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JP Updates: Chinatown Native Lester Chang Wants to �Clean Up The Mess� in NYS Assembly

Chinatown Native Lester Chang Wants to ‘Clean Up The Mess’ in NYS Assembly

http://jpupdates.com/2016/03/29/chinatown-native-lester-chang-wants-to-clean-up-the-mess-in-nys-assembly/

by Leila Roos

Lester Chang’s “pre-existing condition” is the Navy — he told his wife as much before getting married. He’s telling his potential constituents the same before taking office — if he wins the special election for New York State’s 65th Assembly District next month.

The message, as he sees it, is the same for a military analyst and legislator: “to serve the people” and then to get out of the way. Chang, 55, who has never held political office, believes in term limits and wants to abolish the unlimited number of times a legislator can serve on a two-year term. He says the people of New York deserve representatives who serve their constituents, not themselves.

Corrupt career politicians nevertheless play a big role in this race. The April 19 special elections were called to replace former Senator Dean Skelos and former District 65 Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, who spent almost four decades in office before he was convicted on corruption charges.

Chang’s take on corruption is encapsulated by his party’s name: “Clean Up The Mess”.

Although the Nolita (North of Little Italy) resident is running as a Republican, New York candidates aren’t limited to one party line on the ballot. Chang is also backed by Reform and Independence, as well as the party he founded: “Clean Up The Mess,” which, he says, speaks for itself.

‘Right for the people’

Chang, who currently works in international shipping and logistics, agrees with the GOP’s business-friendly, lower-tax, fiscally conservative ideology. That said, he’s independent on what he thinks is “right for the people.”

“It may be contrary to what the party is saying, but when I raise my hand in oath, it’s to obey the orders of those appointed over me,” he told JP in an interview last week. “And it’s not the party leaders that appointed me, it’s the people that voted me in.”

Photo by Leila Roos. Lester Chang has four party lines on the ballot, including his very own, ‘Clean Up The Mess’.

Compared to his opponents – Alice Cancel of the Democratic Party, Yuh-Line Niou for Working Families and Dennis Levy on the Green ticket – Chang considers himself the most qualified in matters of security. His 20-year career in military intelligence – which gave him experience in a Joint Intelligence Fusion Cell after 9/11 and later with special ops in Afghanistan – makes him “pretty much solid on what we need to do to protect the city.”

District 65, in lower Manhattan, includes the NYPD’s headquarters, the courts, the New York Federal Reserve and Wall Street, making it “a bullseye” for terrorists, according to Chang. Although last week’s terror attacks in Brussels rattled the world and New York City with it, Chang thinks there’s a general sense of complacency and “in the military, complacency kills people.” He would amp up security zones and increase the number of National Guard troops to supplement the police force, which would be funded by Homeland Security.

Aside from physically protecting the city of 8.6 million people, Chang wants to tackle an entirely different kind of security issue that “really affects” him: homelessness. He recalls one particularly cold day back when he was working with the Census Bureau.

Counting the homeless, they found 140 people living in his neighborhood’s Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station. That was 1990. Mayor Rudy Giuliani came and “cleaned up,” after which Mayor Michael Bloomberg “kept it pretty okay,” Chang says.

But less than two years into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, Chang remarks that he’s “never seen so many homeless out in the street.”

Giuliani’s support

He asked Giuliani, who endorsed him last week, what could be done. He says the former mayor’s answer was very simple: “You talk to these people.”

For Chang, that means, “you find out where they’re from and try to help them along the way.”

Chang wants to focus on the beginning, with education — “our basic foundation.” He believes in charter schools and supports tuition tax credits for parochial and private school parents. Specialized schools should stay “just the way they are,” but the public school system needs to be improved, with more resources at the bottom.

“I’m a product of public school education,” says Chang, a graduate of Brooklyn’s Midwood High School. “I used the public school to better myself, so I want to make sure we maintain that.”

The son of immigrants from China and Hong Kong, Chang grew up in a small railroad apartment in Chinatown. Chang recalls his mother promising his dying father that all three children would get their college degrees. His father passed away when Chang was 8 years old, but in spite of extremely limited resources, they all succeeded. Chang himself graduated from Brooklyn College with an accounting degree and later earned his master’s degree from the State University of New York Maritime College in The Bronx.

Chang’s district, which includes Chinatown, is more than 40% Asian-American, and he wants to step up for his underrepresented demographic.

New York State has about 1.4 million Asian-Americans, but out of 150 Assembly members and 63 senators, only one legislator is Asian-American: Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Korean-American Democrat representing the 40th Assembly District in Queens. Chang wants to do his part to provide better representation.

In Chang, constituents would get a representative with “an honest voice who works for the people,” he says. “And I would push for term limits. Seriously, term limits,” he adds. As with the Navy, Chang would serve as long as he’s told. Then, when the time comes, he’ll “be ready to transition to the next [legislative] generation.”