Editor’s note: With Mikie Sherrill resigning her Congressional seat to become NJ Governor, South Orange and Maplewood will help decide the crowded Democratic primary for NJ-11. Village Green is profiling candidates. Primary day is Feb. 5. Mail-In Ballots started mailing out to voters on Dec. 22. Early in-person voting begins January 29. Read more election coverage here.
Zach Beecher is running for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District seat as a “Veteran for Congress.”
It’s an important distinction for the Morris County native who says he has seen the definition of patriotism distorted and wants to restore its true meaning.
“I love this country more than really almost anything in this world because it’s given my family the opportunity to have the story that is only possible here, that is only possible in a nation that aspires to a set of ideals, that the pursuit of happiness is a concept not given to the few, but to every citizen of this country.” Beecher cites his grandmother’s story as an Irish immigrant in the 1950s working as a house cleaner, as well as his interfaith marriage (Beecher is Catholic, his wife is Jewish).
“Only in America are our differences our strength. It makes me think of the soldiers that I served with in Iraq, down range, who put their lives on the line. That was about love of country. To me, what patriotism is about is serving those ideals.”
In an interview with Village Green last week [before the killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents], Beecher said that loving America is also about holding the country and its leadership accountable.
“There’s a James Baldwin quote where he said, ‘I love this country more than any other, which is why I insist on criticizing her.’ And I think that that is founded on this essential belief that this country is always striving for what was written in our founding document, which is to be a more perfect union. That means the work is always remaining, and that to be patriotic is to see where we can be better and to demand it, because it is truly in a nation that is based on ideas.
“It’s a promissory note that our parents have handed us, and that we have the opportunity to hand our children. Now, every promissory note that’s been handed on over the last few generations has been one of improved promise, increased security, and a country that looks more sure in the world. When I think about my son Pierce, I think seriously about my responsibility as a dad, as a citizen, as a veteran, it’s a moment that’s feels do or die. It’s a moment that feels like the arena or the moment to stand up is now. And to be patriotic is to stand up. It’s to demand better. It’s to organize, to drive outcomes. It’s to focus on the results that we need. And it’s to make sure that we’re proud of that promissory note.”
Immigration
“America has always been proud of being a city on the hill, because we believe in a set of shared ideals and principles. We fought for them, and we’ve gone the world over to make sure that tyranny and fascism wouldn’t rise. That’s why we landed on the beaches in Normandy, not for oil. That’s why we fought across the South Pacific, not to keep people out, but to make sure that tyranny stayed out from here,” said Beecher.
Beecher is now seeing refugees who “stood shoulder to shoulder” with American military personnel and other immigrants as well as U.S. citizens facing aggressive tactics by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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“You have officers that claim to be officers of the government, claim to be law enforcement, but I don’t see any training. I see lawlessness where they argue there’s law enforcement. I see scare tactics where they say there’s strategy. I saw a 5-year-old kid be used as bait. I saw a 17-year-old kid picked up in my hometown doing his laundry. I mean, do these sound like terrorists of some cartel to you? No, they’re lying in broad daylight,” said Beecher. “They’re arresting corrections officers in Maine. They’re standing behind podiums with SS slogans on them.”
“Congress has a responsibility to act,” said Beecher. “Its principle responsibilities are the power of the purse and oversight. … We should demand a clear answer from the administration on why ICE needs this funding.”
Regarding the actions of ICE and Border Patrol agents, Beecher said, “Real bravery is people who are getting out into the streets and demanding that their rights be heard. Real bravery is people who look out for their neighbors. Real bravery is saying that this isn’t the America that I know. Real bravery is not wearing a mask, refusing to identify yourself, entering a home without a warrant and pulling a U.S. citizen out into the snow in their boxers. Real courage is not throwing canisters of gas at peaceful protestors observing your immigration enforcement operation.”
“And then on the side of the fact that the Federal government is now investigating [Minneapolis Mayor] Jacob Frey and Governor Waltz for impeding immigration operations, the weaponization of these agencies is something that should give every American pause.”
Zach Beecher, son Pierce, and wife Michelle Zar Beecher, a senior program director at Fuel iX
The Audacity of Hope
Beecher recalled how the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 deeply affected him as a high school student.
“What President Obama was able to articulate was a sense that we can grab that shovel, that we could grab that keyboard, that we could put our hands on the oar, and that we could build, we could row or we could create the future that we wanted to. And we saw the potential, the Affordable Care Act, the attempts to optimize paths for Dreamers, the opportunity to think about our national security in a way that was more comprehensive and energizing a full new generation of talent into government. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met in my age group, and frankly in my parents’ age group, who really found renewed hope in this idea that politics isn’t a spectator sport, but one that we all get to play in if we believe in our role.”
“President Obama gave hope and gave light to so many folks,” said Beecher. “I think it’s been frankly shocking to see the how aggressive the rollback and how pernicious the anger has been.”
Unexpected Ivy League Launch
Beecher is a 2013 graduate of Princeton University — and impressive feat for the son of a police officer and a social worker. He says he never intended to apply, thinking the Ivy League was out of reach, but did so after an ROTC interview at another New Jersey university was canceled due to snow.
“The way it works is you preference different universities [and] you can interview wherever [and] that army unit just sends it on to the bigger Army headquarters.” After calling around to several universities “finally I called Princeton ands this colonel picks up his name’s Colonel Stephen Harlan. … We end up talking on the phone for an hour and a half. And at the end of the call, he goes, ‘So are you going to preference Princeton on your list?’ And I said, ‘I’m not applying to Princeton.'” But Harlan told him to reconsider, “Just apply. What’s the worst that’s going to happen?'”
“Sometimes it just takes someone seeing something in you that you don’t see yourself, to give you that kick to believe that you can step out onto that bridge and walk across,” said Beecher.
[Editor’s note: Beecher says his wife Michelle Zar Beecher, a senior program director at Fuel iX, is the real brains of the couple.]
An Entrepreneurial Mindset
Beecher just turned 35 on January 20. He brings a youthful enthusiasm to his campaigning — and to his approach on making New Jersey and the country a better place.
That includes his work experience in venture capitalism grounded in humanitarian causes, green energy and innovation.
“I quit my job on November 5 and I’m full-time on the campaign,” said Beecher, who described his work as “mission meets technology.”
“When I left the Army, I had been an advisor in Mosul, had worked alongside basically every major Iraqi unit in Western Mosul during the peak of combat operations to make sure that we could liberate that city. And my role was to help them really have what they needed, where they needed it. That was all the combat logistics at the forward line of troops. I call it innovation at the speed of battle. Because if we had a square peg in a round hole, it wasn’t like we could call back to anybody. We had to figure it out up at the front.”
“That kind of dynamic — that sense of urgency, that sense of possible — was something that I really fundamentally yearned to keep moving in that direction.” After grad school in London, Beecher decided, “I really loved the innovation space, and I loved the innovation space when it was paired with mission. When you were working with technologists and entrepreneurs who fundamentally have the gritty, undaunted belief that they can change the world for the better.”
Beecher said he started with a firm that “helped take technology and apply it to public good missions,” including The Anti-Slavery Collective, co-founded by Princess Eugenie, and the OSCE or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is “the world’s largest regional security organization, with 57 participating states across Europe, Central Asia, and North America, focusing on conflict prevention, human rights, and democracy.”
“We launched a veterans training initiative with SAP NS2 to bring together veterans groups and American and British veterans and cybersecurity job training opportunities. We launched a transparency initiative that took me to HealthWorks, where I led the operations and strategy team to drive the integration and implementation of a moonshot effort at one of the largest healthcare providers in the Mid-Atlantic. We expanded Medicaid access in South Baltimore. We commercialized new technologies to improve telemedicine for rural members of that healthcare plan. And we acquired companies in order to make sure that we could provide new, agile and dynamic services to make sure that people got the full and the highest best use out of their healthcare.”
From there Beecher went to become a founding partner at America’s Frontier Fund, which was built off the core idea that “America is its own best hope. …. We just needed the right strategy, the right creation tools, and the right scaling capital to do it. We built a foundation that did the economic development strategy. I personally led the efforts with the governor’s office in Nevada on how to build a global green economy off their lithium mine. I worked with New Jersey’s economic Development Agency to launch Nokia Bell Labs venture studio here to build new businesses. We launched an $80 million fund in Venture Studio in New Mexico to commercialize new companies that are the intellectual property coming from our leading national laboratories.”
“And we launched over $300 million fund in coordination with the Department of Commerce and the Department of Defense in order to back critical technologies right here in the U.S. from green technology to cutting edge healthcare solutions to bring down the cost of pharmaceutical discovery.”
“All of these are areas where we fundamentally believe there’s opportunity now and where America can build in order to be the hope that it always knew that it was. And I think all of these efforts, whether it’s broadening access to healthcare, whether it’s improving technological development or commercialization, all of these efforts are under attack by the administration today.”
Beecher said the current brain drain caused by the Trump Administration’s drastic cuts in research and science are concerning.
“Steve Case has a great line where he says that the United States of America is exceptional because it doesn’t build technologies, it builds industries. And industries give vibrant opportunities and fulfilling employment to millions of Americans. … And as soon as we take away competition, this country fails to thrive. And it all starts with research and development.”
What About AI?
Many of Beecher’s Congressional competitors are talking about the regulation of AI or artificial intelligence. What are his thoughts?
“AI is a tool,” said Beecher. “It can be an exceptional tool for good. We know in fact that it can crush the timelines to identify complex algorithms to determine new specific therapeutics to drive better pharmaceutical outcomes. We know that it can digest data at scale in order to take the load off of human workers, to focus them on more fulfilling, creative, analytical, insightful work. It’s when we use these tools as a method to control, to convert and to twist everything from pricing like we’ve seen on tickets” that it becomes problematic, said Beecher.
“Like all technology development, responsible technology development is important,” Beecher continued. “I think we have to understand and be transparent about drawbacks, and then move to prevent and inhibit the negative side effects as soon as we know them. I don’t think Americans want overregulation of anything, but I do think they want a strong government that calls strikes and fouls. We’ve seen an irresponsible and frankly, outpaced growth of the AI data centers. And we’ve seen a degree of overspending on the leverage side that is concerning from a financial perspective of whether or not we’ll be able to actually generate these returns to offset the risk. I think responsible growth, responsible innovation is always best when it’s encouraged. But I think the government has a responsibility here to call strikes and fouls, and we need to be in the position to do that.”
Back to Healthcare
“Whoever wins this seat in April is going to be faced with the same numbers in the House that we’ve always had. And I think what builds confidence with voters is competence. We asked the American people to sacrifice with us in November in order to drive an outcome on healthcare. And instead of holding to our guns, we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. … So we’ve got to keep first things first, and first things first is that there are 1.4 million less Americans signed up for ACA this year because of those cuts. There are New Jersey families that are reeling from costs that they are barely going to be able to cover with premiums rising on average just shy of $3,000 per person per year. If you’re a family of four, that’s nearly $12,000 a year.
“We have to face the facts that are ahead of us. And the facts that are Americans are losing their healthcare right now. That’s the fire that has to be fought. Prices are slipping away. The privatization of healthcare systems, whether it’s the VA losing 35,000 jobs in December, whether it’s the errant cuts that are one day announced, then the next day rolled back. There’s no degree of predictability in these programs. And so when you have no discipline, when you have rampant waste and cuts happening, … we have to solve and triage what’s ahead of us.”
After addressing the soaring premiums due to the ACA subsidy cuts, Beecher said Congress must address the issue holistically.
“This person who’s represented in this seat will also have to seek reelection in November. And I think that’s where the conversation starts around attacking the full system of systems. … I think what we need to make sure is that there is a fair, equitable baseline that every American has the opportunity and the right to healthcare. … Every American should not be afraid that they are one health crisis away from losing their future.”
“It should not be crazy for us to talk about universal healthcare,” said Beecher. “These should not be concepts that frighten us. What we should be frightened about is what happens to this country when we don’t take care of one another, and we stop believing that your future is tied to my future and that we can all thrive together.”
A Local Endorsement
Beecher’s knowledge and resume have been winning support from those who have heard him speak. “After meeting Zach Beecher at a Meet and Greet in Chatham, I was thoroughly impressed,” Maplewood resident Mindi Farran told Village Green. She was so impressed that she then hosted a meet and greet at her SOMA home. “Zach is incredibly smart, hardworking, and motivated. This is a very important election, and the fact that Zach is a veteran speaks volumes. I know his fresh perspective will serve our district well.”
