Rep.-elect Michelle Park Steel, R-Calif., believes that the Republican Party will survive and thrive if it takes its message of lower taxes, less regulation and opportunity to the growing minority communities in the U.S.
Hours after Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda conceded defeat on Wednesday, the conservative Republican who will be the first Korean-American woman in Congress gave her first post-election interview to Newsmax.
Much as Margaret Thatcher’s admirers dubbed her ''the Iron Lady,'' the former Michelle Eunjoo Park of Seoul, South Korea, is known to fans as ''the Lady of Steel" — no pun intended.
Strong-willed, educated in Korea, Japan and the U.S. (Pepperdine University and the University of Southern California), and a self-employed businesswoman, Steel was elected to California’s Board of Equalization and then won two terms as a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and became its chairman.
''When I started going to Republican meetings decades ago, most of the people I met looked like Shawn [husband and California’s GOP National Committeeman Shawn Steel],'' she told us with a laugh. ''But now, you can’t say the Republicans are the party of white men only. Young women, Asian-Americans, Latinos — they are a big part of the reason I won.''
Steel believes three issues that resonated with voters across the board that were pivotal to her triumph: lower taxes, less regulation, and, in her words, ''a common sense approach to COVID-19.''
One week before the state of California declared an emergency over the life-threatening virus, Orange County Board Chairman Steel moved quickly to create an ad hoc committee to craft preventive measures.
To those who said she didn’t go far enough, Steel replied: ''We must go all-out to protect our senior citizens. But when one hears that 23 percent of small businesses may not come back, it’s ridiculous to deny the young the opportunity to work. Let the young work! That’s common sense.''
Discussing the inroads she made with various ethnic groups in the 48th District (Newport Beach-Orange County), Steel pointed out that this summer, the large Vietnamese community in Westminster (''Little Saigon'') was alarmed that the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) deported 30 members of their community back to Vietnam.
Steel hit that hard, and warned that deporting Vietnamese to the Communist-ruled land of their birth meant ''sending them to the gulag.'' In contrast, she said, Rouda ''didn’t touch much of the Vietnamese community.''
In terms of cultural issues, Steel is a stalwart conservative: pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, and favoring choice in education — ''vouchers, charter schools, home schools, anything.''
''My opponent said he was a 'moderate Democrat' but he took opposite positions from me on most issues,'' said Steel. ''And while he said was pro-police, he still joined a 'Defund the Police' rally. If you really support the police, you don’t do that."
Like just about all of the winning Republican House candidates, Steel fully embraced President Trump and his agenda.
''I support his economic policies and he’s done an especially good job in dealing with China,'' she said of the President’s hard-line approach to Peking.
Michelle Park Steel is often asked how she will deal with Rep. Alexandra ''AOC'' Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the other members of the decidedly left-of-center ''Squad'' when she gets to Congress.
''You know, I was told my accent is strong and some people couldn’t understand me,'' the congresswoman-elect chuckled, recalling that she arises early every morning to read aloud and correct mispronunciations, ''Well, 'AOC' speaks without an accent, but I still don’t understand her at all. Let me find out what she means and I’ll reply.''
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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