Americans face. “There is a sense that we have to get out there and participate in our political races or else we are going to end up with a president that characterizes the coronavirus as the Chinese virus. Now that has a direct impact in our communities every single day,” Yang said.
Yang also expressed criticism of Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, pointing to the president’s failures in mitigating, tracking and testing for the virus.
Both Yang and Perez criticized the Wisconsin state government for deciding to hold an in-person primary and forcing citizens to put their lives at risk in order to vote.
Perez said that Republicans might have deliberately chosen to hold primary elections to make it harder for certain groups to vote. “That is unconscionable. You shouldn’t have to win the geographical lottery to be able to exercise your right to vote,” said Perez.
Because the COVID-19 pandemic has halted in-person campaign rallies for Biden and Trump, Yang believes that social media will be a key factor in the presidential election. Biden won’t be able to rely on traditional campaign methods like rallies and will have to compete with Trump, who has the advantage of always being in the public eye, Yang said.
Perez added that in order to defeat President Trump, Democrats will need the support from “digitally savvy” young voters to successfully advance Biden’s campaign online.
Yang also discussed his plans to launch new initiatives and eventually reenter politics. He will be launching an anti-racism campaign Monday to raise awareness about COVID-19-related racism toward Asian Americans. “The virus doesn’t know race. We need to come together and not let it divide us,” he said. Additionally, Yang affirmed that at some point in the future, he has plans to reenter the presidential race.
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