Christian Fong

By THOMAS BEAUMONT • tbeaumont@dmreg.com • December 2, 2009

Cedar Rapids Republican Christian Fong remains a rising political star despite announcing Tuesday he was giving up his 2010 campaign for governor, supporters said.

Fong attributed the decision to leave the race to difficulty he had raising campaign contributions in recent months. But he promised to remain involved politically and didn’t rule out running again for governor.

“I wouldn’t have started if I didn’t think I could win. But, at 32, this is just round one,” Fong said. “I’m not closing any doors.”

(Cedar Rapids, IA)   Christian Fong, Republican gubernatorial candidate announced that effective today he will suspend his campaign for Governor. 

“Today, I announce the suspension of my campaign.  From this time forward, we will not be actively campaigning for the Republican nomination for Governor.   While today marks a change of direction for our campaign and for myself personally, today is not an end to my passion to see the Iowa Dream restored,” said Fong.

“Over the coming months, I intend to be actively involved in the process even if it’s not as a formal candidate for Governor.   Iowa is faced with historic challenges and   opportunities.  The decision voters make in 2010 will greatly shape the future of our state.   I personally want to ensure we continue to have a lively discussion about reforming our income tax code, reversing population and job losses in Iowa and addressing the “Brain Drain.”   Electing a Republican nominee who is committed to addressing these issues with substantive plans will lead to success, both next November against Governor Culver, and through the next four years.” 

EAGLE GROVE - A new vision and a bright future.

This is the focus of the Eagle Grove Chamber of Commerce.

And it’s the topic Christian Fong addressed at the chamber’s annual fall harvest banquet Monday.

“I believe Iowa will be the next great economic engine in the world,” said Fong, who is seeking the Iowa Republican gubernatorial nomination. “There is a tremendous brain gain in our state because of our quality education.”

However, many of the youths Iowa educates are also one of its largest exports, which has become known as the brain drain, Fong said.

According to Fong, the main reason youths leave the state, or rural areas, is that they receive better job offers elsewhere.

As the chair of the Generation Iowa Commission for a year, Fong and his colleagues looked at how they could retain young workers. The commission asked 1,000 young people what their highest priority was when accepting a job offer.

The youngest candidate seeking the Republican nomination for governor often starts campaign speeches talking not about himself, but about his father, a Chinese immigrant who, at times, ate rotten potatoes to save money to help his family flee communism.

Christian Fong, 32, was born in the United States, but he tells of wearing hand-me-down clothes and benefiting from government-subsidized school lunches during his childhood in western Iowa.

His campaign combines calls for personal sacrifice, fiscal responsibility and social conservatism, all stirred by ambition and a talent for strategic thinking that have driven him since childhood, those who know him best say.

Christian Fong, the youngest of the GOP field at 32, talked about his father’s immigration from China, in search of the American dream.

Fong said he’s proud to be the son of an immigrant, quickly emphasizing his father was a legal immigrant.

Fong has followed his own Iowa dream, he said, growing up in a poor family, but going on to graduate from college and earn an MBA from Dartmouth. Today, he’s managing director of capital markets with AEGON USA.

CLINTON — Republican gubernatorial candidate Christian Fong stopped in Clinton on Thursday on a statewide campaign that will focus on phasing out the state income tax by 2020 and reversing population losses in areas outside of Des Moines.

Fong, a 32-year-old Cedar Rapids businessman, is running for the Republican nomination for governor despite never holding public office.

He said if elected he would shrink the size of government by five percent in his first year, which would be the first step to reducing the state’s reliance on the income tax.

Christian Fong isn’t easily intimidated. 

The 32-year-old Cedar Rapids businessman is running for the Republican nomination for governor despite never holding public office and competing against several more experienced candidates, likely including a four-term governor. Then comes the prospect of trying to defeat an incumbent governor, an achievement not accomplished since 1962. 

In an interview with The Associated Press, Fong said the key is the “next generation” of younger voters that President Barack Obama energized in the last campaign. Those voters, Fong said, view the world outside the prism of traditional party politics, instead thinking more in generational terms. 

“We have a very active next-generation vote,” said Fong. “They are largely independents. The key voting block that Republicans ignore at their peril is eastern Iowa independents. If the Republicans lose the independent voting block in eastern Iowa, they lose any statewide election.”

Chinese communists swept to power in the last century without mentioning plans to nationalize businesses or institute forced abortions, Republican gubernatorial candidate Christian Fong told supporters of the Iowa Minuteman Civil Defense Corps on Saturday.

“They came in promising hope and change,” Fong said. “Sound familiar?”

Fong, a Cedar Rapids businessman who described himself Saturday as the son of a Nebraska farm girl and “a legal immigrant” from China, told a crowd of roughly 30 onlookers at a Minuteman rally that he should be “allowed to take this a little more personally as the son of someone who had to do it the right way.”

SIOUX CITY—Holding his first series of public meetings in Northwest Iowa since announcing his 2010 gubernatorial candidacy, Christian Fong unveiled that he proposes cutting Iowa income taxes to zero.

Finishing up a 17-event tour with a 1,400-mile swing through western Iowa before heading home to Cedar Rapids, Fong spoke at Spencer and Sioux City events that were closed to the news media. In an interview, Fong said as governor he would begin the process of cutting the state income tax rate, targeting incremental cuts in the middle of his term, before moving to completely end the state income tax.

“We have got to get our state income taxes to zero,” he said.

“It’s spin or accounting tricks,” Christian Fong said of the state budget.

“But it’s not common sense.”

The insurance executive from Cedar Rapids made his first campaign stop Monday in Spencer and touted himself as a social conservative and economist who pledged to shrink the size of state government by 5 percent in his first year as governor.

He’s seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Gov. Chet Culver, the presumed Democratic nominee. Fong said the governor is misguided in an attempt to borrow his way through a budget crisis.

“Iowans don’t take money from their kids to pay for things—for themselves—today,” he said. “Now, at the state government level, that’s called bonding to pay for a budget deficit.”

During a visit to Denison on Thursday Christian Fong said he is running for governor to preserve access to the American dream.

As the fourth of eight kids born to a Chinese immigrant who came to Iowa seeking political freedom at a time when his country was blanketed in communism, Fong said he “grew up hearing about what happens when freedoms slip away.

“It took an entire community to give me a chance – that’s the Iowa dream,” Fong said.

Every kid in Iowa should have the chance to emerge and compete on an international level, he continued.

MASON CITY — Christian Fong, son of a Chinese immigrant, says he has been fortunate to have “lived the Iowa dream.”

The Cedar Rapids business executive is running for governor because he says “Access to the Iowa dream is slipping further and further away.”

Fong, 32, is seeking the Republican nomination for governor with the winner facing Gov. Chet Culver in the November 2010 elections.

(Cedar Rapids, IA) Iowa gubernatorial candidate and Cedar Rapids businessman Christian Fong (R) today called for the Legislature and Governor to enact the Iowa Transparency Act in response to the Iowa Film Office tax credit fiasco.

“Obviously the Culver administration has failed at almost every level to provide an adequate level of oversight on the tax credits that were paid out under the Iowa film office, as Iowans were made aware this week. The lack of transparency and accountability in state government may have been averted if we had in place an online transparency system. With today’s news that errors in the tax credits were evident as early as July of this year, this could have been corrected months ago,” said Christian Fong.

Republican candidate Christian Fong says if he’s elected governor, he’ll issue an executive order that forbids state agencies from hiring lobbyists.  Fong says it’s important to stop the cycle which sees state agency lobbyists who earn a taxpayer-funded salary asking legislators for more money for their agency.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Christian Fong says now is “not the time to stick our heads in the sand” and just hope the Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (IPERS) rights itself.  Fong is a chartered financial analyst — the designation for those who manage investment portfolios and he says the $4 billion drop in value of that IPERS  fund is a “big hole.”

“I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life in the investment profession and so I have a unique view of what it would take to manage IPERS through this sort of situation,” Fong says.  “…My own family depends on IPERS.  My wife, a former school teacher, has an retirement account there.  Look, I join more than one-in-10 Iowans who depend on IPERS and have a very personal concern as well.”