Tech Instructor Launches Campaign For Sixth District House Seat

A Tennessee Tech instructor launched his campaign Wednesday night for the House Of Representatives seat held by John Rose.

Cyril Focht will run as a Democrat. He completed his paperwork Wednesday morning and finished his website, Vote4Focht.Us.

“My platform is actually on technology policy, so my background is in computer science,” Focht said. “I’ve noticed a lot of ways that the big tech companies are coming in and they’re building new technologies that are having a lot of pretty detrimental consequences to our society and our country. And the reason I’ve decided to seek federal office is because I think that’s where I can have the most power to be able to have good, effective regulation on those tech companies.”

Focht said the launch of the campaign was actually a bit “anticlimatic” compared with what he thought.

“I’ve kind of seen seeking a position of elected leadership as a form of civic duty,” Focht said. “I think it’s important to find some ways to give back to my community. And for a long time, I had kind of played with the idea of maybe doing something like local or maybe even state leadership.”

Rose is serving his third term representing the sixth district. Focht said his campaign is not about running against the incumbent.

“I think it’s what it comes down to is we’re all just trying to do things that we think are going to be the best for our community,” Focht said.
“I’m not really thinking about it so much of challenging an incumbent, so much as I want to do what I can to affect good in the community around me. So even if I lose the race, hopefully, at least with my campaign, I will still have an opportunity to be able to educate people about important issues around technology and how we can think about good regulation for those.”

Focht said he looked forward to getting out and meeting people face-to-face to talk about the issues.

Born and raised in Cookeville, Focht pursued a Computer Science degree at Tennessee Tech and later at UC Santa Cruz. Election Day is November 5, 2024.