Obama inspired Truong to run, get involved in student government

BY CHRIS KINKAID THE DAILY NEWS

Bogalusa Mayor Tyrin Truong was inspired to get involved and run for something after Barack Obama was elected president.

“This was back in ‘08 and that just inspired me to see somebody who looked like me become the president of the United States,” Truong said. “Of course, I don’t want to be president, but that inspired me to run and get involved in student government.”

Truong said to see Obama be so graceful and that he has never seen Obama get out of character.

“People lobbed so much stuff at him whether it was right or it was wrong, that’s politics, but just the sheer fact that he just handled himself with so much grace, so much humility and he set a standard for black boys, black men all around the country,” Truong said. “Actually for anybody really, the standard is still set. As a young black boy, I had never seen anything like that in terms of somebody who looked like me. We haven’t had a black governor in recent times, Obama is still the only black president, so his first helped me reach my first in terms of, ‘I can do it. I don’t have to see somebody else do it before (me).’ President Obama did it. He didn’t have anybody come before him to be the president. That’s what kind of motivated me.”

Truong said that he didn’t know what politics was at that point. He was around 8, but Truong said he remembered the symbolism of seeing Obama elected and seeing how proud everybody was about it.

“That feeling stuck with me. That feeling of leadership. That’s what made me get involved with student government and that’s what has helped me reach this point,” Truong said.

Truong was involved in student government all throughout junior high and high school. In college at Washington University in St. Louis, he ran for student government senate and ended up being student body president his sophomore year, which Truong said was unheard of.

“We hadn’t ever had a sophomore to run and to lead the student government,” Truong said.

Before becoming Bogalusa’s mayor, Truong worked on a few campaigns. He interned on Capitol Hill for three summers for Congressman Lacy Clay out of St. Louis.

Truong, who is just 23, decided to run for mayor, despite being so young.

“I’m used to proving people wrong,” Truong said. “I’ve been doing it my whole life. I knew that my age was going to be a huge factor in the campaign and that’s why I knocked on doors for 10 months straight. I think when you connect with people, because in this world, we all have stereotypes. We all look at somebody and stereotype them based on society, but once you talk to somebody individually, you get to see like, ‘oh well, maybe I stereotyped them wrong. Maybe that’s not true.’ So, I just knocked on doors. I just let people know, ‘hey, here’s my plan. I want to help reduce crime. I want to bring more businesses into town,’ and I think that resonated with a lot of people. I think that the more that I knocked the doors, the more that people put their guard down about my age.”

Truong said that with crime, they need to keep the guys out on the streets.

“Police officers need to stay out of the office and in the streets,” Truong said. “That has worked so far. I think the community is starting to come around and trust in the police department a little bit more. With this last incident that happened in front of Food Depot (on March 1; interview for this article took place on March 9), we had the suspects arrested within an hour. We had video footage that somebody had turned in, so I think it’s starting to work in terms of letting people know that you can no longer get away with this kind of stuff. I mean, I don’t have any control, you don’t have any control over somebody choosing to shoot someone, but what I do have control of is making sure we apprehend them and get them through the court system, so that’s what I’ve been doing my best at.”

In early November, Truong was elected Bogalusa’s new mayor with 56 percent of the vote.

Truong said he had three speeches prepared, one for a loss, one for a runoff and one for a victory.

“Of course, I used the victory speech, but it didn’t feel real when it happened,” Truong said. “I was just sitting there and I walked into a room — a victory night party — and everybody was happy and I’m just like, ‘ok, it’s real now.’”

Inauguration day was in early January.

“The community came out,” Truong said. “We had the swearing in that morning, that was really nice. Then we had the parade, then the ball that night. I just think it was a turning point. Mentally for a lot of people here in town, it’s like, ‘ok, well now I think we can actually progress and move forward as a city because we’ve got somebody young, somebody energetic’ and it’s just been my job to live up to those standards since I’ve been here.”

Truong said that his biggest goal while in office is to empower the kids in the community.

“Whether it’s through mayor’s camp, whether it’s through mayor’s youth council that we’re about to start up (as of March 9), I just want to provide a lot of positive pathways for young people in our community because that’s where we’re seeing the gun violence. Most of this is happening from guys 14 to 17 years old. How do we stop that? How do we get out of the cycle of poverty, of gun violence,of just a general lack of respect? Everybody says, ‘oh the parents.’ Well, if the parents aren’t doing their jobs because most parents here are working two and three jobs, so the kids are latchkey kids. They come home, get off the bus, go change out their school uniform and they come into the street and play and that’s where we’re seeing a lot of this conflict, so how do we start before care and after care programs? How do we bring stem camps? How do we get resources in here for the kids? That’s what I hope my legacy will be at the end of my term.”

Truong said the best part for him since he took office is the hope that citizens have right now.

“It’s a weight on my shoulders and it does become hard to bear sometimes, reconciling like what I can do as mayor, what I can’t do and what the citizens expect of me,” Truong said. “But I think that hope, just seeing people think that now, we can actually turn Bogalusa around, because for decades now, our city has been declining and the sentiment has been, ‘oh yeah, well it’s Bogalusa.’ But now, people actually say, ‘I think Bogalusa is going to turn around and make a turn for the better,’ so that’s been the best part so far.”

Truong went to Varnado High School his freshman and sophomore years. His mom is in the military, so they moved and he graduated from West Harrison High School in Gulfport, Miss. in 2017.