Homeschooler Doc Launches Independent/Libertarian Challenge To DeLauro

A new congressional candidate running to represent New Haven as an Independent and Libertarian has an MD, and an Rx for America:

• Protection for diverse points of view.

• Expanded voting access.

• A localized food and production economy.

• And ​“school choice” policies in which government funds support public and private educational options for kids.

The candidate, Amy Chai (or ​“Doc Chai” as her campaign materials call her), pitched those ideas at a campaign launch on Tuesday afternoon at mActivity fitness center on Nicoll Street. She is running to unseat 16-term incumbent Democrat Rosa DeLauro and represent the Third U.S. Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

She is seeking the nominations of both the Independent Party and the Libertarian Party. The Libertarians have voted to endorse her candidacy; she is expected to receive the Independent nod at an upcoming convention.

DeLauro has represented the district, which includes New Haven, Hamden, Middletown, and Stratford, since 1990; she also faces a challenge from Republican candidate Lesley DeNardis.

Chai, 58, lives in North Haven. She has practiced internal medicine and epidemiology with a focus on ​“complex patients.”

“If America were my patient, I’d be very concerned because our nation is not well,” she said.

Chai took time off from her medical career to homeschool her two kids (who are now 25 and 28) in their middle and high school years. In 2011, she received a U.S. Presidential Teacher Award from the Obama administration recognizing her work as a home educator.

Her LinkedIn page identifies her as the teacher/administrator at ​“Chai Academy” (her homeschool) and highlights her experience beyond the medical field.

“I have experience as a janitor, a waitress, a librarian, a secretary, a lab technician, a physician, an author, a ghostwriter, and a teacher. I never used my hyper-academic training for my real goal, which was to be an academic physician in a research university,” Chai writes in the introduction. ​“My goal is to discover a new career for the second half of my life. I am frustrated by the way medicine is heading, and I am an old school physician who believes that paying doctors to think and counsel would save a lot of money and produce better outcomes. Nowadays, doctors would sooner do a total body MRI than listen to a patient for five minutes. Why? Because you don’t get paid to listen or think. Health care policy would be right up my alley.”

Chai said she came to Libertarianism in the 2000s as a way to ​“protest the war on terror.” While she said she supports a ​“strong military,” she considered the Iraq war unjustified. ​“I was so angry that both parties were killing innocent people and enacting regime changes,” she said.

Chai’s campaign team includes Jason Bartlett, Chai’s campaign strategist, and Rhonda Nelson Sheffield, her treasurer. Bartlett praised Chai’s ​“fresh ideas” and commitment to bringing ​“excellence to education.”

Rhonda Nelson-Sheffield noted that while she likes Rosa DeLauro, the incumbent representative has been in office ​“since I was in elementary school.” She said she was impressed with Chai’s perspective as a nationally recognized homeschool teacher.

Some of Chai’s policy priorities, as she explained on Tuesday, are connected to her experience in teaching and medicine. She said she believes in raising science and math education standards in schools, expanding healthcare access for substance use and mental health treatments, and enacting ​“school choice” policies in which public funds would ​“follow the child” and support their education in a public school, private school, or homeschool setting.

“There is a broad rift between the haves and the have-nots” when it comes to school quality, Chai said. ​“The achievement gaps are disturbing.”

Chai also promised to broaden voter access and institute legal protections opinion diversity if elected. She said she would propose a ​“Viewpoint Discrimination Act” that would amend the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on ​“viewpoints” in addition to identities like race, sex, and religion.

“I’m talking about legitimate viewpoints, not the KKK,” Chai said. She likened one’s opinions to other identities like sexual orientation that are immutable and deserving of protection from discrimination. ​“What’s more a part of who you are than your thoughts?” she asked.

As national debates rage on about whether to censor school curriculums that touch on African American slavery and queer identities, Chai said she supports the organization FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) For All’s views on the subject.

FAIR, which identifies as committed to an ​“anti-racism” and ​“pro-human” agenda, has challenged school curricula that focus on systemic racism and oppression as being ​“pessimistic,” ​“divisive,” ​“racial essentialist,” and ​“one-sided.”

Finally, Chai is proposing a ​“Green Future Initiative,” which would aim to create entirely local supply chains and fund locally-rooted environment initiatives. A local focus on agriculture and industry would both reduce the carbon footprint of supply production, Chai argued, and address the liabilities of international supply chains that the pandemic and the recent war in Ukraine revealed.

In general, Chai said, she would take an ​“evidence-based,” data-oriented approach to policy. She believes in experimenting with programs on a small, local scale; analyzing the outcomes of those programs; and tweaking them before expanding them to a national level, she said.