Latest / Breaking The Meta / Young Progressive Takes on Ohio Republicans | 2026 Statehouse Race

Transcript

Young Progressive Takes on Ohio Republicans | 2026 Statehouse Race · Breaking The Meta

• Breaking The Meta: We're considered one the most corrupt states in the country. It's because people don't know where the money is going. People don't know who's paying for what. Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running for governor right now, he is jetting around Ohio on a private jet. Ohio is four hours end to end. ⁓ Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meta. My name is Mike Winson. Today we are sitting down with Lalithya Acharya who is running for District 56 in the Ohio State House. Very excited to find out what about you and what you hope to do with your district. Hello, Lalithya. I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna get it. I'm just gonna say it. I'm gonna say it like an hour. out of the mouth. How are you doing? It's good to see you. ⁓ good. How are you? Are you staying warm? As warm as humanly possible, the buildings here were not made for this weather. Houses here leak like a sieve when it comes to cold weather. So it's always interesting. ⁓ So the way I always like to start out, for people that don't know much about Ohio, could you let everyone know what is encompassed in the 56th district of Ohio? Yes, so Southwest Ohio, which is what this district is. I'm about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati, so 30 minutes north of the Ohio River. We represent, for those who know Ohio well, Mason, Lebanon, and Deerfield Township. We are also the northern part of Congressman Greg Landsman's new redistricted seats. So our maps in Ohio have been redistricted every two years for the past six years. They're only supposed to happen once a decade. That hasn't been happening, and so. My district is now fully encompassed in Greg Lansman C, all of Warren County is. And so this is not only a crucial area for myself and to be able to break the Republican supermajority in our state house, but also to make sure that we keep a majority or even close to a majority in the entire U.S. Congress, especially heading in to the 2026 midterms. Yeah, absolutely. Could you start off by giving us just a little background on who you are? and why you decided to run for a state Senate seat or a state house seat. Yes, it's the state house. So I was raised in Southwest Ohio. I've been here for as long as I can remember. And what I was seeing over the years of growing up, I'm 22, by the way. So my entire political conscious has been surrounded by whatever is happening right now. I was 12 years old when Donald Trump got elected for the first time. And that's like the first election that I ever remember. And so I think when a lot of people talk about this younger generation and why they seem to be so distant from politics, a big part of it is because we don't remember much else. Like I do not remember a time of mudslinging or like, you know, the Obama McCain election. I was five years old. Like that isn't a concept for us. And so what happened for me was I started getting involved more and more in politics. did congressional internships. I just started doing advocacy work at the local level. A big passion of mine as an engineer by training is water. So I'm a biomedical engineer, but I'm focused on developing this tool all through high school, undergrad and grad school that used AI in a device to be directly integrated into water pipes to detect microbial contamination. So the hope was that, you know, before a entire public health disaster happens, for example, with cholera or E. coli, you're able to detect it at a smaller level. And people might look at that and think, oh, it's not political by any means, but it is. Arguably, when you think about public health, when you think about science being implemented, this is something that's going to be owned by municipalities, by the money that is funded by our state house. And so the only way that it's going to be feasible to be implemented is if you have people in politics who understand the work, who understand the value. That's really where my advocacy's journey kind of got started. In the summer of 2023, Ohio had a couple really interesting initiatives on the ballots. First was we were going to be having the reproductive rights amendment in November 2023. This was going to be a citizen led initiative. So it is as democratic as it comes where there is this bill essentially on your ballot and the people say yes or no. And if it's yes, it gets codified into our constitution. If it's a no, gets booted out. On August 23, after the Republicans in our state house said that they would not put any more August elections on, they decided to put in an August election. This would cost millions of dollars, which was their rule. And I agree with them that we don't need constant elections that are going to be spending millions and hundreds of thousands at the bare minimum of dollars. But they put that on the ballot. And this would basically have made it harder to pass citizen led initiatives. which means that it would have increased the threshold to pass from 50%, a simple majority to 60%. It would require more signatures. It would just be like a lot more loopholes that would essentially reduce people's vote. And we thankfully were able to get that, I don't know what to call it, that initiative kind of reduced. And so that was negated. And we called that August issue one because we wanted to make it. really easy. It was going to be issue one in August and issue one in November. So my vote was going to be no on issue one in August, but yes on issue one in November. again, lots of convolution. And so with that, it started getting more and more involved and engaged. And it kind of got to a point where, especially after the 2024 election, I was like, I want to do something about this. And I think that, especially somebody who's worked in politics before, it sometimes gets a little disheartening when you are working and you're not seeing the change happen fast enough. You're not seeing it happen at all. Because in the end, when you're working for somebody else, regardless of how much you agree with them on, in the end, it's that person vote. Like it's whatever they want to do. They can say yes, they can say no. The facts can be pushing them in one direction or another, but like it is their vote. And I think that we need more people who have votes, who are in elected office, who are willing to do the right thing, who are willing to actively stand up against everything that's going on in our world. ⁓ There's so many issues happening. My big three personally are public education. I am a public education kid. I graduated from the biggest high school, biggest public high school in Ohio, one of the biggest in the country. And my opponent, he is actively trying to defund public education. He has pro school voucher, which essentially takes money out of public education and public schools and directly gives it to private institutions and private schools instead. Another one is affordability as a young person. I know it's like the big buzzword, like every politician is saying they're for affordability. Like what does affordability really mean? It just, when we look around, groceries have tripled. My wage has not, you know, the thought of buying a house is next to impossible. I think for the first time in American history now, the average age of a first time homeowner is in their forties. So by the time like I'm in my forties, that's going to be 65. Like just the thought of being able to do that. is impossible. And if we want kids and young people to be incentivized to even work hard, how are they going to be incentivized to do so when it just feels like everything is working against them? And lastly, I'm a biomedical engineer by trade. I work in clinical research now. And so healthcare is super important to me where the facts say that prevention is cheaper than like emergency intervention, where it's cheaper if you give people a dentist appointment and a physical appointment like once a year compared to them going to the ER because their appendix is about to burst. And so when we look at that and those facts, these are the powers that the state house has. And Ohio State House has been this black box where nobody believes in them. Nobody trusts them. My opponent hasn't held a town hall in like well over a year. And so at the bare minimum, even if you take the politics out of it, we deserve to have a government that is attempting to work for us. That's trying to do the right things. And I think all that just pushed me to this point of it's now or never. And I'm really excited to have this opportunity to chat with you, to be running for this office and to be representing my district. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, speaking of trust, ⁓ one of the very ⁓ common issues that we have had in this entire country, especially when it's come to politics, is the ideal of accountability or the lack thereof. ⁓ Most of our politicians don't really care about being held accountable. They just want to do whatever they want. my question to you is, how do you view accountability? How do you view accountability when it comes to your constituents and you and even accountability as the state house of Ohio? Yeah. So the first thing is I am fully grassroots funded. I'm not taking any corporate PAC money. I'm not taking any of that kind of things where it just gets into a weird gray area. And I think a lot of people in politics, might not go into it with the intention of becoming a morally gray character. It's a very slippery slope. You take money from one corporate pack and all of a sudden you're beholden to those shareholders compared to your own constituents. And so I only want to be beholden to the people who I'm representing, the people of Ohio and the people of the US. So I think that's the first thing in accountability is like put your money where your mouth is. Our campaigns are funded fully by money. And so it follow the receipts, where do they trace back to? ⁓ Another big thing is our state house is genuinely it's a black box. Like your average person does not know what's going on. People know about city council. People know about US Congress. State houses are kind of weird because they sit in the middle of those two where you like you do funding, but you're not at the local level, but you're not in Congress and you're not in DC. So it's a weird in between. And so I think a lot of that is being open with people, telling people that this is what I'm signing on to. These are what these bills are. This is where your money and your salaries are going to. It means doing town halls. It means trying to be accessible and responding to like constituent concerns in a reasonable amount of time. All of these like when I'm saying them, right, it doesn't seem to be this crazy concept and nothing. It shouldn't be. And nothing I'm saying is that out there because it genuinely we have seen at work. There are plenty of congressional offices and state house offices across the country that work really well. that make sure that when somebody has a passport that's delayed or somebody can't get a social security check, they're able to help that when a school is struggling with funding or anything like that, they're able to help they're able to intervene. And so that's a big part of what we need to try to do. And that's what I want to do at the Ohio State House. People don't have trust. We're considered one of the most corrupt states in the country. It's because people don't know where the money is going. People don't know who's paying for what, who's doing what. ⁓ Viva Cromoswamy, who's running for governor right now. He is jetting around Ohio on a private jet. Ohio is four hours end to end. I was in Cleveland two weeks ago to visit a friend. I'm in Cincinnati, the very bottom tip. Cleveland is almost the very top. It's four hours. Like it's not that much of a hike. But then you also don't know where the money is coming from. And I genuinely think it just comes down to money because especially in our campaign system, so much is run by finances. So that's so critical to just talk and share about. Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ So if you get, there's a little bit of a little bit of two questions. If you get voted in as the representative for district 56, what are the things that are the pain points for that district? What are the things that most of the people as you walk around and talk to them ⁓ talk about? I think you talked about a lot of them, but I just. There is the list is slightly never ending. And the reason I say that is because our state house, they either they don't work or they're writing up really horrific bills. There was a bill last year in the state house that would basically make it harder for kids to access mental health care. It basically restricted providers from giving mental health care to minors without their parents consent. Now, I can think about 30 different scenarios where a child might not want their parents or their legal guardians to know that they're seeking this care. And instead of kind of dealing with the actual issues at hand, it's like we're focused on all these other things to the side. And there are plenty of existential issues to run down. The big thing for me genuinely is public education, where people move to this area because of the incredible schools. We have several school districts in my district that are really phenomenal. They are large public schools. They offer tons of AP classes and extracurriculars and support for neurodivergent students. And all of that funding is at risk. And our state house controls all of that funding. And so that's something that is a huge concern for people is this is one of our biggest draws into our community. And do we want people to be able to come here and live here? And that ties into affordability because who is using the schools besides young families? If young families can't come in and afford to move and live here, the centerpiece of what holds communities together really starts to fall apart. I was looking into houses just in my district in Mason. A condo is running for about half a million right now. Whoa. Which is insane. How are you expecting young family to be able to afford a three to five hundred million dollar? And that's baseline because this is like it's a hot and popping spot because of our schools. So people are willing to pay more. And so that's kind of where it starts and it just goes up and up and up and up. And so what are people supposed to do if they want to come here, if they want to live here, if they want to grow their families here? And so everything just ties back into that affordability price point of People are being priced out of the communities that they grew up in. People are being priced out of the places that they want to live and grow and raise families. And last one, this has probably been more of a concern over the past year or so, is ICE. I am a first-generation immigrant. My parents came here from India. We are a hugely diverse community with so many different backgrounds. We celebrate Diwali and Holi and Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, all these incredible holidays. And people are scared. People are worried about what it's going to look like for themselves, for their families, people are worried about ICE kind of coming into our streets and doing the things that a year ago, if you had told me this is what was going to be happening, I'd have been like, you're crazy. Like you're just fear mongering. Seriously. And genuinely, I'm seeing these things down. I'm like, it's AI generated. Like it's so difficult to grasp that. But people are worried and it is a concern for people that it could start happening. We're seeing it in Minnesota where ICE is waiting at bus stops. So as parents come to get their kids from the bus, they're grabbing these parents and kids. And that is a very real possibility, especially in a state that has been run by Republicans for the past 30 years. And these are people who they aren't even standing up for what they believe in. They're not willing to, you know, back up these bills with a fight. They're just bending the knee to whatever upper entity, higher entity, whatever that person power thing is. And they're just saying, whatever you say, we are going to do blindly. Right. So obviously there are Republicans in your state, obviously. ⁓ And even though we often, both sides of the aisle tend to have the same difficulties, and we probably agree on more than either side is willing to admit oftentimes, ⁓ there's still a lot of people that identify and that's their main focus. What has it been like walking walking around your district and talking to people that may be Republicans and see that D next to your name. What have those interactions been like in your district? It's interesting because I think we're all guilty of it where somebody comes knocking on your door and they give their little political spiel and we're like, so what party are you? And immediately the second somebody says, we flip a certain way or we don't flip a certain way. I think a big part of it is two things. One, I don't agree with the Democrats' policies on a national scale, but I'm proud of Democrats at the local level, because it's Democrats at the local level where even when the DNC might be writing off Ohio as like, it's a complete red state, we're not going to invest anything there. It's our local community organizers that helped us pass reproductive rights, where even in states like New York, reproductive rights is not codified into the state constitution. It is in Ohio, which makes it incredibly difficult for anybody to do anything about it. And that's because of our local STEM communities. It's because of these local people who have done the work and tried to make that momentum happen. And so I always tell people that, like, know, whatever you're seeing probably on the news and stuff like that, I'm probably on your side of like, you know, I don't agree with how we spend willy-nilly, like billions of dollars on races when honestly what we're spending on political races, we could probably use that money to fix the issues that you're campaigning on. Like a billion dollars for presidential campaign or a billion dollars to reduce food insecurity. And that's how we try and approach those conversations of we share a lot more than we don't. And especially at the state level, I think it's lot easier to break through those barriers of we all want our schools to be funded. I think that's a relatively sane topic to talk about. We all want to make sure that, you know, you and your kids and your grandkids can afford to live here. We all want to make sure that, God forbid, the worst happen. We have access to health care and that our neighbors aren't being ripped off the streets. And it's exciting to see that kind of change happen where there are people who are staunch Republicans who are at least willing to listen. And one of the things that I've started to do, and obviously once I get more into campaign season, is I believe that you can say something with your vote without voting, in the sense of you can turn in a ballot and then turn that ballot in blank. And I think that says something. There are people who cannot bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. I get it from a certain perspective. So I asked those people, would you just mind not voting for this position at all? Like go down the ballot. skip this one completely. And I think that also sends a message of, you know, clearly you are disagreeing with whatever my incumbent is doing right now. You don't like him. I'm your other choice. If you don't like him and you won't vote for me, leave it blank and let's have that conversation then. So at least then you're sending a message to your own party that they need to do better. Cause if we just keep on looking at this as like, you know, two people just playing off of each other, like the parties in power are going to keep doing what they're doing. Cause clearly one of them is going to keep winning and they're just going to keep leveraging that and using that against us. How has the, what has the effect of things like the tariffs or even the, the end results of the big, beautiful bill and the loss of subsidies, how is that affecting your district? I think it's affecting us the same way it's affecting all Americans. It is affecting us because our grocery prices are increasing like crazy. It's affecting us. I mean, I know the ACA subsidies thing, it's going to probably kick in more in the next couple months ⁓ as people's healthcare premiums start to go up, but you know, it's going to affect our healthcare premiums. It's going to be really, really devastating for a lot of people. We're especially in Southwest Ohio. We have some huge hospitals. Cincinnati Children's, you see like, Cincinnati Children's is one, if not the best pediatric hospital in the country, if not the world. And people come here from everywhere to come get treated. And they're not going to be able to afford treatment. There are people who aren't going be able to afford groceries. It's literally just a matter of costs where our wages aren't going up. We're being taxed more and more. And I mean, where are those taxes going? Clearly not in fixing our roads or solving anything tangible. So what is happening like genuine? And I think that comes back to that accountability perspective of where is this money going? Like we as the people should be able to demand a bill of you get X amount in revenue every year. Tell me where that money is going, because it's not going into solving our problems. What we're seeing is the same thing all Americans are seeing. Groceries are going up. Housing is going up. New housing isn't being built. Investments aren't being made. People are struggling to, you know, get loans and afford homes and do all these basic things. And how is that going to continue to persist in the future? And how is this even sustainable in any way? Because I feel like we're hitting a breaking point of at a certain point, like we will not be able to afford it. Like objectively, people are going to starve. people are going to die. And again, it sounds very fear mongry, like, oh my gosh, the liberal is saying this, but it's true. Where at a certain point, like our groceries are going to cost an insane amount. like went to a grocery shop and I bought like five things. And was like, how is this $50? Like nothing crazy to like not caviar, like milk and banana, you know, and bread. And I looked at it I was like, this is like not even a full meal. Like I don't think I could even make one meal from all the ingredients in my cart right now. And it was $50. So I like doing ⁓ a little future casting. So let's say you get through primaries. don't know if you have a primary opponent. No, unfortunately. so blast through primaries. Easy done. You get through the general election. are you are you win. And then New Year comes around and you are sworn in as representative of District 56. What is the first thing that you do? First thing that I would do, that's a really interesting question. First thing I would do is ban ICE. Like I would introduce legislation that would ban ICE from our communities and ban ICE from the state of Ohio. ⁓ And I think that should be something that's very basic of who are these people, where are they coming from, and where are they taking people? You know, I have nothing against what... the supposed premise of ISIS, of trying to make sure that our borders are safe, trying to make sure that our country is safe. You I am the product of legal immigration to the United States, but I also understand that pulling people off the streets is not the answer. That this lack of due process, that's the beauty of America, is regardless of your status, you have due process. You can be taken to court and you can be deported after that, but you at the bare minimum be given your basic rights as a human being and not have your children ripped away from you as your community stands there watching. ⁓ That would be my first thing. My second thing would be try proposing a plan that would end school vouchers. And I can go more into detail about the policy aspects of it, but school vouchers are quite literally where you take money from public education and you essentially give that money to a family. And you say, here, use this money to send your kid to XYZ school. And the idea is that a family gets school choice so they can pick whatever private school or school entity that they believe is best for their kids. The issue is that nine times out of 10, it doesn't actually help kids afford private school because it's just subsidizing families who already are sending their kids to private school. And it's essentially a blank check of we don't know what those schools are or aren't teaching. I'm all for school choice, but if it's public money, if it's taxpayer money that's going into these schools, taxpayers also deserve to know what they're getting out of it. And so that's another huge issue. Also, every single family regards of income status gets the same amount. So even if you are, for example, somebody who goes to a less supported school, and so that's why you need school vouchers, you're gonna probably get the same amount of a voucher as somebody who goes to like the best public high school in the state of Ohio that I went to. And that's a huge issue for so many families. And another big, big part of it is if you do the math of how much money every public school spends per student, that amount is less than the vouchers. So let's say you spend $2,000 a month for every single public school kid, outers are going to be like $4,000 a month. So again, I don't know how that math adds up, but they're basically paying private schools more than what they're giving to public schools. And it's just feeding the problem of if you continue to take money out of system, public schools are bad, public schools are bad. It creates a cycle of then they don't have money to become better. So then you have to pull more money out to send to private schools. And you're just like, you're putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. And that's not solving anything for anybody. Absolutely. If whoever's watching or listening to this gets to this point and they've heard you talk about all the stuff that you want to do for your district, what would one or two things be that you'd want to make sure that they walked away knowing about you and your campaign no matter what? The first step, this is a winnable seat. People need to stop writing off seats as winnable or not winnable based on whatever the higher consulting powers say, every single seat is winnable because every single seat has voters. And we're seeing that across the country where districts are swinging like 30 points, which is insane. But it's because in the end, we are all struggling with the same issues. Like genuinely, I pay bills, I buy groceries, I buy gas, and I deal with all these things of why am I paying $50 to fill up my car with gas? And that's barely lasting me anything in this like crazy cold weather. Why is it that, you know, our streets are struggling to be salted because some of our cities couldn't afford to buy the salt or because the salt manufacturers are struggling because of tariffs. Like it's all just a really big cycle. And this is a winnable seat. And so I want people to know that wherever you are, whatever political party you are in, that side is winnable. just requires some grunt work sometimes. And to not believe in all these pundits who believe that, you know, the path to owning the house in 2026 is like seven key seats across the country. That's like a couple million people. Every single see every single American has a vote in 2026 and I want them to use it. That being said, if anyone wants to learn more about you and what you stand for and wants to help support you, maybe where can they find you? So it's a charia for Ohio dot com. So it's my last name. A C H A R Y A F O R Ohio dot com. I'm also accessible on all social. Same thing. A charia for Ohio. I just got Blue Sky, which is my newest social, but I'm on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, the whole thing, ⁓ and connect with me. I'm genuinely, I want to hear from people. I want this to be our campaign, not just me telling people what I think that we should do about the world. And we need that in politics. We need people who are actively trying to do good and people who you can trust to make the right decision. And I am hopeful that you guys will see me as that person and that we're going to get this done in 2026. Yeah. And we'll make sure to put put that down below in the description. ⁓ For everyone that listened this far, thank you so much. I do really appreciate it. Make sure you hit all those buttons down below. It helps to make possible for me to keep doing what I'm doing here. ⁓ Just for anyone who's new and doesn't know about this podcast, or you're just listening for Lalitia, ⁓ this Breaking the Meta is all about having hard conversations. It's all about ⁓ breaking the status quo, and it's about making sure that all people, no matter your race, religion, gender, or identity gets right. get rights, respect, dignity and safety. And that's something that we need to do here. That's something that people like Lilithia and many, many other progressives in this country are fighting for. So please support them, watch videos like this, watch them on social media, share it around. They aren't taking PAC money. They aren't taking money from big corporations, which means they need visibility. They need name recognition in other ways and watching things like this and pushing. out these this kind of content is exactly how we give them the kind of recognition they need to be seen in places like their district. So please, please help out, make it possible, make the changes that we're we've been pushing for and screaming for, ⁓ for years now. Aletia, thank you so much for being here and letting us know you. It was so amazing. I can't wait to see what happens in the general election. to hear that you become the ⁓ new representative for District 56. And for everyone else, we'll see you next time on Breaking the Meta. Bye guys.