In race for Congress, Dr. Alex Balekian runs against the grain

Dr. Alex Balekian has deep concerns about the wellbeing of his community.

“The California that I was born and raised in, it’s not healthy,” he says. “It doesn’t look like the California it used to. And unless we do something about it, we’re asleep at the wheel while somebody else keeps on ruining this place, our home.”

The intensive care physician — one of 18 candidates running for Congress in our district — remembers what a peaceful place it used to be.

“Sleepy suburbia,” Balekian said. “It was not the cool part of town, but it was safe and there were no homeless people and you had good schools and people were just happy living their lives and running their small businesses. It was the American dream. It was boring, but it was great. It was predictable, and that is no longer the case.”

“Now it seems like every street has its own homeless person and that’s their territory,” he said. “We have smash and grabs. One Armenian business owner in Pasadena got pepper-sprayed yesterday.”

Balekian lives with his husband in Glendale, where he grew up.  As a kid, he was proud to have a fellow countryman — George Deukmejian — as his governor.

“Being Armenian, especially in the ’80s, it was impossible for you not to be a Republican,” Balekian said. “Because you came to this country from the Middle East, amid lots of political upheaval. You really just wanted your political freedom, you wanted to be industrious and assimilate, and make something of yourself, and create a business and build something for you and your family. There were a lot of parents leaving a really bad environment and they genuinely wanted a better life for their children. The Republican Party at that time was sympathetic to small businesses and the middle class, and it advocated building yourself up, lower government regulations, and government getting out of your life.”

Not anymore, he says.

“Being fiscally conservative, advocating fewer regulations, living life on a budget, being for the middle class and for small businesses — that is no longer what the Republican Party stands for,” he said.

Balekian had originally filed to run for California’s 30th Congressional district as an independent candidate, but after sinking $30,000 of his personal funds into the campaign, he decided that competing within the two-party framework was the only feasible path forward.

“I think people have lost faith in their government because their government no longer represents them,” he said. “The Mitch McConnells, the Pelosis — everybody’s a lifelong politician. They’re not small business owners who took five or six years away from their job to do their civic duty. As a physician and somebody with a real job, I’m better equipped to represent people.”

WEHOVILLE: Tell me about the doctor.

BALEKIAN: I’ve been practicing medicine for 20 years. I’m an intensive care physician, but also a lung specialist. I’m a pulmonologist, but I also do research as a biostatistician, and that’s where I analyze clinical data to provide the best treatment recommendations for our patients.

WEHOVILLE: What led you to pursue a career in medicine?

BALEKIAN: I was a big nerd in school, and I initially wanted to be a mechanical engineer. I wanted to build and test roller coasters, and my dad basically said, “You know what, it’s a fun job but it’s not secure. You’re going to be out of a job.” And so, he kind of persuaded me to pick a career that was more secure. And I had always been good at science and math, and so I eventually gravitated towards that. And he was right. It’s not that I wouldn’t have been happy, but my life would have been very different if I’d pursued that career path. I’m very happy with the way things have turned out.

WEHOVILLE: What issues do you have with the Democratic Party?

BALEKIAN: They have been championing identity politics over the average person. So it’s no longer about ‘What is your message?’ It’s more about who you are. They have been creating this stifling unity of exclusion. If you’re not one of the minorities that they champion, then you’re not allowed to be part of the conversation. And that’s not what America is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be that you elevate minorities over the majority. It’s supposed to be that you elevate ideas over identity. 

WEHOVILLE: Are you getting the assistance that you hoped for from the GOP?

BALEKIAN: I mean, it’s an uphill battle for a Republican. So I think they are picking and choosing their battles wisely across the country because there are 435 elections that are happening, you know, 434 other elections other than mine. That’s number one. Number two, this is really a grassroots effort. This is a populist ground-up effort, and we don’t have some of these deep-pocketed donors that some of my opponents have, for example, Anthony Portantino. And you can see this; it’s freely available on his filings. He got money, he got thousands of dollars from studio executives, for example, Amblin Entertainment, while a writers’ strike is going on. Jirair Ratevosian, he worked for pharma for eight years, for Gilead. If you look at his filings, I think about 90% of his money came from out of state. 25% of it came from people in the pharmaceutical industry. So these challenges that I’m facing are the average person, the David versus the Goliath, being the entrenched kind of lobbyists, lobbyist-loving, career politicians. And that is why I think my message of being unapologetically anti-lobbyist and being absolutely for term limits and against career politicians is really resonating with the average person on the ground.

WEHOVILLE: How do you feel about the COVID lockdowns?

BALEKIAN: The COVID lockdowns, in hindsight, did not achieve what they were supposed to. In medicine you see equivalence of treatments: “Of these two treatments, is one better than the other, or are they similar?” With COVID lockdowns, even if they may have saved lives, the suicide and violence rates went up, people lost their jobs, people lost their businesses, and we know in research at least that poverty, that losing your health insurance via your job, those are strongly associated with worse mortality.

WEHOVILLE: Would you support additional lockdowns if COVID re-surged?

BALEKIAN: Me personally, I have not had a COVID death in at least a year, maybe a year and a half, that I’ve seen. And when I say a COVID death, I don’t mean somebody who comes in with a heart attack or stroke and you test them for COVID, they never complained of symptoms, it just so happens that their nasal test is positive. You have to ask, “Does this have to be a society-wide thing, or do we identify high-risk individuals: the elderly, those with pre-existing conditions, those with transplants?” And so we’ll say, “Okay, those people, we’re going to protectively put limitations there, but then children, healthy able-bodied people who are going to keep the economy going —  we will allow those people to continue.” I think that we should have a tailored hybrid approach rather than the all-or-nothing approach that we’ve done before.

WEHOVILLE: The war in Ukraine — where is that headed, in your opinion?

BALEKIAN: If you talk to the Ukrainians, if you talk to Zelensky, he wants Eastern Ukraine plus Crimea. If you talk to the European-American coalition, they’re saying, “Leave Crimea alone, count it as a loss, and just take Eastern Ukraine back.” Before we devote more money and resources to that, for example, wouldn’t it be great if we used the 100 billion dollars that has been spent there so far to deal with homelessness, to maybe help out the people who are displaced in Maui? We definitely shouldn’t send our men and women over there. It’s beyond me to say where this is going because nobody has clearly defined our enemy, our goal, and our timeline.

WEHOVILLE: Do you think that our armed forces are ready for a potential escalation?

BALEKIAN: I mean, the short answer is yes. You know, we have the strongest military in the world. We are well prepared. However, even the strongest military, if its resources are poorly directed or stretched thin, can lose a battle. So it doesn’t matter that you have the strongest military, just whether we are using them effectively. I think that will determine whether we are ready, but on the surface I think we are. But we should not devote our resources willy-nilly without a strong plan. 

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