Fresno native to challenge for a U.S. Senate seat, blasts Newsom. Can she win?
Fresno Republican Elizabeth Heng said Monday she will once again challenge for a Democrat-occupied seat, but this time it will be in the U.S. Senate.
The 36-year-old ran an unsuccessful House race in 2018 against Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno.
This time she is challenging Sen. Alex Padilla, the former California secretary of state who Gov. Gavin Newsom in December appointed to the Senate seat left open by the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Heng’s remarks accompanying her announcement hung heavily on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the past 12 months our freedoms have been stripped from us, our livelihoods destroyed, our kids are suffering, our businesses shuttered,” she said. “These out-of-touch politicians are ruining the California we know and love.”
She pointed to the French Laundry party from last year, when Newsom attended an event at the same time as he had made gatherings prohibited because of the coronavirus. Newsom has apologized for attending.
“Most of these policies were ad hoc regulations that seem to have zero connections to public health,” Heng said. “Democratic elites don’t follow them, of course — just look at Governor Newsom’s dinner at the French Laundry — but we have to. Families are struggling because they can’t send their children to school.”
Heng has also been an outspoken supporter for the effort to recall Newsom. Those behind it said Sunday they’ve collected 1.95 million signatures a little more than a week before the deadline.
A Fresno native, Heng attended Sunnyside High School before going on to get a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University. She later earned a master’s from Yale University.
The child of Chinese-Cambodian immigrants, she worked in her parents’ store Rasmey Market in southeast Fresno. She said she’s had a front row seat for the “American Dream.”
“Through hard work, determination, and a bit of luck, I’ve been allowed opportunities that wouldn’t be possible had my parents not sought refuge to the United States,” she said.
She also routinely points to her parents’ experience in the socialist country of Cambodia as foundational to her conservative beliefs.
During her congressional run, Heng had some of her social media ads blocked because they used violent images from the genocide in Cambodia. Facebook and Twitter later reversed their decisions to block the ads.
Heng has said that experience led her to develop a company called “The New Internet,” an encrypted internet browser. She said it’s a tool to fight “fake news and censorship.”
Can she win?
As far as political experience, she was a D.C. staffer as chief of protocol for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and student body president at Stanford.
Heng also worked for former House Rep. Ed Royce, who served in the Los Angeles-area 39th district. Her work in D.C. gives her some qualifications that are rare with newcomer candidates from the central San Joaquin Valley, according to Fred Vanderhoof, the chairperson of the Fresno County Republican Party.
He also noted the large influence Asian American voters have in California — particularly in Southern California and the Bay Area — as another leg up she could have with voters.
“California is a tough state for Republicans,” he said. “It’s obviously uphill, but she’s a minority, a woman and conservative.”
There is no official list yet of candidates for the primary election on June 7, 2022. The deadline to file for the primary race is March 11, 2022.
This story was originally published March 8, 2021 at 3:00 PM.
