That last part? That's the kind of thing we respect around here. Calling out waste and corruption in the defense industry takes real courage, and anyone willing to torch their own livelihood to expose how taxpayer dollars are being flushed deserves a serious hearing.

But then you get to the platform, and things get murkier.

Dang is running on getting corporate money out of politics, universal healthcare, ending "pointless wars," and tackling the cost of living and housing crisis. Noble goals, mostly. But "universal healthcare" and "get money out of politics" are slogans, not plans. How do you pay for the former without blowing up the deficit? How do you achieve the latter when the Supreme Court has already weighed in on campaign finance? One Bay Area resident put it simply, asking about his stance on "fiscal policy and healthcare costs" — the details that actually matter.

The housing crisis framing is interesting given where he's running. CA-15 covers parts of the East Bay and down the Peninsula — areas where home prices have become genuinely absurd. As one local pointed out with inflation-adjusted numbers, an 8-bedroom in Bernal Heights that sold for $145,000 in 1986 would be about $443,000 today — yet actual prices are multiples higher. The math tells a brutal story about what decades of restrictive zoning, regulatory bloat, and NIMBYism have done to housing attainability.

But here's the thing: the housing crisis wasn't caused by a lack of federal spending. It was caused by governments — mostly local and state — strangling supply. If Dang's answer is more federal programs rather than cutting the red tape that makes it impossible to build, he's treating symptoms while ignoring the disease.

We'll be watching this race. The biography is impressive. The whistleblowing record is admirable. But voters in CA-15 deserve more than talking points — they deserve a candidate who can explain where the money comes from, not just where he wants it to go.