Daughter of Laotian Refugees Running for Ohio State Senate

In a recent episode of the Model Majority Podcast (@modelmajorityp), its co-host Kevin Xu (@kevinsxu) interviewed Tina Maharath (@TinaOHSen3), candidate for Ohio State Senate 3rd district about her tough upbringing as the daughter of Laotian refugees, her single motherhood, and why she’s running for Ohio’s State Senate as a minority of the minority to fight for the “little people.”

A transcript (edited for clarity) of their conversation is below. Click HERE to listen to the full episode.

KEVIN: Alright everybody. Welcome back to the show. On the podcast today, I am absolutely thrilled to have Tina Maharath, on the Model Majority Podcast. Tina is actually running for Ohio State Senate District 3 right now and is the first Asian American woman to be running in the General Assembly. Thank you Tina for taking the time off the campaign trail to join our podcast today.

TINA: Yes absolutely, it’s a pleasure.

KEVIN: Alright. So we always like to start our conversation about our guest’s personal story and upbringing. So I would love to hear a little bit about, where did you grow up and how did you grow up?

TINA: Yes. So my parents are actually refugees from Laos during the Vietnam War era. They came here in 1990. So I was the first U.S. born citizen of my family. At the time, during Communist takeover, they were running away from the Communists, because they were in Laos killing anyone and everyone (who) had (anything) to do with the previous reign. So unfortunately, my family was on that list, and they spent several years running across the fields and walking through the rivers just to make it to America to give me a better opportunity.

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So of course I grew up in poverty, because there was a lot of socio-economic and language barriers that prevented my parents from giving me a great, proper, I guess, middle class life and unfortunate at the age of 14, my mom and brothers died in a car accident, while living abroad in France, in Toulouse, France. And I got sent to Toulouse, France, for better education opportunities, and I came back to America and try to live a new life again without half of my family. And during that time period, I just watched my dad growing up struggling and trying to make ends meet, because he had all these barriers that he had really no control over. And one of those barriers had to do with getting taken advantage of because of the language barriers. And when I say taking advantage of, I meant with legislation, with taxes, everything you can possibly name of. Specifically speaking, there’s a one year he wanted to try to do his taxes by himself without me, without a translator, nothing. And they were so discriminating that they told him to go somewhere else where they speak his language to get his taxes done. And ever since then, that’s when I got infatuated with politics, like running for office and trying to stand up for the little people, because my dad’s story is just like every other immigrant and refugee, who is probably going through the same experience in Columbus, Ohio. Yeah, that’s my childhood in a nutshell, haha.

KEVIN: Yeah, I mean it sounds like a pretty tough upbringing and I know there’s a lot of people actually in the Laotian community and you know in the Cambodian community as well, people who were affected by the war came here as refugees right, or a lot of them did, to America. And this is actually a fairly common struggle for that community especially.

TINA: Yes. absolutely, especially in the mid 80s. My family came extremely late, so those who got to go in earlier, they were, I want to say, the guinea pigs, as the first round of refugees. So that way, they could keep learning the process, learning what works.

KEVIN: Right. And so what were you up to then, leading up to your current run for State Senate. Of course, we will get into a lot more about that.

TINA: So prior to me running for office, I was a workforce analyst, which is managing the call center queues and assisting with the hiring and staffing with call centers. So I guess you want to say, I was a normal Joe, a normal business woman. However, I was a single mother too, trying to make ends meet, so I can get all the work experience I could possibly get over in the private sector world. It’s not that I wasn’t happy with my lifestyle. It was just that I was unhappy with the way legislation was going in Ohio. So when I decided to get politically involved, it was because of the fact that legislation for the AAPI community weren’t necessarily going towards our advantage. So one of the disadvantages we have here in Ohio is, we’re the only ethnicity group who does not have a commission but every other ethnicity does. So that’s what started me kicking off with the whole process, in the legislation process, and then I just kept going and going and just never stop with the legislative process.

KEVIN: So of all the minorities living in Ohio, the AAPI community doesn’t have its own voice or its own group to talk about issues to the larger legislative body, it sounds like?

TINA: Exactly.

KEVIN: How does your father feel about you getting into politics, I’m curious, because there are a lot of folks who are from that generation who are rightfully very fearful and afraid of politics. You know, like I grew up in China and I didn’t go through the refugee experience, but so even my grandmother gets nervous every time I volunteer for Obama or something. She’s like oh you gotta be careful in politics, because to them it’s a very different kind of experience.

TINA: Exactly. And that’s my dad’s same exact emotions. He was fearful not only for me to get so publicly involved with politics, but also for the fact of failure, because he knew that he was going to get hurt. It’s not like a communist country, where they decide who is the voice and who isn’t. He just didn’t believe that democracy was necessarily democracy, especially in America where we are a minority of the minority. So he just didn’t want me to have my hopes up that I was going to make a change and just get disappointed. But he was also fearful for me to get hurt publicly, because they were going to pretty much tear me apart.

KEVIN: Right. And I was reading about you. You were also a Field Fellow for APIAVote. I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about what were you doing there?

TINA: So with the role of the Field Fellow with APIAVote, I did it for the last presidential election cycle. I tried to close the gap between the AAPI community and the civic engagement process, especially during the presidential election, where we were anticipating high voter engagement turnout. So my role specifically which is to close that gap with why weren’t AAPIs voting. And if there was a gap, how can we get that closed. It was a challenge, especially with the AAPIs already thinking that we don’t have a voice, but it’s something that APIAVote tend to try to close the gap for future election cycles. So I was the first round of Field Fellow, so it was a learning experience for all of us.

KEVIN: I see. So this is actually a program that is hopefully gonna be ongoing for future election cycles?

TINA: Yes, absolutely. So we were the first round, so they specifically picked battleground states, so Ohio, Nevada, and we had Florida and Virginia.

KEVIN: Gotcha. And could you give our audience a little bit of color and background into what is actually your district, so I think you’re running for Ohio State Senate, in the 3rd District. What is in that part of Ohio? What are some interesting things that are in your community or your district?

TINA: Yes, so my district is on the eastern and southern parts of Franklin County, Ohio, which is Central Ohio, Columbus. Ohio. It is 75 percent Caucasian, 20 percent African American, and 5 percent quote-on-quote “others.”

KEVIN: Right…haha.

TINA: And it’s primarily working families, women, entrepreneurs. So that’s one of my big disadvantage is the fact that it’s 75 percent Caucasian. However, my advantage is that I am a working mother, who was raised in a working family. And of course me being a minority and a single mother too, that helps a lot. But yes, it’s primarily Caucasian. It’s that white picket fence, picture-perfect image you see on TV, of what a perfect American Dream looks like.

KEVIN: Right. I mean despite that though, I’m sure there’s a lot of social issues, of course improvements, that you would like to see, if you do become successful and represent the district. What are some core issues that you are fighting for or are fighting about for your constituents on the campaign trail right now?

TINA: Currently, the number one priority is this opioid epidemic. It is sweeping our nation, sweeping our state, and especially sweeping this district. Columbus right now is number 3 on the top cities with overdoses in our state. So it’s an issue that’s really really deep to me, and it’s affected the AAPI community as well here in Ohio. It’s affected me since I was 16 years old, when I lost my first friend to an heroin overdose. I didn’t even know she was on drugs. Ever since then I did the research, did the mental health analysis, and just make sure I watch out for all the signs and try to help, not only my friends and family, but also the community surrounding us, who’s getting taken over by this epidemic.

And number two is education as well, because social media perspective has a perspective that you know the picture perfect life is: you go to high school you, go to college, get married, have a career, and start a family, but that’s not necessarily the life in this generation. In this generation, people go to trade school. College isn’t for everyone, and sometimes you know people don’t have marriage before families. So education, I want to close that gap with the picture perfect image that you have to go to college, because there are so many jobs out here in Ohio–there’s about over 90,000 openings, but they don’t have the skills to close that unemployment gap, because some jobs want specific skills and some jobs want specific degrees, and it just does not work out. And we just got close that workforce gap.

KEVIN: Wow, that’s so interesting. So there’s actually a ton of jobs out there, but you’re either not qualified because you didn’t pick up that specific skill or perhaps in a way you were even like overqualified because you went to college, and you don’t want to do these kind of jobs, and there’s like a huge mismatch it sounds like.

TINA: Exactly.

KEVIN: Very interesting. And you being you know a first time candidate running your first campaign. What’s been kind of the most surprising thing that you’ve experienced or seen so far since you started your campaign?

TINA: So one of the most mind-blowing experiences in this campaign so far is the fact that racism is still happening around us, especially for me being a minority of the minority. When I first started knocking on doors a couple of months ago, there were a couple people would not open the door for me because of the color of my skin! And I was just mind-blown because as an AAPI, I’m sure we experience racism, but it’s not so crucial, like for the African Americans where it’s more transparent. So I was just like mind-blown that, me a tiny little 5 foot 4, 130 pound Asian American woman…they were scared of me! I’m like…I can’t even say hi to someone!

And then, there were a couple of town halls I had, where I was standing up against racial social injustice in our criminal justice system talking about, if I were to get pulled over, they would start questioning my language, my immigration status. They would give me a tough time versus a Caucasian male, where they’ll just let them go, give them a warning, or just give them a normal protocol and make it a quick stop. So, because I was defending that someone said that I was racist against white male, that’s just not the case! I was just trying to you know, state the obvious, that racism is still here especially in our social justice system. And I never gotten called a racist a day in my life. So my mind was blown, like what? I’m just defending the minorities! I’m never going to stop defending the minorities.

KEVIN: Right. No, that’s…that’s kind of crazy to hear. I mean, I guess in a way with Donald Trump being president and everything that happened leading up to that, there is this spigot that has been released out of a lot of people. I’ve certainly heard that from other candidates we’ve spoken to as well, but not to the extent that you were just describing. It seems like the reaction to you is much more overt. And before it was kind of subtle, they were just hiding it inside.

TINA: Exactly. I was just mind-blown, like I knew it existed, I just never thought I’d see the day, where I would witness it first hand.

KEVIN: And how did you react to that afterwards? Like does it kind of like put you down a little bit? It’s kind of a party pooper to your day of canvassing or you’re like this is emboldening me, and this is why I’m doing what I’m doing.

TINA: Yeah, it definitely ruined my day, ruined the campaign trail, but then again, at the same time, this is the change I want to see. This is something I don’t want to see on an everyday basis, because this is me: the minority of the minority. Just think about the majority of the minority, the African Americans, the Latinos, who have to go through this daily, in excruciating details, like this is something I don’t want to see for another human being. So it bucked me up to continue to keep fighting the fight. But it also brought me down at the same time. Again, wow! I’m never going to have a voice. There’s never a place for me in this town. But yet again I was born and raised in this district.

KEVIN: Exactly, this is as much your home as anybody, who’ve been living in that district. And you mentioned that you’re also a single mother. How old is your son, by the way?

TINA: He’s 6 years old. He’s in first grade now.

KEVIN: Nice, nice. Do you bring him around everywhere you go campaigning and doing town halls and stuff like that?

TINA: Absolutely. Because this is something I want him to experience firsthand. I don’t want him to have this false belief of what the American Dream is or what a life in America is. I want him to see the realities of it, because I was given a false representation because my family was trying to protect me my whole life. You know I want him to see the realities. This is American politics, this is our political process currently. If you don’t like it, change when you get older son.

KEVIN: Nice, nice. How is he taking all of this in? It’s not a very typical experience for a 6 year old, right?

TINA: So I don’t teach him about party affiliation differences. I teach him about the candidates and the issues. So when he sees Donald Trump, he absolutely hates that man. When he sees other Republican candidates, he knows that like you know, they have good intentions, so be positive. And vice versa, for Democratic candidates. But he can tell right off the bat, if you’re not a great politician or you’re not really a public servant, he’ll call you out as a 6 year old, because you know kids are the most honest people in the world.

KEVIN: That’s right. Wow. He’s already very insightful, thanks to you know your teaching. He is way more nuanced than most of the voters out there! Hahaha.

TINA: I know! Haha

KEVIN: That’s incredible. Well, I want to wrap up our conversation with one more fun question, which is something I always ask our candidates, especially I want to hear your thoughts, because you know you’re working right now, you’re also running for the State Senate, you’re also raising a child by yourself, and you must have pretty long days, and I just want to hear what is your campaign trail comfort food? What kind of gets you through the day? You are a guilty pleasure.

TINA: My comfort food is actually carrot sticks, because of the fact that you gained 30 pounds from stress eating.

KEVIN: Hahaha. That is awesome. That is by far the healthiest answer I’ve gotten for that question. Period. This is really amazing, Tina. We’re so proud and excited for your campaign, to take up everything that you’re doing right now. How do people find out and learn more about you and your campaign?

TINA: Yes absolutely. So I have a Twitter page. It is @TinaOHSen3. You can also find me on Facebook. My first name, last name: Maharath. Of course, I have a website which is my first name and last week as well. And yeah, you can find me on the Internet, I’m all over the place.

KEVIN: That’s right. That’s amazing. I mean that’s how we found each other right? On Twitter. So everyone, make sure you go find out more about Tina’s campaign. Her website is tinamaharath.com. Follow her Twitter handle: @TinaOHSen3. Thank you so much again for taking the time to talk to us. Good luck on the campaign trail, and we are rooting for you.

TINA: Thank you, and thank you for your time. Thank you for having us.

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