Human rights activist Suzanne Scholte announced her run to represent Virginia's 11th district on Thursday.
Scholte has been a longtime human rights activist focusing on North Korea. Her long resume includes establishing North Korean Freedom Week and Save North Korean Refugees Day. She is also a founding member of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, "an organization of over 65 nongovernmental organizations and individuals from around the world promoting the freedom, human rights, and dignity of the North Korean people."
According to her press release:
For close to twenty-five years, I have served as president of the Defense Forum Foundation, a well-respected, non-partisan foundation that promotes a strong national defense, freedom, democracy, and human rights abroad. My human rights advocacy for the world's most persecuted has taken me to the very borders between freedom and oppression: the DMZ in Korea and the Wall of Shame in Western Sahara.
I have built coalitions and consensus with people of very diverse opinions and backgrounds to advance democratic ideals while never compromising my principles. I truly believe that the solutions to our problems are not out of reach - if we work together.
In my view today, we have a president and a congressman who not only have taken our country down a dangerous path, but who refuse to work with people they disagree with on problems we should be addressing together as fellow Americans. Even worse, our president and our current congressman openly mock those with whom they disagree, using their positions of power to ridicule and demonize our fellow citizens, refusing to respect other people's opinions or even their concerns.
If Scholte wins the GOP candidacy, she will be running against incumbent Rep. Gerry Connolly (D., Va.).