TikTok star vies to become first Gen Z woman in Congress + Fast food industry strikes back

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GEN Z TIKTOK STAR, POLITICAL ADVOCATE ANNOUNCES BID FOR CONGRESS

At 25, Orange County native Cheyenne Hunt has parlayed her experience in grassroots political organizing and high-level policy advocacy into a sizable TikTok audience. Now, she’s looking to become the first female member of Generation Z to win a seat in Congress. (Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla, 26, an Orlando community organizer, became the first male Zoomer in Congress this year)

Hunt announced Tuesday that she’s running in CA-45, against Republican Rep. Michelle Steel, whom the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified as vulnerable. Steel’s district went for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Hunt, who was born and spent her early life near Sacramento, is a lifelong Californian, though the University of California Irvine grad has spent time in Washington, D.C., including serving as the youngest-ever law clerk for Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In an interview with The Bee, Hunt said she’s seen how the system works, and also where it doesn’t work. She said her generation — generally defined as those born between the mid-1990s and 2010 — isn’t waiting for its chance to operate the levers of power as they struggle with everything from the high cost of living to student loan debt to the lack of opportunity.

“I’m just really passionate about jumping in because we can’t afford to wait,” she said.

Hunt has turned that passion for policy into a successful TikTok presence, with more than 62,200 followers and counting. She told The Bee she never intended to build a huge audience, but rather just set out to have real conversations about the issues that matter.

“I’m a policy nerd, that’s what I love to do,” she said.

Now that she has that following, however, she said she intends to use it as she campaigns for Congress. Social media is a way to reach people where they are, she said.

Asked about the potential security risk posed by TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, Hunt said that the lack of comprehensive data privacy is a huge security risk, with threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party and Russia as well as domestic “bad actors.”

“I think that it’s really a mistake to think about this as a single-app issue because it’s not,” she said.

Asked what her priorities would be if elected, Hunt said she is focused on the “pain points” in her community, including high cost of living and energy price-gouging. She cited the proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons as another concern.

Hunt also said she is focused on fighting back against the attacks on abortion and LGBTQ equality, which she called fundamental rights.

“I see all of these things are interconnected and any attack on fundamental rights is an attack on all of them,” she said.

FAST FOOD INDUSTRY COALITION LAUNCHES AD CAMPAIGN AGAINST AB 1228

The fast food industry is fighting back against a bill intended to hold restaurant franchisors accountable for their franchisees’ legal violations.

AB 1228, by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, is set to be heard April 12 by the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. The bill is an attempt to improve labor conditions in the fast food industry by making franchisors — companies like McDonalds or Subway — legally responsible for labor violations by individually held franchisee restaurants.

“As a former fast-food franchisee, I know how much pressure maintaining a safe and healthy working environment puts on local owner-operators, especially when global corporations refuse to contribute their share,” Holden said in a statement on the bill.

The industry pushback led to the formation of a coalition — Stop the Attack on Local Restaurants — and the launch of a statewide digital ad campaign to protest the bill, which the coalition argues will cut off a pathway for business ownership, particularly for minority entrepreneurs.

“I immigrated to California at age 16 from India speaking no English and took the first job I could get cleaning toilets at McDonalds,” said Sacramento McDonalds restaurant owner Jay Hazari in a statement. “I worked my way up, became manager and in 2004, I was given the opportunity to own and operate my first restaurant. AB 1228 would destroy the rights of local restaurant owners like me, taking away our life’s investment and work.”

The ad campaign is being coordinated by Sacramento-based public relations firm BCFS Public Affairs.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“A somber moment in the life of our country, when it’s necessary to arraign a former president on criminal charges. As the case falls to the DA to prove, we must recognize what is most important: Even the most powerful are held to account, and that nobody is above the law.”

- Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, who led the impeachment proceedings for now former President Donald Trump, via Twitter.

Best of The Bee:

• President Joe Biden declared another major disaster in California Monday as the state deals with the repercussions of a new bout of severe storms, via Gillian Brassil.

• Donald Trump made history on Tuesday when he was booked and arraigned in a Manhattan courthouse as the first former president ever to face criminal charges. But historians are looking beyond his indictment with anxiety over what might follow, via Michael Wilner.

• A California lawmaker is trying to create a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented farmworkers, via Mathew Miranda.

• Donald Trump has accused Ron DeSantis of being a shapeshifting political fraud, argued he’s bought and paid for by wealthy donors and even baselessly suggested — without evidence — his political rival engaged in inappropriate romantic relationships. And yet Florida’s Republican governor, visiting this battleground state to build national support before a likely presidential campaign, still rushed to the former president’s defense on Saturday against an indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, via Alex Roarty.

• Californians are making much bigger auto loan payments nowadays than they were a decade ago, and more and more consumers are unable to make their loan payments, via David Lightman.