Candidate Profile: Rashon Young

Rashon Young has some key dates marked off on his June calendar. 

First is his 26th birthday on June 22. But the second comes two days later on June 24 and is perhaps even more important to him. It’s the Democratic Primary for the House District 40 special election. This year, the best birthday gift anyone can give him, Young said, is their vote. 

“Our elections matter, and that is why we have to make sure that people turn out for this election and others, to elect members who have the people’s best interests at heart,” Young told VoxPopuli in a recent phone interview. 

Young is campaigning against former State Rep. Travaris McCurdy in the primary for House District 40, which encompasses Windermere, Ocoee, Pine Hills, College Park, Apopka and parts of Orlando, Maitland and Winter Park. The winner will face Republican Tuan Le. The Apopka aerospace engineer — who has twice run unsuccessfully for Congress in District 10 — is the only Republican to qualify for the Sept. 2 special election. Write-in candidate Christopher Hall also qualified. 

Florida state representatives serve two-year terms and earn $29,697 annually.

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is June 12. Early voting will take place June 14 to 22, daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Click here for early voting locations.

Longtime partnership

While 15 years younger than his opponent, Young said one advantage he has is that he’s spent the last three years working in House District 40 as chief of staff to State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis. He began working for her out of college as the community programming manager for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. When she decided to run for office in 2022, she asked him what he wanted to do. 

“I said I wanted to do work that meets at the intersection of people and policy,” he said. “I left and worked in the Senate for a little while, and then as soon as she got elected [as state representative], I came on as her chief of staff. The rest really is history.”

The line of mentorship from the late State Sen. Geraldine F. Thompson to Bracy Davis, and from Bracy Davis to Young, is one that he said speaks to an effort to invest in younger generations — something he says isn’t always present in the political space. 

“You find politicians who get so stuck in the cycle that they don't necessarily pour into the next generation out of fear that they're coming,” Young said. “I don't believe that you can have a true investment in your community, have a true interest that you're serving, if you don't make an intentional effort to ensure that as you transcend or transition out of this space, that you pass it to someone who has the best interest of the people in mind.”

He’s grateful to Thompson for identifying Bracy Davis as her “heir apparent,” as it inspired a conversation about what leadership for House District 40 should look like to ensure its constituents would have a “fighter” working for them. When Bracy Davis announced her run for state senate, she broadly hinted that if Young ran, she would endorse him — and she has. Young said he knows constituents because he’s been in the district at neighborhood association meetings, town halls, graduations and parades. He recently attended the graduation ceremony for Evans High School seniors, some of whom were members of Future Leaders United, an after-school leadership development program. 

“When we first met some of these kids, they were freshmen or sophomores, and now we just watched 35 of them from that program walk across that stage,” Young said. “We know them, they know me. That's not something that you get by knocking on doors on the campaign trail. That's something that you get by doing work with people who call the district home.”

Top issues

Young’s campaign website lists education, civil rights, economic security, climate action, sustainable growth and youth empowerment among the issues that he believes affect his constituents. 

But affordability tops all others, Young said. 

“Floridians cannot afford to be Floridians anymore,” Young said. “They are being outpriced. There are people who are having to work three jobs to pay for one roof. We have to make a concerted effort to tackle this affordability crisis because people are struggling from gas to groceries to rent, to property tax, to property insurance, to car insurance — everything is expensive.”

The cost of living is rising while wages aren’t, he said. He calls the issue an “elephant.”

“This is not a small issue that we can address with one thing," Young said. "But the way that you eat an elephant is bit by bit. We have to have intentional conversations about how we can strategically decrease the livability cost for those who want to call and do call Florida home. People are being priced out of the neighborhoods that they grew up in. Seniors are having to decide between meals and medication. It's not fair.”

Young supports some legislative efforts to address the state’s cost-of-living crisis, such as the Live Local Act, which promotes affordable housing opportunities. But he says there’s always room for expansion. 

He also wants to address healthcare access issues, like reducing prescription drug costs and expanding Medicaid. He described it as a "passion project."

“I sit on the board for 26Health, which is a health organization in downtown Orlando that prioritizes care for underinsured and non-insured patients. By working in that space, I see the disparity of health access and health equity in House District 40 and in Central Florida.”

He said expensive healthcare impacts everyone and just because someone lives in a particular ZIP code doesn’t mean they can afford quality healthcare. 

“How do we subsidize and help with health costs to ensure that people are getting good, quality care? Because let me be honest with you, I don't know if you've ever been to a Department of Health, but that's not quality care,” he said.

Education is another priority, especially in underserved neighborhoods throughout the district. 

“How do we empower our students and our next generation to be the entrepreneurs that break the cycle of poverty in their communities?” Young asked. “How do we empower the next generation to be the political leaders to make positive policy decisions that help to make sure that everyone has access to educational institutions?”

Public-private partnerships can help address education, but he said there needs to be more conversations about these types of solutions. Young pointed to Valencia College's recent offer of full-tuition scholarships to graduating seniors at Evans and Jones high schools as one example of “chiseling away at the boulder” of an issue through multiple players. (Both Evans and Jones high schools are Title 1 schools, which means they receive federal funds to supplement what the schools provide because they have a high percentage of low-income students. Evans has a 68 percent poverty rate while Jones' is 77 percent.) 

He said constituents are also concerned about the environment, including protecting Florida's natural waterways, transitioning to clean energy and addressing climate change.

“We need to be having conversations about what the beautification of spaces across Orange County should look like,” he said. “There are studies that have talked about the need for trees to reduce carbon in our environment, but underserved and minority areas also don’t have access to trees or shade or have light pollution.”

Addressing the greater climate crisis will require partnership at the municipal, state and federal levels, especially as storms have become more frequent and intensified, he added. 

Justice for all  

For Young, civic engagement is a value he’s long championed. Voter suppression is at an all-time high, he said, marked by what he called “fearmongering” campaigns going on behind access to the ballot box. He said in the last six years, there have been “concerted efforts from those in leadership” to suppress the vote.

He considers his work with Bracy Davis on the Harry T. and Harriet V. Moore Florida Voting Rights Act as one of his most significant efforts in politics. The measure, which he described as Thompson's “brainchild,” seeks to expand voter access by establishing Election Day as a holiday, repealing laws that complicate voting by mail and authorizing same-day voter registration. If elected, he said that he and Bracy Davis will continue to get that legislation passed.

“We put a lot of effort and a lot of attention to the bill,” Young said. “I mean the first time it was written, it was 87 pages. When we tried it again this year, it expanded to about 113.”

As of May 3, the bill was indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration in the House, but Young has said it will be the first bill he files if elected. 

“Freedom is expressing our voice through our right to vote,” he said. “I feel given all of the, probably consciously, bad policies that extreme Republicans are pushing in Tallahassee, they realize that they’re not representing the majority of the people who call this state home … The way that they protect their place in the political system is by making it harder for people to vote.”

Young also wants to have more conversations about prison sentence disparities that disproportionately affect Black and Brown populations, improving inmate living conditions that are more conducive for rehabilitation and police accountability. At the same time, he wants to work with the Department of Criminal Corrections on matters such as ensuring corrections officers receive better pay and investing in mental health services in the Department of Juvenile Justice. 

“If we address those issues, then we will break this playground-to-prison pipeline that we're seeing in communities of color,” Young said. 

Young told VoxPopuli that he worked with members of both parties in the House on House Bill 1405 to reform the state’s juvenile justice system. Bracy Davis co-sponsored it with Republican Rep. Berny Jacques of Pinellas County, at the behest of the Department of Juvenile Justice. The bill unanimously passed both the House and Senate and Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign it. 

Still, Young said Tallahassee has a “different dynamic” today than in past years, one he has experienced firsthand. “The Tallahassee that was, is not the Tallahassee that is right now.” 

But he knows the leadership — and they know him.  “They know that I'm coming to fight. They know that I am following someone who has been extremely vocal on the issues that matter to the people of this district and that I'm going to continue that work.

“I'm not looking to do anything different in regard to the work that I've been doing,” Young said. “We have to certainly become innovative in our approach to addressing anything, but I'm looking to do the same work in a different seat.”