Jehu's Story
If Jehu does not look like a California politician, it is because he is not. Jehu has always worked in the private sector. He had had to make payroll, market his business and prove himself every day since he started working in his early teens. Yes, there are many wonderful people in academia or the public sector, but in the private sector, if you don’t perform, you don’t eat.
The first and the only national candidate with a multi-ethnic, multi-racial family. Jehu is straight from the middle class, not a member of the Elite. He talks straight and not out of the side of his mouth. Jehu knows the issues that middle-class Californians care about. And he knows how to get things done.
To top it off, Jehu’s first-class legal mind will help him write and negotiate legislation that will benefit all of us. After all, isn’t that what legislators are supposed to do?
Meet Jehu
Jehu’s life is a case study of victory over adversity and untiring service to others.
From left, cousin Jimmy, Uncle, Aunt Ruth (who would become stepmother to Frances Fisher), Mother Marie, Father Charles, and in front, brother Jason (now deceased) and Jehu.
Jehu’s life began auspiciously when he was born to a prominent and brilliant local attorney and his beautiful wife in Temple City. Although Charles R. Hand himself never sought public office, he worked for decades in politics, starting out in Whittier, California working on the Senate campaign for a fellow Whiterian.
Before reaching his first birthday, Jehu was burned on his upper body and neck from scalding coffee, and spent months in the hospital. The accident left him with disfiguring scars, and he was often ridiculed by other children. His Appalachian grandmother, who herself had raised 17 children, took on his care. Jehu credits his close relationship with his grandmother with instilling in him an affinity for spirituality.
Elementary school teachers labeled Jehu as mentally retarded, due to his severe speech impediment.
The turning points for Jehu’s life occurred when he was 10 to 11 years old. He received treatment for his speech impediment and, for the first time, his words became intelligible to outsiders. During his weekly visits to the South Pasadena Public Library, he started reading National Review, and absorbed the Conservative philosophy. Impressed with William F. Buckley, Jr.’s passion for a classical education, Jehu decided that his public school was not up to Buckley’s standards, and Jehu devised his own, simple study plan: read one quality book of literature, science or history every day, in rough chronological order. Beginning with Aeschylus and ending with Spengler, he faithfully executed his plan until graduation from South Pasadena High School. Jehu started earning money from delivering newspapers and other odd jobs to build a library of over 1,000 books while in High School. Dedicated to becoming a well-rounded person, he taught himself several musical instruments, was a member of the South Pasadena Marching Band, and lettered in wrestling and sophomore football.
Grandparents William and Martha, his beloved grandmother
At age 10, Jehu started attending church and continued doing so, riding his bicycle every Sunday. Eventually, he would prepare himself to serve as an unpaid missionary in Southeast Mexico. He saved money and paid for nearly all his expenses during that two year period.
When Jehu was eight, his mother had been diagnosed with a strange new illness: multiple sclerosis. In a few years, she became an invalid, and the responsibility of running a household and caring for his younger brothers and sister fell upon him. At the same time, his father’s problems with alcoholism reached a tipping point. The family was plunged into monetary poverty. His parents separated due to the father’s physical abuse of his wife and children. By age 16, Jehu was working full time as the night manager at the South Pasadena McDonalds, and had to give up athletics. Due to his home responsibilities, his work, and his attention to his self-study program, he was frequently absent from school, and graduated from South Pasadena High School 202 out of a class of 212.
The young missionary, in Veracruz, Mexico
Upon release from his missionary labors, Jehu enrolled at Brigham Young University, with a hiatus to earn money managing a Mexican restaurant in Baldwin Park while attending UCLA. He graduated in 1981 with a degree in Latin American Studies. He then attended New York University School of Law, receiving his J.D. in 1984, and was offered employment at one of the major law firms in Columbus, Ohio. His first child was born during the two years he worked in Columbus.
Moving back to California in 1986, Jehu continued to work in corporate and securities law. He made partner at one of the largest law firms in Orange County in 1991, after only five years of practice, but left to form his own law firm in Orange County, practicing law until 2012. His private practice focused on start up companies, and he was the attorney taking the first Chinese public in the United States. Jehu also operated a registered stockbrokerage firm for 18 years. During this time, Jehu devoted a significant amount to pro bono work, primarily with immigration and family law issues for the immigrant community in South Orange County.
In 1998, Jehu entered into a joint venture with the Belarusian Olympic Committee to own and operate a professional basketball team in Gomel, Belarus. This was the first foray of many by Jehu into business in the countries of the former Soviet Union, during the 1998 to 2006 time period. While in those countries, Jehu learned Russian and forged many friendships in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia which continue to this day. These experiences make Jehu uniquely poised to understand the critical foreign policy issues in that part of the world.
In 2012, Jehu moved from the United States with his elementary school-aged daughter to The Bahamas. They lived on a boat in The Bahamas while Jehu obtained a law degree at the law school in Nassau. This was a humbling experience in two ways. Starting school again at age 56 sweeps away decades of mental cobwebs. And being the only white student in the law school helped him understand race relations from a different point of view. After graduation, Jehu moved to Antigua and Barbuda, with the goal of being called to the bar in that jurisdiction and spending his retirement there attending to public interest issues and offering adventure sailing tours. While in Antigua, Jehu met and married his wife Jirawan, with whom he shares a one-year old son.
When Jehu moved abroad, he transferred the legal files on two public companies to other attorneys. After his departure, the attorneys, with two of his brothers and their associates, engaged in a series of stock frauds for these companies. Jehu had no knowledge of these illegal activities, and received no benefit from them. Along with the other shareholders, his investment in those companies was rendered virtually worthless. The perpetrators obtained minimal sentences in exchange for blaming Jehu for the frauds, and, after a trial, Jehu was sentenced to prison. He served 32 months. While in prison, he authored and published Federal Prisoners’ Legal Guide (available on Amazon), the definitive guide for federal prisoners to contest their sentences and deal with prison bureaucracy. He also wrote hundreds of pro bono motions for other prisoners. Jehu provides free copies of his book to members of FAMM and their loved ones in prison. His conviction is still under appeal.
Jehu in Gomel Belarus with Olympic committee member, after a practice session (1998)
Jehu is now working on developing One Family One Tree, a genealogy-based eco-cemetery in San Bernardino County. Jehu started collecting his own family’s genealogical information at age 14, adding over 700 names to his family tree, and is a volunteer genealogical consultant. He also has served as an officer of his regional PTA.
As the father of 9 children, ages 1 to 38, including soccer moms, and two grandchildren, Jehu understands the problems that families face raising their children in this inflationary environment. He brings a unique perspective to his candidacy, and is truly representative of a post-racial California, being blessed to have Latino, Black and Asian children and relatives by marriage. Truly, he believes we are indeed “One Family.”
Interesting Facts about Jehu Hand
- While growing up in Dana Point, his children got used to Jehu bringing homeless people home to stay. Other than some minor thefts, no adverse incidents occurred.
- Jehu periodically sponsors the college education of an underprivileged youth; his third protégé graduated in December 2022.
- Jehu is a private pilot. On a commercial flight from Kyiv to Crimea, he was the last passenger to board and the flight crew asked him to sit in the cockpit jump seat. He was invited to and flew the aircraft for about 20 minutes.
- An avid sailor, Jehu competed in the Newport to Ensenada race. He engineered and implemented an EV conversion of a Bavaria sailboat, and performs almost of his own automobile repairs, including engine swaps. He is an experienced marine electrician and canvas worker, and loves his vintage Pfaff sewing machine.
- Jehu has long championed the defense of women. From 2000 to 2006, he operated a domestic violence hotline focused on immigrants. Since witnessing the abuse suffered by his own mother, Jehu has keep his vow of non-violence insofar as it relates to his own person, to be a silent witness against familial violence.
- Jehu learned in his teens how to fall asleep instantly. He adapted to the pressures of a Big Law career by sleeping only every other night. He relaxes by learning about technology; currently, Bootstrap is on the menu. He has written four unpublished novels. He is a snowboarder, not a skier.
- An early adapter of technology, Jehu learned to program on his Apple II and to email through CompuServe.
Jehu ’s Reading List
- The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire’s Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education and Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory, by James Lindsay
- Ender’s Game and Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card
- Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Steven R. Koonin
- Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Gulag Archipelago, Vols. I-III, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free: And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System, by Judge Jed S. Rakoff
- The Complete Rigger's Apprentice: Tools and Techniques for Modern and Traditional Rigging, by Brian Toss
- Harbor Lights of Home, by Edgar A. Guest
- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt
- The Origins and History of Consciousness, by Erich Neumann
- The Welfare Trait: How State Benefits Affect Personality, by Adam Perkins
- The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer
- Notes from the Underground and Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodr Dostoyevsky
- Guns and Violence: The English Experience, by Joyce Lee Malcolm
- Radical in Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, by Stanley Kurtz
- Black Rednecks and White Liberals, by Thomas Sowell
- Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals, by Saul D. Alinsky