By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

The mode of transportation middle school teacher and first-time candidate Neil Young has been using to navigate his way through Chester and Berks counties is a standard school bus, painted white, that is averaging between 700 and 800 miles a week.

His name is streamlined in large capital letters across each side of the vehicle, along with what has become the short-hand message of who he is and what he wants to do come next January: Teacher for U.S. Congress.

“I had an acquaintance who came about who owns a bus company who was happy to lend us the use of his bus for the campaign, and he said that I could make it my own,” Young said. “My wife is an art teacher, and my sister is an artist, and they painted it up and we’ve been on the road ever since.”

The bus and his message are simple but powerful that are molded in the form of a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington earnestness that is getting Young from point A to Point B to meet with his potential constituents to share his platform.

In the precious days that lead up to the Nov. 5 election, Young, a Republican and a newcomer to the political foray, continues to campaign against Democrat incumbent Chrissy Houlahan for the right to represent the 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. While he admits that the task of defeating the popular Houlahan will be a formidable climb, he has done an effective job of narrowing the breadth of his campaign to major issues – some critical of his opponent’s votes in the House and others that peer into the looking glass of a future that he would like to reshape for young people. 

American borders, American energy

One issue – that which may ultimately determine the upcoming presidential election – is Young’s belief that one of the chief failures of the Biden-Harris administration has been their ineffectiveness in securing U.S. borders from a surge of illegal immigration – a belief enflamed by Houlahan’s vote against the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2). In a statement posted on her website after her decision, Houlahan said that she voted against the bill because she felt it would not address the pressing issues at the U.S.’s southern border and potentially sow “chaos and confusion” to the immigration system.

On the issue of energy and the economy, Young is critical of Houlahan’s record on American energy; specifically, her voting in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that is intended to reduce the federal government budget deficit, lower prescription drug prices, and invest $400 billion in promoting clean energy to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by 2030.

He is also critical of Houlahan’s opposition to the completion of the Keystone XL Pipeline – cancelled by President Joe Biden in 2021 – that would have carried 830,000 barrels of domestic fuel from Canada to the U.S. per day and support as many as 60,000 temporary jobs.

“Everyone wants to see a more fiscally responsible federal government, so while I tell people that the protection of our border is an issue, so are restrictions placed on American energy – the idea that we should restrict our energy output,” Young said. “What this does is restrict American energy and empower bad actors around the world. It turns Russia into Europe’s gas station. It enriches Iran. If America doesn’t produce its own energy, it drives inflation and it weakens the geopolitical structure of our world.

“Pipelines transporting natural gas around the country and the world are the safest and most efficient ways to transport energy, and when you shut those down, there have ripple effects economically, both nationally and internationally,” he added. “The responsible use of natural resources is the key to human flourishment, and no just survival but raising communities out of poverty. What is more important – the potential to alleviate human suffering or the potential of environmental harm? I will choose the elimination of human suffering over potential environmental harm, every time.” 

Rejecting the ‘radical curriculum’ of education

When it comes to the way public school districts have been designing – and redesigning -- the process of educating young people, particularly those in Chester County, Young can easily qualify himself as an expert. As an eighth-grade history teacher in the Great Valley School District for the past 22 years, he is a proponent of schools serving as distraction free enclaves to allow children to pursue success in the classroom, protected not just from violence but from over-interference with classroom curriculum that push for equity over excellence in order to achieve outcomes. 

“When I look around and see the more traditional issues – the degree to which we feel safe and the degree to which our borders and our economy remain strong – I acknowledge that they fluctuate depending on what your party is, but the issue that most strikes a chord with me is that the next generation is being neglected,” he said. “I am seeing a far-left turn in education and the results are not only destructive for students socially and emotionally, but academically. We’ve never spent more on schools and never received less on that investment.”

Young also criticized what he calls a “radical curriculum” that are embedded in all 14 school districts in Chester County.

“Our schools teach our first-grade students to become activists and teaches our middle school students that we live on stolen land and teaches our high school students that our way of life is systemically racist, and that capitalism exploits our workers,” he said. “Consequently, our students don’t embrace capitalism or the American experience or the exceptionalism that my generation has learned, or that my parents’ generation learned. I am interested in ensuring that the next generation of Americans understands the true greatness of our nation.”

While Young readily agrees that sensitive subjects like slavery and other discriminatory injustices done to ethnic groups and individuals like women, homosexuals and other marginalized people over the course of U.S. history should be taught in age-appropriate classrooms, “when you leave it there and don’t get into what has made American the Great Experiment – the immersion of different people who look and act and speak differently – we are denying the truth of our exceptionalism. We must find the balance of what we have done right and what we’ve done wrong,” he said. 

Since 2018, Chester County – the largest slice of the 6th District – has consistently voted for Democrats by both narrow and wide margins: President Biden in 2020, Sen. John Fetterman and Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2022, and for Houlahan in 2018, 2020 and 2022. It’s a collective pie that has turned increasingly blue. It’s reality that Young knows all too well, but he said that for the people who will go to the polls in less than two weeks, their vote is less weighted toward the candidate and more on the issues that face them now, tomorrow and in the future.

“This congressional district is often times seen as one of the best places in the country to live, and I think it has to do a whole lot more with the people who live there than maybe some of the elected leaders’ policies,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that policies won’t erode the unique greatness of a place like Chester and Berks counties over time.

“We’re 2,000 miles away from the southern borders, and while we may not feel the issue as harshly as say, Texas is, we’re certainly feeling the effects, and when you trace it back to its root cause, you have to ask yourself whether we want to wait until we’re feeling great disruption or whether we want to change the tide of that now.”

To learn more about Neil Young’s campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives, visit www.neilyoung24.com.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].