A Letter to Young Voters in CA-40

I want to talk to you directly. Not at you. To you.

I know you have heard every version of this before. The candidate who shows up at your campus or your coffee shop, says all the right things about your generation, and then goes to Washington and votes like none of you exist.

I know the cynicism is earned. I know what it feels like to be handed a world shaped entirely by decisions you had no part in making, to be told your voice matters, and then to watch nothing change when you use it. I am not going to pretend that did not happen. It did. Repeatedly. By both parties.

What I want to say to you is something different from what you have been told before. I want to start with the truth about what your generation is actually up against.

You entered adulthood during a pandemic that shut down the economy. You graduated into a job market that had been reshaped by automation and inflation. You are trying to afford rent in a district where the average home costs over a million dollars in parts and where a one-bedroom apartment runs more than most entry-level salaries can carry alone. If you have student debt, you are paying for a degree with money that does not exist yet, for a job market that keeps moving the goalposts.

You are doing all of this while being told by people who bought homes for $180,000 in 1987 that you just need to work harder and stop buying coffee.

That is not a character failure. That is a structural problem. The decisions that created these conditions were made in rooms you were not invited into, by representatives who were not thinking about you when they made them.

The national debt your generation will spend decades managing was built by administrations that never had to live with the consequences. The climate, the housing supply, the healthcare system, the AI disruption coming for entry-level jobs, every one of these was shaped by choices made before many of you could vote. You inherited the bill. You did not write it.

What I see when I look at your generation is not defeat. I see a generation that is critical to our future– and something this country needs right now more than it knows.

There is something else I see clearly that most politicians choose not to address.

Your generation is navigating a mental health crisis that did not happen by accident. Social media algorithms are deliberately engineered to keep you engaged through outrage, comparison, and anxiety. The reason is simple: outrage and anxiety drive engagement, and engagement drives revenue. The result is a generation that has grown up inside a system designed to make you feel inadequate, divided, and overwhelmed, and then been told the problem is your resilience.

It is not your resilience. It is the architecture. Depression, anxiety, and loneliness among young people have risen sharply in direct correlation with the rise of algorithmically driven social media. That is not a coincidence. It is a design outcome.

Congress has been slow to act because the companies profiting from your attention have spent enormous resources making sure it stays that way. I will push for algorithmic transparency requirements, meaningful mental health investment for young people, and the kind of honest reckoning with social media's impact on youth that this generation has deserved for years and has not received.

The good news is that -your generation is the most educated in American history. You are more racially and culturally diverse than any generation before you. You grew up with more information at your fingertips than any human being who ever lived, which means you are also better at detecting when someone is performing versus when someone is telling the truth. You have a finely tuned instinct for authenticity that most politicians underestimate and almost none of them can pass.

You do not need a candidate who uses the right words. You need one who means them.

I came to this country as a refugee with nothing. I sat in a public school classroom as the only person who looked like me and dared to believe this country's promise. I built a nonprofit from the ground up. I worked for almost a decade with young people –who had been written off by every system that was supposed to help them.

I know what it looks like when institutions fail people. I know what it costs. I am running for Congress because someone needs to be in that room who actually remembers what it felt like to need the system to work.

Let me be specific about where I stand on what matters most to you.

On housing, the only real solution is more supply. That means zoning reform that unlock building in high-demand areas, federal investment in middle-income housing tied to real accountability, and down payment support for first-time buyers are not complicated ideas. They are the policies that actually move the needle, and they are the ones I have researched, advocated for, and will push for on the record in Congress.

On student debt and the cost of education, a degree should open doors, not chain you to payments for a decade before your life can begin. Federal investment in community colleges, vocational training pipelines, and income-based repayment structures that actually reflect what people earn are not radical ideas.

They are the minimum a serious country owes to the people it asked to invest in their own future.

On AI and the future of work, your generation will absorb more economic disruption from artificial intelligence than any other, and you deserve representatives who understand what is actually happening rather than ones still debating whether it is real.

Through WonderSeed Foundation, I have worked with technology as a therapeutic and educational tool for years. I know both its power and its limits. The jobs being created by AI will go to people with the right skills and the right support, and Congress must build those pathways now, not after the displacement has already happened.

On climate, the decisions made in the next ten years will determine what the next fifty look like for you and for your children. Federal investment in clean energy infrastructure, climate resilience, and a transition plan that does not simply abandon workers in legacy industries is not optional. It is the most consequential long-term investment this country can make, and I will treat it that way in every vote I cast.
Your ballot arrived May 4th. The primary is June 2nd–and I want to tell you why this particular primary matters more than you may realize.

California uses a Top-Two system, meaning every candidate regardless of party appears on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters advance to November.
That means any young voter, whether registered Republican, Democrat, Independent, or No Party Preference, can vote for me right now.

This primary is not a partisan gate. It is an open door for your generation specifically. This is the moment that determines whether November will bring about CHANGE or more of the same.

If the primary produces two career politicians backed by corrupt party machines and corporate PACs, November is already decided and your choices are already made for you.

Your voice in this primary does not just count—it shapes what choices everyone gets in November. If an INDEPENDENT like me advances, November becomes a real conversation about people over party agenda.

That is a different kind of power than most people don’t realize they have right now, and most campaigns will not tell you about it because they benefit from you not knowing.

I am asking you to vote anyway, not because one election fixes everything, but because the people who benefit most from your absence are counting on it.

Your silence is not neutral. It is a vote for the status quo.

I am asking for your trust. Not blindly. Watch what I do. Hold me accountable. If I go to Washington and forget who sent me there, you have every right to send someone else. That is the deal. I am not asking for your loyalty. I am asking for the chance to earn it.

If you are not yet registered to vote, the deadline to register for the June 2nd primary is May 19th. Register online at registertovote.ca.gov

It takes five minutes. Your voice is worth five minutes.

You deserve a representative who sees you. I do.

With respect and belief in your generation --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40