MEET CHANDLER
I'm Chandler Stewart Hadraba, running for Idaho House District 16B because Idahoans deserve leaders who put hard working people first - not government overreach, division, or failed ideologies.
With a background in domestic manufacturing and entrepreneurship, I've seen how innovation creates jobs and builds prosperity through making things. I've also lead teams to deliver exceptional results for the community, from Boy Scout Troop 303 with a 70% Eagle Scout Award rate, to Volunteer Coordinator for the 5 time award winning Green Team at the Lighting in a Bottle Festival, to serving as a Black Rock Ranger at the Burning Man Project, while also founding the Black Rock French Quarter Theme Village(profiled in the Wall St Journal). From FDA compliance projects for national brands to plastics industry leadership, my career has been about execution, standards, and getting things done.
But my commitment to fighting division and defending liberty runs deeper than policy, it's in my blood.
My Family's Stand Against Tyranny - Three Times Socialism Took Everything
My family knows what happens when governments classify people, silence dissent, seize property, or punish success.
Vienna Philharmonic before Anschluss Period under Wilhelm Furtwangler, who personally intervened to save my cousin Josef and his Jewish wife.
Vienna Philharmonic during Anschluss Period
Under Nazi occupation, my cousin Josef Hadraba, a trombonist with the Vienna Philharmonic, was nearly expelled because he married a Jewish woman. The Nazis labeled him "Jüdisch Versippte" (closely related to Jews). He and his wife survived only due to a rare special dispensation from Wilhelm Furtwängler — documented in the Vienna Philharmonic's historical records.
Prisoner #28174 record, issued for Karl Hadraba for transport from Auschwitz to Buchenwald
Another cousin, Professor Karl Hadraba, joined the Czech resistance alongside Milada Horáková (subject of the film Milada, English film Trailer here, whose daughter I knew). Arrested by the Gestapo in Prague on 12 July 1943 for high treason, he was registered as political prisoner #28174 in Buchenwald concentration camp. The original Nazi Prisoner card (pictured above) is preserved in the Arolsen Archives(the largest archive on victims and survivors of Nazi persecution in the world), He endured Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald. In a crowded boxcar, two days into the journey to Auschwitz, the SS guards shoved a garden hose to provide some water, but it was a trick to cause fighting. If fighting broke out this became an excuse for the guards to shoot everyone. Fighting did break out, but before the guards acted, Professor Karl commanded everyone's attention and then said, "If we don’t help each other we all perish" — this simple act restored order and helped everyone in his box car survive the journey.
My relative František Hadraba, a plasterer from Tábor, was conscripted into Nazi forced labor around 1941 and escaped in 1945.
My great-uncle Ted Hadraba, was a Northwestern University Economist, assigned to the American Embassy in Prague, Czechoslovakia. While there he met and married a Czech national Georgina. Unfortunately, the year was 1936, in 1938 under the Munich Agreement, the nation of Czechoslovakia was given to the German Nazi Party to administer. Because Ted had a diplomatic passport, he was able to escape with Georgina back to the United States, but Georgina's family had to remain under Nazi rule until 1945.
After liberation came communist repression. Great-uncle Ted, previously at the U.S. Embassy in Prague before the 1939 Nazi takeover, later was tasked by the State Department to organize aid in Vienna for Hungarian refugees fleeing the 1956 Soviet-crushed uprising. Another relative,
Robert Hadraba fled communist Czechoslovakia in 1950, detailing persecution in a Vienna affidavit also preserved in the Arolsen Archives.
One cousin, Tomáš Setka, was jailed for an accordion song mocking communist leader Klement Gottwald's wife, for a fat joke, he was forced into hard labor — proof even humor became a crime under socialism.
My great-uncle Chandler Echols — the man I'm named after — built Graphic Arts Supply, S.A. in Havana, Cuba. He also had a 4 acre ranch. My father told me: Uncle Chandler's brother Sam called, worried about Castro and Che's revolution. Chandler replied, "It's just guerrillas in the mountains; it'll be over in weeks." Soon after, Che's men arrived at his home — an unarmed man flanked by two armed rebels confirmed his identity, made him empty his pockets, then said his wife and child were at the airport. He was flown to Miami, ended up on the streets penniless, had to borrow a dime to call Sam for help. The U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission certified his losses at over $24,000 (plus interest) when the regime seized his company in 1961. He was unable to file a claim for his home, car, the family belongings, and the 4 acre land. Because he held a US passport and his wife was a French national(a former stewardess for PanAm) they were not shot on site, which is how the Castro regime dealt with "enemies of the revolution". He rebuilt in Miami with Chandler International and succeeded again.
Three times my family lost everything to socialism at gunpoint. My father built Freeze Pops, a flavored ice-pop business in Jamaica with Jamaican-Chinese partner Herman Chin. When Michael Manley's People's National Party took power in 1972 and imposed democratic socialism (with economic advice from Donald Harris, father of Kamala Harris), nationalizations, controls, and pressures forced them out. The business was taken. I was supposed to grow up in Jamaica — instead, we struggled in suburban Chicago, worried we would loose our house due to the economic hardship from the consequence of 'Democrat Socialism".
From Nazi badges sorting people by identity, to communist labor camps and satire bans, to Castro's armed seizures, to Manley's Jamaica — my family has witnessed every form of division and control destroy what individuals create. That's why I fight DEI and any policy that sorts Americans by race, ancestry, or identity instead of merit. Never again means never again — not in government, not in workplaces, not in Idaho.
Idahoans build their futures through hard work, innovation, and unity. Join me in putting Idahoans first.
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