Candidate Profile: RaShon Young

Prior to the Democratic Special Election Primary for House District 40 in June, RaShon Young said the best gift anyone could give him for his upcoming birthday would be 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 at the time.

Winning the primary two days after his 26th birthday with 55.44 percent of the 5,039 ballots cast, Young got his birthday wish — the Democratic nomination. Now he faces Republican Tuan Le — an Apopka aerospace engineer, who has twice run unsuccessfully for Congress in District 10 — in the Sept. 2 general Special Election for House District 40.

“I am honored, humbled, and ready to serve,” Young wrote in a June 24 primary night statement posted on his Instagram.

Florida state representatives earn $29,697 annually and typically serve for two years. However, the winner of this election will serve through 2026 to finish the remainder of State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis's term. She resigned her seat, effective Sept. 1, to run for the state senate seat in District 15 that opened with the unexpected death of Sen. Geraldine Thompson in February.

House District 40 encompasses Windermere, Ocoee, Pine Hills, College Park, Apopka, Maitland, Winter Park and parts of Orlando.

Aug. 21 is the last day to request a mail-in ballot. Early voting takes place Aug. 23-31, daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Click here for early voting locations.

Longtime partnership

Although some critics have questioned his age and political experience, Young said he has his own advantage  — he’s spent the last three years working in House District 40 as Bracy Davis's chief of staff. He began working with her, fresh out of college, when she was still at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. He became her community programming manager. 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.”

That Young is running now is largely because Bracy Davis chose run for her mentor's seat in the state senate. Thompson's death opened one seat; Bracy Davis' decision to run opened up another. The line of mentorship from Thompson to 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 sphere. 

“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,” since that 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 in March, she broadly hinted that if Young ran, she would endorse him — and she has, continuing to do so after his primary win. 

Where Young stands

Young said his priorities include affordable housing, quality education, healthcare access and equal justice. The Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey he filled out in May also lists preventing gun violence, protecting women's reproductive health and LGBTQ+ rights as additional key concerns.

But affordability, he said, tops all others. 

“Floridians cannot afford to be Floridians anymore,” Young said. “They are being out-priced. 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 explained. "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.”

To that end, 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 more. 

He also wants to address healthcare access issues, like reducing prescription drug costs and expanding Medicaid, now all the more urgent since an estimated 2.3 million Floridians, particularly in Central Florida and South Florida, are expected to lose their healthcare insurance with the passage of the Republicans' Big Beautiful Bill.

Expensive healthcare, Young said, 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. Young supports investing in public schools, expanding universal Pre-K access and increasing teacher pay. Florida continues to rank at the bottom of the nation in teacher salaries according to the National Education Association.

“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 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.) 

The environment is another critical concern, 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 dioxide]  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. The first named hurricane of the season, Hurricane Erin, quickly intensified within hours into a category 5 storm before being downgraded to a category 3.

‍Equal justice   

Young said that voter suppression is at an all-time high, marked by what he called “fear mongering” campaigns aimed at denying access to the ballot box. In the last six years, he said there have been “concerted efforts from those in leadership” to suppress the vote.

That's why he considers his work with Bracy Davis on the Harry T. and Harriet V. Moore Florida Voting Rights Act one of his most significant efforts in politics. The measure, which he described as Thompson's “brainchild,” is intended to expand voter access by establishing Election Day as a holiday and authorizing permanent mail-in ballot requests, same-day voter registration, expanded language access and a centralized database for returning citizens to verify their voting eligibility. The measure would also roll back laws that complicate voting by mail and eliminate the election police.

“Freedom is expressing our voice through our right to vote,” Young 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.”

Introduced twice in two separate legislative sessions and considered one of the most comprehensive pieces of voting legislation in decades, the Florida Voting Rights Act has yet to get a hearing in the Legislature. But Young said that if he's elected, it will be the first bill he files and that he and Bracy Davis will continue to work 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.”

Young has also spoken out against what he sees as an imbalance in immigration status. He points to white South Africans granted refugee status in the United States based on false reports of killings while other groups of immigrants, including those who had temprary protective status against real violence in their home countries, are targeted by the state and federal government for deportation.

“I can’t tell you what the intent is but it seems like it is carving out certain groups and prioritizing certain groups over others,” Young said. “I think that equity is important and we need to make sure that everyone has the same level to be able to have access to gaining citizenship in the United States."

He added that talk about trimming waste and profligate government spending didn't land well "when you have [officials] flying migrants out of the state on taxpayer dollars, when you're running these anti-immigrants campaigns. That's money that could be going back into the pockets of Floridians."

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 was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on June 19. 

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 said that he knows the leadership — and they know him. 

“They know that I'm coming to fight," he said. "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 looking to do the same work in a different seat.”