Ritesh Tandon

Ritesh Tandon earned an B.S. in mechanical engineering from LD College of Engineering (India), an M.S. in computer engineering from Santa Clara University, and an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University.[1] Tandon's career experience includes working as the CEO of Kricel Corporation and as a research fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. Tandon has served as chief liaison officer for Smart Village Movement, as vice-chairman of UPMA, and on the executive committee of the Sankara Eye Foundation.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I'm Ritesh Tandon — engineer, business leader, and father. I've called the Bay Area home for 26 years and served as a community volunteer the entire time, helping families across CA-17.

I'm running for Congress to bring common-sense policies to Washington and work across both aisles.

I follow the American Constitution. In 2021, I stood up to Gavin Newsom and won a landmark 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling — Tandon v. Newsom — defending religious liberty for every American.

I don't just talk. I fight and win:

✓ DEFEATED Prop 16 — stopped race-based admissions & hiring

✓ DEFEATED SB 403 — the caste bill dividing our community

✓ LED the recall of a far-left CA state senator

✓ Top-2 finisher TWICE as a REPUBLICAN — +4% every cycle

Engineer. MBA, Santa Clara University. Research Fellow, UC Berkeley Haas. Congress needs engineering discipline, not more lawyers.

My promises to CA-17:

Cut taxes, lower costs, restore the middle class

Secure the border & enforce Voter ID — only Americans decide American elections

Merit-based education — VOTE NO on ACA 7

8-year term limits & ban Congressional stock trading

BRING JOBS BACK TO CALIFORNIA — stop companies fleeing the state

Constitution & YOUR freedoms FIRST — no compromise

Endorsed by CA Congress of Republicans, Silicon Valley Chinese Association, Many community leaders.

I'm not a politician — I'm a public servant who's beaten the establishment. I'll do it again in Washington.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

AFFORDABILITY FOR EVERY FAMILY.

CA-17 families are squeezed by rent, gas, groceries, and healthcare.

My plan: lower everyday living costs with middle-class relief, real market competition, and cracking down on hidden fees.

Make housing affordable — federal incentives for new supply and first-time homebuyer support.

Lower healthcare and Rx costs through price transparency and preventive care. Stop tax-and-fee overload — oppose CA's wealth tax and mileage tax.

Cut waste, fraud, and bureaucracy — an estimated $1T per year.

STOP CORRUPTION IN WASHINGTON: 8-year term limits, ban Congressional stock trading, read every bill before voting.

A government accountable to YOU — not lobbyists, not special interests. CUT THE FAT.BRING JOBS BACK TO CA & AI EDUCATION

Stop companies fleeing California — make it the place jobs come HOME to.

Simplify small-business taxes so Main Street can grow.

Protect American startups and employee ownership — modernize stock-option tax treatment. End endless red tape with a One-In, Two-Out federal regulation rule.

Fast-track permits for data centers, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing.

Every K-12 student should graduate AI-literate — fundamentals, ethics, and digital safety. AI in every college, not just CS — business, healthcare, engineering, law.

Rapid AI upskilling for workers and veterans.

Federal incentives for AI implementation that CREATE jobs, not layoffs. Buy American. Build American. Train American.MERIT, BORDERS & YOUR FREEDOMS — NO COMPROMISE.

VOTE NO on ACA 7 — it strips Prop 209's equal-treatment protections from K-12 AND college programs, reopening the door to race-based treatment. Every child deserves to be judged on merit.

Fund the child, not the bureaucracy — public, charter, or parents' choice. Put parents back at the center of education. Safety on every campus — zero tolerance for violence and threats.

Secure the border with modern technology, anti-cartel ops, and rapid processing. End catch-and-release.

Enforce Voter ID — only American citizens decide American elections.

Stand against identity politics dividing our community.

Constitution and YOUR freedoms FIRST — every vote, no compromise.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Two issues drive me —

BRING JOBS BACK TO CALIFORNIA. I'm an engineer. For 26 years I've watched Silicon Valley build the future — and watched company after company pack up and leave over taxes, red tape, and political nonsense. We can't keep losing Tesla, Oracle, HP, and the next 1,000 startups. CA-17 should be where jobs come HOME.

AI EDUCATION FOR EVERY STUDENT AND WORKER. AI is the biggest economic shift of our lifetime. Either every American kid graduates AI-literate, or we hand the future to other countries. I want AI fundamentals in every K-12 classroom, AI in every college major — not just CS — and fast retraining for workers and veterans. AI should CREATE jobs — not replace workers.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

look up to leaders who paid a personal cost for doing the right thing. The ones who stood up when it would've been easier to sit down, who told the truth when a lie would've polled better, who fought for people who couldn't fight for themselves. They led with conviction, not calculation. That's the example I want to follow.

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

Honesty, courage, and actually showing up. Voters can tell the difference between a representative who's performing and one who's listening. The job is to fight for your community even when it's politically inconvenient — and to tell the truth about hard tradeoffs instead of pretending they don't exist.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

Three things: pass laws that make life better for working families, hold the executive branch accountable, and show up for constituents when federal agencies fail them. A House member who forgets they work for the district has already lost the plot.

What legacy would you like to leave?

That my district was treated like it mattered. I want families here to look back and say their representative actually delivered — on housing they could afford, schools they could trust, and a real shot at the American Dream for their kids.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

Cisco — for 11 years. It was my first real job, and I helped build and design the IP phones that ended up on desks all over the world. I stayed because I believed in what we were building and the people I was building it with. I learned that you don't get great results from shortcuts — you get them from showing up every day, doing the work, and treating the people around you with respect. I still carry that with me.

What is something that has been a struggle in your life?

Losing my father. He was my mentor, my guide, the person I called whenever I didn't know what to do. When he passed, I had to learn how to carry questions I used to bring to him — and lean on family, faith, and community in a way I hadn't before. It taught me that no one gets through the hard moments alone, and that the job of anyone in public service is to make sure people have something to lean on when life knocks them down.

What qualities does the U.S. House of Representatives possess that makes it unique as an institution?

The House is the chamber closest to the people. Two-year terms keep every member accountable to the voters who sent them, and with 435 representatives, every community — rural, urban, coastal, heartland — gets a voice in the room. It's loud, it's messy, and that's the point. The House is supposed to look like America actually looks.

What do you perceive to be the United States' greatest challenges as a nation over the next decade?

Affordability, AI, and the erosion of trust in our institutions. If working families can't afford to live in the country they helped build, and if people stop believing democracy works for them, nothing else we fix will hold. The next decade is about proving government can still deliver.

Do you believe that compromise is necessary or desirable for policymaking?

Compromise on tactics, never on values. Refusing to ever cut a deal means nothing gets done — and your constituents are the ones who pay for that purity. But compromise has to mean meeting in the middle, not surrendering before the fight even starts.

What organizations or individuals have endorsed your campaign?

California Congress of Republicans (Official body of California Republican)

SVCA - Silicon Valley Chinese Association

Multiple Community Leaders

What was the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember?

9/11. I was working at Cisco when the news came in, and I'll never forget how the whole office just stopped — strangers checking on each other, neighbors showing up for neighbors in the days after. What stayed with me wasn't the fear. It was how Americans came together when it mattered most. That's the country I'm running to protect.

Ritesh Tandon did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2024 Candidate Connection survey.

Campaign website

Tandon’s campaign website stated the following:

Public Safety & Security

Our law enforcement officials put their lives on the line each and every day to protect those of us going about in our daily lives. I will not tolerate the radical liberal policies calling for defunding our police and spewing anti-police rhetoric.

As a US Congressional candidate, I will make sure to motivate our police department and protectors of the state of California to enhance public safety and defend the people from significant crimes.

Additionally, I will prohibit the federal government to continue allowing unfettered access into our state. Currently, we have wide-open, unsecured borders, and 20% of San Jose residents are undocumented. Meanwhile, our lawmakers are allowing them to vote in elections like Mayor, City Council, or School Board instead of taking action.

People are unsafe, and our businesses are broken into very frequently. We cannot let this persistently affect our state.

We must rehabilitate our asylum policies and work towards a comprehensive solution to this crisis and stop drug cartels and illegal immigrants from coming to our state.

Our border patrol agents are putting their lives on the line, daily, to help keep our country safe. We must ensure our border patrol is fully-funded and return to policies that keep our state out of harm’s way.

Protect Silicon Valley Jobs

Supercharge the Silicon Valley to innovate for the next century

We have to plan for the next century of innovation for the Valley. It must be done with close cooperation from the government, the local universities, and investors. The next generation technologies necessary for the United States are artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and advanced medicine including gene therapies. We must transform Silicon Valley into a behemoth of Bio-Silicon Valley. For this to happen, Congress must act in harmony with the spirit of the valley. I intend to introduce federal programs, tax incentives, and low cost funds to encourage diversification of the Silicon Valley industry start-ups.

Silicon Valley has over a century of innovations and start-up history. Tremendous amount of that credit goes to the unique philosophy of Stanford University where it encouraged its faculty members to start companies. It supported the discovery of Audion tubes by Lee De Forrest with $500 funded by the university president David Starr Jordan, in early 1900s. Ambitious guidance of Dr. Terman at Stanford, who did not like the idea of his electrical engineering graduates to migrate to the east coast for jobs, created Hewlett Packard. Close partnership of Stanford with the industry, the military, and its establishment of Stanford Industrial Park to house companies, catapulted this valley to where it is today –a $3 Trillion neighborhood.

Factors that made the Silicon Valley successful were to attract highly educated engineers and scientists, and let them experiment freely without the fear of failure. Proliferation of the VC money took risks with thousands of companies, thereby creating an amazing spectacle of new Electronics and Internet related industry formations in the history of this world. The rewards for this pioneering spirit of the valley are apparent. As an entrepreneur and future policy maker, I will encourage sensible regulations for the start-ups, such that the spirit of innovation and the investor money does not stop flowing.

We must keep the tax rates low and regulations reasonable in order for new industries to start, grow, thrive and complete worldwide. I want the companies to start here and stay here. We don’t want where, for example, the chip manufacturing, and computer manufacturing completely went overseas. We want key expansion to happen locally such that the IP remains within the valley and rest of the country.

Covid-19 crisis teaches us that we need to change tax laws to encourage domestic manufacturing. A 5-10 years tax holiday, along with low interest rate loan incentives, would help establish domestic manufacturing across the country and enhance the middle class living wages. I will introduce such visionary bills in the congress.

For us to thrive as a country, we must protect the enormous intellectual property created by the Valley. I will propose strict IP security related bills. Potential candidates are: 1.) All technology transfers to any foreign entities, regardless of ownership, must get a review and an approval. 2.) University admissions of personnel and collaborations from certain countries on key research areas need to be scrutinized carefully. 3.) IP protection laws also need to be examined carefully, particularly, where Patents on key technologies can be copied, or transformed.

In and around the Valley, we need Federal funds to acquire industrial parks to kick start companies with low cost facilities during incubation period. In our district, we have many sites for such purposes. I have targeted Milpitas, Fremont, and Newark as candidates for such funds. These towns have land to host variety of supply chain manufacturing support.

In order to attract diversity of start-ups and help their employees, the government needs to be creative partner. Start-ups compensate hardworking employees and investors in many innovative ways such as stock options, stock purchase plans, and carried interest to name a few. A flexible tax treatment is required to un-burden hardworking innovators. When companies grow and mature, you still want creative entrepreneurial skill to continue to compete in the world. I would support a program where an “employee dividend plan” is not taxed. This would be amazingly attractive for a continuous industry innovation and expansion.

Create better educational opportunities for our children

Educational Reforms for our children

Children are our future, and parents should have a major role in determining that future! This should be the prime principle for our nation. The “progressives?” democrats like our incumbent should be defeated like Terry McAuliffe – the ex governor of Virginia – who proclaimed twice that parents should have nothing to do with education. They think your children are a state property. Are they? This notion is only valid in Communist countries, not in freedom loving democracies like the US.

Just to remind my constituents, our incumbent congressman supported race-based quotas in higher education admissions: He fully supported California’s ACA5/prop 16 based racial make up quotas in education, jobs, or public contracts, after promising, in writing, years before that he would not support any such laws. He is a turncoat not to be trusted! Our district is heavily Asian and our incumbent congressman is an Asian, yet his policies have been anti-Asian! I am glad that prop 16 was defeated! Now, Lets defeat this anti-Asian incumbent with his extreme left “Progressive” policies that are regressive – not progressive – and infantile. Lets take our kids back and educate them the way YOU want them to be educated, not the state, not the politicians, not the biased school boards, and not the teachers unions.

The reason Virginia parents won and the “progressive?” Governor was thrown out, is because he supported shameful curriculums that 1.) Promote discussion of sexual contents at early age in schools; 2.) Recommends reading of books like “Queer” in high schools, which graphically describes same sex acts; 3.) Encourage racist and divisive messages of Critical Race theories. School Boards that approve and encourage pornographic materials in schools are despicable. These educators are normalizing garbage under the garb of “progressive?” ideas. What is furious is that they don’t want the parents involved in reviewing the materials taught in schools! They obviously know that parents would not allow their kids exposed to such nonsense. Would you tolerate such degradation in our education system? Your incumbent congressman supports teachers unions and educators that are responsible for this degradation! While the world is racing to teach STEM curriculum to their kids, we are teaching pornography and race divisions to them. I would say that it is time to throw out the public school system and make school choice a mandatory law.

Progressive democrats like your incumbent support messages of critical race theory (CRT) in our institutions: It is racist and divisive. American value is that we must treat everybody equally and stop talking about oppressors (white race) and victims (blacks) in race relations dialogue – History is history and should be taught with a balanced and forgiving perspective. CRT also is bringing in the “Asian Privilege” in their messages. Most of you in district 17 are Asians and are labeled as privileged. It is because you worked hard and have accumulated money. Therefore, you are must be racists. What nonsense!

Teaching our children that racism arises within your skin color, and you are born with it, is totally un-American and unacceptable. Progressives like Ro Khanna support this CRT ideology and its messages. Believe me, it will not help the black community! You want to help the black community with love and care and educational training. They should receive positive encouragement messages of seeing themselves as being equal, and that individual merit counts. Progressives like Ro Khanna should abide by what Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. said to all of the US.

Recently, Ivy League college admission policy discriminating against the Asians has been challenged in the Supreme Court. Under the pretext of diversity, Asians – a minority in the US – are refused admissions in favor of other minorities. This practice damages the Asians, who want to excel in life through hard work – an all American value. The economic and psychological damage caused to the hard working Asians children by refusing admissions to top schools is enormous. Hopefully, just like the defeat of Prop 16 in California, this abhorrent practice of diversity based admissions, jobs, government contracts, etc. will stop throughout our nation. We need the discriminatory admissions challenge in the Supreme Court to succeed similar to a victory won by a coalition of Parents in Fairfax county, Virginia.

Alexandria, Virginia; February 25, 2022: Today, a federal judge ruled that Fairfax County school officials violated the law by changing admissions requirements at the nation’s top public school to deliberately reduce the number of Asian-American students enrolled.

This arbitrary selection criterion of diversity, equity, and social justice allocation is harmful to our nation and federal laws must be made to protect freedom of education, jobs, and business contracts. I promise to work very hard to do just that.

All education institutions including high school should gear kids to earn a comfortable living wage. The school choice is a fundamental policy to achieve such an objective. It needs to be implemented throughout our nation. Public school system has failed to achieve this objective! Its record of the past 50 years is miserable, and has done damage to our kids by ignoring their primary responsibility of competitive education for our kids. The STEM education performance has been really poor in our schools. Teaching kids woke culture, pornography, and critical race theories in schools should not be a priority, as it does not make kids earn a good living. It is time to make a radical change in our school and university system, and create competition for the public schools, and the public universities – all tax dollars must go with the student wherever that student wants to go.

Additional programs that will help our kids earn a good living are: 1.) Apprenticeships that start at the high school level and continue to all levels of higher education. Focus on K-12 education quality is critical as it is the foundation to succeed for children. Our tax dollars and resources must be utilized in a manner where they are most effective and accountable. Educators must be held accountable and incentivized according to their performance. Tenure system must be reviewed and changed to hold faculty responsible for the outcomes for students.

American society must embrace ideals of equal opportunity for all without discrimination or preferences. Our children must adopt values of fair competition and success, which is the only way to make United States shine as an example of a fair society where American dream is possible through hard work alone, and not through political social engineering. I will vehemently oppose quota systems based on race, color, sex, and ethnicity. I will work at congress level to propose bills that will withhold federal funds if any state laws support any kind of preferential affirmative action and quotas.

US Education Policy

The Education Policy of the US is not a coordinated national policy as the 10th amendment gives the power of education to the states. However, to help the states and school districts, a formal department of education at the federal level started in 1980. The department, with its $60B budget, focuses its mission on supporting the states and school districts in their efforts to provide an equal access to high-quality education to all students, and on streamlining and simplifying funding for college and expanding access to new, high-quality post-secondary options. Last year, despite funding from the federal government and surplus funding with the CA state government, schools in Cupertino, Evergreen, and other areas in my district were closed. I strongly oppose the closure of any schools in our district. Read more.

States fund free education up to high school and charge nominal fees for post-secondary education. Post-secondary education has generally been acceptable, but K-12 education has come under critique.

For K-12 education, the state department of Education, and local School Boards control the education policy, curricula, and the administrative burden. Funding for education in California for the K-12 education comes from income and property taxes, and was about $102B in the year 2019. K-12 level education system has been criticized for providing less than quality education to the students, as they lack competitive ranking (US is 30th) in basic math and science education compared to many countries in the world. Many educators have argued the lack of funding as the key reason for the quality of education decline in the past 40-50 years.

Revenue and Expenses per pupil for K-12 schools in California’s Congressional District 17th

Fremont: Exp equals $10,331 Rev equals $12,575

Cupertino: Exp equals $10,574 Rev equals $11,635

Milpitas: Exp equals $10, 472 Rev equals $13683

Sunnyvale: Exp equals $13,572 Rev equals $15,019

Santa Clara: Exp equals $15,125 Rev equals $21,841

California: Avg. Exp: $12, 056 Avg. Rev equals $14,708

USA: Avg. Exp equals $11932 Avg. Rev equals $14, 146

Source: National Center for education statistics

Note: California expects the average expenditure per pupil to be around $17K in 2019.

Compared to OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation & Development) countries, the US spends about 30% more per pupil at primary and secondary education level, and 93% more at the post secondary level. In our congressional district, schools like Cupertino and Fremont did very well despite a lower than average spending compared to California and the US. So, spending levels may be only a small reason, if at all, for the lackluster educational performance at K-12 level in the US. We have to look at other ways to improve our K-12 education system.

History of our shift to the public school system is over 100 years old. Educators have felt that all children are state responsibility, and have pushed for a large and uniform public school system. It resulted in powerful teachers unions, and large administrative burdens. Milton Friedman, a Nobel prize winner economist, argued for more choices in the schooling system, which started the Charter schools and other options. Here is a survey of success of school choice:

In 2012, approximately 78 percent of kindergarten through 12th grade students attended the public school to which they were geographically assigned, about 14 percent attended a public school of their choice, and more than 8 percent attended a private school. In addition, among all children ages 5–17, approximately 3 percent were homeschooled in 2012, the latest year for which homeschool data are available. Satisfaction levels are the highest among private school parents, with more than 80 percent of parents saying they were ‘‘very satisfied’’ with their children’s school. Parents of children at public charter schools and public schools of choice also showed levels of satisfaction that were significantly higher than parents at geographically assigned district schools.

In today’s rapidly changing economy, it is more important than ever to prepare workers to fill existing and newly created jobs as well as the jobs of the future. However, higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable, and we are enrolling more foreign students to charge larger fees, and also importing highly qualified labor force that competes with the local students for jobs. This faulty admissions and immigration policy is raising the cost of getting good higher education and high paying jobs for our kids. Currently, far too many individuals leave postsecondary schools with unmanageable student debt and with no direct connection to jobs. We have to create comprehensive solutions to help our children compete well and get great jobs in the new economy.

Congress, in coordination with the states, must be active in meeting the above challenges. I am a very strong proponent of policies to provide multiple vocational pathways beginning in the high school that help students identify and build upon their unique strengths. I firmly believe that students need to have a full host of options, including technical schools, community colleges, ROCPs, and 4-year Colleges, all with strong apprenticeship programs.

I will propose and facilitate bills that will incentivize company apprenticeship programs, and reform the existing ineffective education and workforce development programs. This will help more Americans to obtain relevant skills and high-paying jobs. For example, apprenticeships with companies should start quickly after students join a course of study. Students will benefit from getting trained on the state of the art technology being used by the companies, get relevant workplace experiences and opportunities to develop skills that employers value. Also, this will pay partial living costs and tuition for the students. Federal matching programs can be used to incentivize such programs. These measures will provide affordable paths to good jobs, lesser or no student debt, and ultimately, fulfilling careers.

Admissions to the educational institutions must be with total disregard to race, sex, color, and ethnicity etc. All students must enjoy a very open and equal access to education that leads to high paying jobs. Recent defeat of the attempts by California Legislatures to change its constitution (Prop 16) to allow preferential system in admissions based on racial make up of the state, speaks volumes as prop 16 went against the very grain of American value of ZERO discrimination in the society. “Progressives?“ like Ro Khanna Supported Prop 16!

Any system of preferential affirmative action, reverse discrimination, and quotas will create sub-par skilled workforce and will corrupt the society. Instead, resources should be made available to underprivileged students at high school and college level so they learn and graduate with excellent skills to enter either higher educational institutions, or enter workforce at comfortable living wages. All Federal incentive programs must be tied to non-quota based admissions to the colleges and universities.

My opponent, incumbent congressman Ro Khanna, believes in social engineering of Prop16. Fortunately, it was defeated. Help me defeat his infantile ideas that waste our energies. We must forever discourage this race, color, and ethnicity-based preferences through Feder