Right to Start, a national nonprofit organization championing entrepreneurship as a civic priority, will host a forum on entrepreneurship in Cedar Rapids for Republican presidential candidates.
The event will be held 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday, July 28, at the Dows Fine Art Center at Coe College. Confirmed to participate are: Larry Elder, Asa Hutchinson, Perry Johnson and Francis Suarez.
The forum will consist of a series of four, 20-minute, question-and-answer conversations – one for each candidate. The candidates will be questioned by Inc. magazine’s Editor at Large Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan and Right to Start’s Founder and CEO Victor W. Hwang.
Participating presidential candidates – with a highlight of their connection to entrepreneurship – are:
- Larry Elder, a talk radio host, trained as a lawyer and founded in 1980 a law-related executive search firm, Laurence A. Elder and Associates, which he owned for 15 years.
- Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas, founded a consulting firm, Hutchinson Group, LLC, in 2005 in Little Rock.
- Perry Johnson, an entrepreneur, has founded 80 companies worldwide.
- Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami, Florida, champions the development of Miami’s tech economy through Venture Miami, which offers concierge-level support to entrepreneurs.
“Right to Start is pleased to host this first-ever candidate forum on entrepreneurship,” said Mr. Hwang. “Entrepreneurs create nearly all net new jobs in the U.S. economy, so facilitating their innovative work should be a prominent focus of the presidential election cycle for both parties.”
A recent bipartisan survey of American voters conducted for Right to Start revealed overwhelming bipartisan support for entrepreneurship. The survey found that Americans almost unanimously agree that “it is important to America’s future that citizens have a fair opportunity to start and grow their own business”: 94% agree, 2% disagree, and 4% are not sure. That near-unanimity crosses party lines – with 95% of Republicans, 95% of Independents, and 92% of Democrats agreeing.
Yet, 92% of voters say that starting a business today is difficult; 81% of entrepreneurs say that government favors big businesses over them and 69% of entrepreneurs say that government doesn’t care about them at all.
The forum will provide an opportunity for candidates to discuss their views on entrepreneurship, as informed by their own experience, to describe the barriers to entrepreneurship that they would tackle and to explore how they would go about that.
Individuals interested in attending the forum can register at r2seshipforum.com.
